The Invention of Religion in Japan

by Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm

Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of what we call “religion.” There was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning. But when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this Western idea.

In this book, Jason Ananda Josephson reveals how Japanese officials invented religion in Japan and traces the sweeping intellectual, legal, and cultural changes that followed. More than a tale of oppression or hegemony, Josephson’s account demonstrates that the process of articulating religion offered the Japanese state a valuable opportunity. In addition to carving out space for belief in Christianity and certain forms of Buddhism, Japanese officials excluded Shinto from the category. Instead, they enshrined it as a national ideology while relegating the popular practices of indigenous shamans and female mediums to the category of “superstitions”—and thus beyond the sphere of tolerance.

Josephson argues that the invention of religion in Japan was a politically charged, boundary-drawing exercise that not only extensively reclassified the inherited materials of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto to lasting effect, but also reshaped, in subtle but significant ways, our own formulation of the concept of religion today. This ambitious and wide-ranging book contributes an important perspective to broader debates on the nature of religion, the secular, science, and superstition.

Genres: Japan, Religion, History, Nonfiction, Theology, Cultural, Asia

387 pages, Paperback

First published October 3, 2012

About the author

Jason Ānanda Josephson-Storm received his PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University in 2006 and has held visiting positions at Princeton University, École Française d’Extrême-Orient, Paris and Ruhr Universität, Germany. He has three primary research foci: Japanese Religions, European Intellectual History, and Theory more broadly. The common thread to his research is an attempt to decenter received narratives in the study of religion and science. His main targets have been epistemological obstacles, the preconceived universals which serve as the foundations of various discourses. Josephson Storm has also been working to articulate new research models for Religious Studies in the wake of the collapse of poststructuralism as a guiding ethos in the Humanities.

Reviews

[Kristian Petersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1853, the Japanese were required to consider what the word religion meant when western powers compelled the Tokugawa government to ensure freedom of religion to Christian missionaries. The challenge this request posed was based on the fact that prior to the nineteenth century Japanese language had no parallel terminology for the category of religion. In The Invention of Religion in Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2012), Jason Ānanda Josephson, Assistant Professor of Religion at Williams College, delineates a genealogy of the Japanese construction of the category of religion, which was catalyzed by this political encounter between East and West. Josephson argues that opposed to the common notion that religion is an ethnographic or academic creation that we can place religion through diplomatic and legal discourses that invent or manufacture an identifiable, yet elastic, category. Prior to this political demand, contact between different Japanese and western social groups were discussed in bilateral descriptions of orthodoxy and heresy, either from a Christian or Buddhist perspective. Added to this developing understanding of terminology were the influences of western science, the negotiation of local practices, and the rise of nationalism. The Japanese depiction of Shinto poses the greatest challenge to customary notions of religion because it is described as a national or political science that is markedly nonreligious. Overall, Josephson demonstrates that in the defining of legal and social categories there was a trinary creation of religion, superstition, and the secular. In our conversation we discuss theocentric and heirocentric definitions of “religion,” the role of the demonic, heresy, varieties of Shinto, theories of secularization, superstition, civilizing projects, personal interior belief versus external behavior, and the institutional confirmation of these beliefs in legal contexts.
http://newbooksinreligion.com/2012/10...

[Daniel Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book not only taught me a lot of history that I didn't know, but it actually changed how I view religion as a cultural concept.

Everyone familiar with Japan knows that in the 1500s and 1600s, Christian missionaries came to Japan and began converting some of the local populace. After initial toleration, the Shoguns responded with banning Christianity, Christian (and all foreign) trade, and persecuting Japanese Christians. That is familiar history, and that isn't wrong.

However, that is told from the outsider (Christian) perspective. This book is fascinating because it explores how Japanese elites perceived Christian and other spiritual systems.

