Bernhard Scheid, ed., with Kate Wildman Nakai

Kami Ways in Nationalist Territory: Shinto Studies in Prewar Japan and the West. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2013.

Publisher’s blurb:

Shinto, literally the way of the kami (gods), is often regarded as Japan’s indigenous religion retaining archaic elements of animism and nature worship. At the same time, Shinto is sometimes seen as nothing else than a nationalistic political ideology. After all, in 1868 Japan turned into a modern nation state and worship at Shinto shrines became a national cult. This so-called State Shinto was eventually abolished under the Allied Occupation in 1946 but the historical links between Shinto and Japanese nationalism led to an ambivalent attitude towards Shinto not only at the popular level but also at the level of scientific research.

The present volume comprises eight essays by leading experts of Japanese intellectual history from Japan, Europe, and the USA who tackle this issue from the point of view of research history: What is the impact of State Shinto on Shinto research before and after the Second World War? How did Japanese and international scholars contribute and/or react to the ideological framework of Japanese nationalism? How did nationalist discourses of other countries (in particular German National Socialism) influence the conception of Shinto? As each essay addresses these issues from a specific angle, it becomes clear that there never was just one ideology of State Shinto. Moreover, from the 1880s onward the political authorities emphasized shrine ritual at the cost of Shinto theology. This so-called nonreligious-shrine doctrine also weakened the significance of academic research of Shinto as a tool of propaganda. Regarding the concept of Shinto proper, the impact of modern, “westernized” religious studies seems at least as important as traditional, “nativist” approaches.

http://www.ikga.oeaw.ac.at/Literatur:Scheid_2013

http://verlag.oeaw.ac.at/Kami-Ways-in-Nationalist-Territory-