Tokugawa Religion

by Robert N. Bellah

Robert N. Bellah's classic study, Tokugawa Religion does for Japan what Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism did for the West.  One of the foremost authorities on Japanese history and culture, Bellah explains how religion in the Tokugawa period (160-1868) established the foundation for Japan's modern industrial economy and dispels two misconceptions about Japanese modernization: that it began with Admiral Perry's arrival in 1868, and that it rapidly developed because of the superb Japanese ability for imitation. In this revealing work, Bellah shows how the native doctrines of Buddhism, Confucianism and Shinto encouraged forms of logic and understanding necessary for economic development.  Japan's current status as an economic superpower and industrial model for many in the West makes this groundbreaking volume even more important today than when it was first published in 1957.  With a new introduction by the author.

Genres: Japan, Religion, History, Sociology, Anthropology, Buddhism, Academic

272 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1985

About the author

Robert N. Bellah was Elliott Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley.

Bellah graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College with a B.A. in social anthropology in 1950. His undergraduate honors thesis on “Apache Kinship Systems” won the Phi Beta Kappa Prize and was published by the Harvard University Press. In 1955, he received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in Sociology and Far Eastern Languages and published his doctoral dissertation, Tokugawa Religion, in 1957. After two years of postdoctoral work in Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal, he began teaching at Harvard in 1957 and left 10 years later as Professor of Sociology to move to the University of California, Berkeley. From 1967 to 1997, he served as Ford Professor of Sociology.

Other works include Beyond Belief, Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society, The Broken Covenant, The New Religious Consciousness, Varieties of Civil Religion, Uncivil Religion, Imagining Japan and, most recently, The Robert Bellah Reader. The latter reflects his work as a whole and the overall direction of his life in scholarship “to understand the meaning of modernity.”

Continuing concerns already developed in part in “Civil Religion in America” and The Broken Covenant, led to a book Bellah co-authored with Richard Madsen, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven Tipton. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life published by the University of California Press in 1985. The same group wrote The Good Society, an institutional analysis of American society, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1991.

On December 20, 2000, Bellah received the United States National Humanities Medal. The citation, which President William Jefferson Clinton signed, reads:

The President of the United States of America awards this National Humanities Medal to Robert N. Bellah for his efforts to illuminate the importance of community in American society. A distinguished sociologist and educator, he has raised our awareness of the values that are at the core of our democratic institutions and of the dangers of individualism unchecked by social responsibility.

In July 2008, Bellah and Professor Hans Joas, who holds appointments in both the University of Chicago and Freiburg University in Germany, organized a conference at the Max Weber Center of the University of Erfurt on “The Axial Age and Its Consequences for Subsequent History and the Present,” attended by a distinguished group of international scholars interested in comparative history and sociology. At the conclusion of the conference, the University of Erfurt awarded Bellah an honorary degree. Harvard University Press published the proceedings of this conference as The Axial Age and Its Consequences in 2012.

In September of 2011 the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press published Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age, the result of Bellah’s lifetime interest in the evolution of religion and thirteen years of work on this volume.

Preview a book about Robert Bellah by University of Padua, Italy, Sociology Professor Matteo Bortolini.
News and Articles Commenting on Robert Bellah's Passing

Comments on the Passing of Robert N. Bellah by Jeffrey C. Alexander
American Journal of Cultural Sociology, July 31, 2013

Robert Bellah, Sociologist of Religion, Dies at 86
Tricycle, July 31, 2013

In Memoriam: Robert N. Bellah
Pacific Church News [The Episcopal Diocese of California], July 31, 2013

Robert Bellah, 1927-2013
Harvard University Press | Blog, July 31, 2013

The Passing of Robert Bellah
Association for the Sociology of Religion, July 31, 2013

Robert Bellah, preeminent American sociologist of religion, dies at 86 by Yasmin Anwar,
UC Berkeley News Center, August 1, 2013

Remembering Robert Bellah by Jeff Guhin
Jeff Guhin's blog , Thursday, August 1, 2013

Robert Bellah Departs by Mark Silk,
Religion News Service, August

Reviews

[Patrick McCoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was so impressed with Robert Bellah’s book of essays about Japan and Japanese culture, Imagining Japan, that I tracked down his earliest book, Tokugawa Religion (1958). Again he has some interesting things to say about the Japanese and their culture. For example:

It is the particular system or collectivity of which one is a member, which counts, whether it be family, han, or Japan as a whole. Commitment to these tends to take precedence over universalistic commitments, such as commitment to truth or justice.

Bellah makes the claim that the religion of the Tokugawa period influenced Japan in the Meiji period to undergo modernization in a manner that reflects the Protestant work ethic that was influential in the modernization of the west as expounded by Max Weber. It seems as a sociologist Bellah is something of a disciple of Weber, which is also evident in Habits of the Heart. He sees the “shinsu” religion as the closest to Western Protestantism and its ethic most similar to the Protestant ethic. Religion is seen as means of maintaining and intensifying central values, supplying motivation, and reinforcing asceticism and diligence and economy. He also points out that if religion gets credit for modernity, it also deserves the blame for imperialism that resulted in WWII.

He also states that Japan didn’t have to go through the slow process of accumulation like the west in order to modernize. The capital required was too great, thus government controlled modernization due to lack of capital in the private sector. (He cites Kemalist Turkey as an example of this model) He also states that modernization should first be seen in political terms and not only in economic development. It is political because it was concerned with the increase of power and wealth as a means. This is seen in the “zaibutsu” economy, which was dependent on government for support. There was also a desire to restore the emperor and increase national power.

[Nash · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book grew out of Professor Bellah's own dissertation in the 60s, so the readers should read with that information in mind. As you would expect from someone who did a Ph.D. at Harvard and also the first of its kind to sort of do a DOUBLE DEGREE by combining East Asia Studies with Sociology, this book is packed with well-researched information of Tokugawa Japan. If you a sociologist, though, you may not agree with all the theoretical assumption he made. But then, again, it was the sign of time. Don't be upset when you read something that you don't agree. Even Professor Bellah himself sort of changed his mind years later in his Foreword for later editions! Despite the changes in recent sociological theories, this book serves as a solid foundation for researchers of subsequent eras to build upon, agreeing with it or otherwise.

[Rebecca Radnor]

One of those books that gathered dust on my shelves for years, now available on kindle...

[Alice Jennings · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very good. Gives you what you want and is well researched

[Frances Wood]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13453118

[Rahmat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I NEED THIS BOOK FOR A CONCEPT IN MY THESIS