For example, picking Christianity, this was characterized not as a foreign religion but rather as a Buddhist heresy. This was apparently a trope within Buddhism of sort of "anti-Buddhisms" cropping up - very similar to Buddhism, except evil and wrong. In this lens, Christianity is a religion that also originates from the West, the first missionaries came from India, there are temples and monks with similar dress and lifestyles, there's quite a few elements that were perceived as similar and then as heretical/demonic. It's fascinating reading Japanese accounts of Christianity from the 1600s through the 1800s, because they've apparently understood the Christian message but reinterpreted God as an evil deity of rebellion. This also explains why Japan limited contact with China as well - the book references the idea that even China has been tainted by this world-spanning demonic heresy.

That's the first several chapters, and that itself is fascinating. The second part of the book focuses on the opening up of Japan to the West (and the rest of the world). One of the treaty elements was freedom of religion - but what does that mean? Is that freedom of inner belief, of home rituals, of public worship, of preaching and conversion? Additionally, what is acceptable internally within Japan? What is the correct worship of the gods, and what is superstition or heresy?

The author makes the convincing argument that this is where religion as a concept is invented in Japan, the idea that there are discrete religious systems such as Christianity, Buddhism, Shinto, etc. This is also where Shinto itself is invented - it is distilled from Buddhism (despite many of the prominent kami being Indian deities themselves), a mythology is retconned, and State Shinto and Sect Shinto emerge as different entities. Buddhism, meanwhile, becomes castigated as a backwards and foreign religion in the decades preceding the Meiji Restoration, a sentiment which only intensifies under modern Japan.

The overall conclusion is that there is not just a dualism between secular and religion in these consciously modernizing states such as 19th century Japan, but rather three parts - religion, secular, and superstition. Somewhat ironically, Japan was able to distill what it perceived as the "virtues" of Christian nations by secularizing them and adapting them to its "Science of the Gods"; certain practices, rituals, and beliefs amongst the citizenry were then categorized as either acceptable religions or as deplorable superstitions and heresies.

I strongly recommend this book. It was genuinely fascinating (and darkly humorous) to read various Japanese commenters interpret Christianity as an evil Buddhist heresy, and that alone is worth the read. But the bigger point about the construction of the concept of religion - as something which all people just "have", where all religions are sort of equivalent - was fascinating to read about in this non-Christian context.

[blaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Josephson tracks the history and conceptual development of religion in Japan. Prior to the Perry expedition and opening of the country, there was no term equivalent to religion. Christianity, when it appeared with the Jesuits in the 16th century, neatly fit within their existing conceptual framework as a Buddhist heresy (partly due to Europeans and Japanese talking past each other in translation). When Westerners returned with ironclad steamships and cannons to pry open Japan’s borders, the phrase “freedom of religion” arose constantly as a treaty term with each Western country. This book tracks the way Japanese diplomats and intellectuals hashed out an understanding of what that meant, as well as the bifurcation of Shinto from Buddhist and Confucian practice and it’s development into a mandatory civil religion under the Meiji government. Incredibly interesting stuff for those interested in Japan, religious studies, or history of ideas.

[Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extremely thought-provoking book! It was fascinating to see how Christians and Buddhists saw each other when Jesuits came to Japan back in the 1500s, as well as their attempts to categorize each other into their own understandings. Both saw each other as heretics within their own respective models of understanding. History really is full of misunderstandings, often leading to unfortunate consequences, as evident in the recounting of Japanese history in this book.

Back to this book being thought-provoking: I find myself going forward having to stop and consider how I categorize things, and why it is that I do. Things like "religion", "superstition", and "the secular". Also the kind of back and forth dynamic these concepts have had with one another.

Another fascinating thing was how influential the Japanese were in the early formation of Religious Studies. And the author's take on how Japan's adoption of the concept of religion both fits into and conflicts with Edward Said's concept of Orientalism. And another thing I'll be thinking about is language and how much that influences one's outlook.

I also found the author's concepts of "hierarchical inclusion" and "exclusive similarity" to be insightful and hopefully useful going forward.

[ª · Rating 4 out of 5]

tardé dos semanas en leerme las primeras 200 paginas y cinco meses en las 50 ultimas👍

[John Gossman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was engrossing, thought-provoking book. I need to process more before I can fully review it. I picked it up to learn more about how Shinto was separated from Buddhism and made into a state religion during the early Meiji period. But I learned far more.

Among the theses propounded:

Japanese had no word for religion prior to American demands for “freedom of religion.”
“State Shinto” was not a religion and should instead be thought of as “Shinto Secular.”
The Japanese experience of establishing a concept of religion is an opportunity to understand how the concept emerged across the world, not just in Christian (Protestant) Europe.
The Japanese thinkers who were involved with defining the role of religion in the Meiji restoration (including the development of “State Shinto”) were familiar with, advised by, and influenced the European thinkers who pioneered “religious studies” in the 19th century.

The book is part history, part philosophy, and part comparative religion. Along with the major theses, it also examines the arrival of Christianity in Japan, why it was banned, and why, in Meiji times, the ban was (gradually) dropped. I found it very interesting that when the first Christians in Japan encountered Japanese Buddhism, they thought it was a garbled version of Christianity, and the Japanese in turn thought Christianity was a heretical sect of Buddhism. I had not previously noticed how many ways the two religions resemble each other.

The book also provides a background on the emergence of religious studies as a field and the difficulties in defining “religion” and differentiating it from concepts such as belief, church, superstition, and cult.

I don’t agree with all the author’s points, and some of the writing is uneven, resembling a dissertation (which it started as) trying to convince its readers of its novelty and contribution to the field rather than simply making its points. But a very thoughtful and thought provoking, well-researched book.

I do wish the author had spent a little more time describing how Shinto compares and contrasts to other religions than Christianity, Buddhism, and Confucianism. In particular, Hinduism (like Shinto sometimes said to be a culture rather than a religion) and the beliefs of the ancient Romans (which was a state religion and included Emperor worship, not unlike Shinto until WWII). But the book is already large and very ambitious. A sequel prhaps?


Ps —

I also wish someone would write a follow-up about the modern Japanese attitude towards religion, especially having just read “1Q84” by Murakami. Part of that book’s plot revolves around the legal definition of a religion in Japan.

[Hebdomeros · Rating 3 out of 5]

Japan became the place, therefore, where European Christianity could be secularized. Inasmuch as secularization is Christianity’s exit, then Japan preceded Europe in importing and producing de-Christianized science and politics before anything of the like existed in the West. Thus, Taylor’s so-called secular age seems to have happened first outside of Europe, at the periphery rather than the center, or in exactly those parts of the globe Taylor explicitly fails to consider.
(...)
Thus, the Japanese narrative can be seen to invert the Orientalist trope of a mystic East and a rational West, as it suggests that it was Japan that had to secularize European politics and science to make it palatable internally.
(...)
In this instance at least, secularization could be seen as something done to Europe rather than as something Europe inflicted on the rest of the world.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

really fantastic genealogical project on how the conception of “religion” was created in japan through colonial encounters with europeans. while this particular project deals with shinto, it has so many more implications for how we understand religion more broadly and how it is connected to power. i’m still not completely convinced discourse analysis is enough to explain the construction of religion in its entirety, but this is a great example of all the exciting research that can be done with this method.

[Benjamin Loubet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting to deconstruct our presuppositions about religion by confronting us to a culture where it was not a category. Also interesting to learn about the history and political ideologies behind the Meiji era in Japan.

[Rhiannon Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful and well written exploration of historical, legal, philosophical, and scholarly factors influencing the ways "religion" is understood in the Japanese context, and how the effort to make the category "religion" function in Japanese society has affected religious studies as a field.

[Ben Smitthimedhin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alright book but cool author name

[Kendra Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like to consider myself a casual scholar (meaning I’m not a professional and it is not my career) of religion and religion in Japan (and I don’t mean necessarily how they affect each other, I mean as topics and areas of study). The Invention of Religion in Japan is both a look at history itself, and how religion fits into it. It discussed how the Japanese had their set of beliefs, like folk beliefs that later became categorized with Shinto, and Buddhism, but, because they were a part of life, they were not defined as a “religion”, so when the Japanese encountered Christianity, they struggled to define their beliefs. Christianity was originally seen as a heretical form of Buddhism.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in religious studies, the history of Japan, or Japan in general.

[Calvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent dive into the negotiation of the concept of religion.

[Kingsborough Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting!