Journal of Religion in Japan 8 (2019) 9–45 brill.com/jrj Formations of Secularity in Ancient Japan? On Cultural Encounters, Critical Junctures, and Path-Dependent Processes Christoph Kleine Leipzig University, Germany [email protected] Abstract Starting from the premise that the diversity of forms for distinguishing between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’ (i.e., multiple secularities) in global modernity is the result of different cultural preconditions in the appropriation of Western normative concepts of secularism, I would like to offer a modest contribution to the understanding of the corresponding cultural preconditions in Japan. I will try to show that the specific—and at first glance, relatively unproblematic—appropriation of secularity as a regulatory principle in modern Japan is to some extent path dependent on relatively stable and durable epistemic and social structures that have emerged in the course of ‘critical junctures’ in history. In this context, I would like to put up for discussion my hypoth- esis that some decisions taken in the period between the sixth and eighth centuries CE regarding the organisation of the relationship between ‘the religious’ and ‘the sec- ular’ generated path dependencies that were effective well into the nineteenth cen- tury. Keywords ancient Japan – secularity – critical junctures – path-dependencies – cultural encoun- ter – epistemic and social structures 1 Introduction—Basic Research Question(s) In the light of the question raised in the general introduction about the differ- ent forms of secularity in global modernity and the cultural-historical causes for these differences, we first have to determine what might be specific to the Japanese form of secularity. At first glance, Japan appears to be a laicist model © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/22118349-00801004Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:59:14AM via free access 10 kleine state in which state and religion are more strictly separated1 than hardly any- where else in the world. The immediate cause for the strong secularist colour- ing of the constitution is, of course, the American occupiers’ intention after the Pacific War (Hook and McCormack 2005 [2001]) to abolish State Shintō as the ideological foundation of Japanese nationalism, imperialism and mili- tarism. Therefore, when we ask about the specifics of Japanese secularity, we must look back to the pre-war period, when the Japanese created their own constitutional order. Although critically eyed by Western powers, the Japanese still had considerable leeway to organise the relationship between the religious and the secular. It is indeed obvious that there is a tension, still not entirely resolved today, between the secularity codified in the post-war constitution and the arrangement between the religious and the non-religious originally conceived in the Meiji period. This becomes particularly apparent in the con- stitutional debates of recent years, which show that the boundaries between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’ are actually highly contested in modern Japan. I am referring here mainly to attempts by the ruling party LDP to amend Articles 20 and 89 of the Constitution to the effect that Article 20, in which “the State, local governments, and other public corporations shall refrain from education in particular religions and other religious activities,” would be qual- ified to except for those which “do not exceed the sphere of social festivities and folkloric activities (shakai-teki girei mata wa shūzoku-teki kōi no han’i o koenai 社会的儀礼又は習俗的行為の範囲を超えない)” (Jiminjutō Kenpō Kaisei Sui- jin Honbu 2013: 48).2 Likewise, Article 89, in which “no public money or other property shall be expended or appropriated for the use, benefit or maintenance of any religious institution or association, or for any charitable, educational or benevolent enterprises not under the control of public authority,” would be altered to permit funding when “the religious content does not exceed the level of custom or social etiquette” (Jones, July 02, 2013). Whatever the political objective behind these revisionist attempts to amend the constitution, they clearly show that the boundaries between culture, tradi- tion and customs on the one hand and religion on the other are highly contro- versial (or can at least be used to mobilise revisionist sentiments). The corre- sponding controversies reflect, even deliberately revive, a dilemma that already occupied the Meiji reformers who wanted to create Shintō as a form of unifying tennō-centric state ideology and cult, while at the same time meeting West- 1 Note that I use the term ‘separation’ as a specific form of structural differentiation on the meso-sociological level, one which implies legal and organisational regulations aiming at the disentanglement of two structural units. 2 For a detailed analysis in English, see Jones (2 July 2013). Journal of ReligionDownloaded in Japan from Brill.com09/27/2021 8 (2019) 9–45 05:59:14AM via free access formations of secularity in ancient japan? 11 ern demands for religious freedom—a precondition for being accepted as a modern ‘civilized’ nation-state qualified to enter into contracts with Western nations. The solution of defining the combination of Imperial Shintō (kōshitsu shintō 皇室神道) and Shrine Shintō ( jinja shintō 神社神道) as ‘non-religious’ (hi-shūkyō 非宗教)3 appeared to be a transparent political manoeuvre, but from a historical point of view, it was not entirely groundless. The Western con- cept of ‘religion,’ adopted with the implementation of the old Buddhist term shūkyō 宗教 as its translation (Krämer 2013, 2015; Josephson 2012; Isomae 2012; Shimazono and Tsuruoka 2004) was indeed hardly applicable to State Shintō. In contrast, it has never been particularly difficult to categorise as shūkyō the strongly institutionalised religions of the ‘voluntaristic’4 and ‘communitarian’5 type that, according to David Martin, are the product of the “Axial revolution of between two and three millennia ago,” which brought about the “ability to choose (or reject) religious affiliation” and is thus “associated … with the cre- ation of voluntary communities apart from the state and territory” (Martin 2014: 81). Buddhism, no doubt, is a religion that can be “separated from state or from territory or from ethnicity, or from all three” (Martin 2014: 81–82), and (in theory) it requires personal confession, just like Christianity. The same is true with new religious communities, for which the term Sect Shintō (kyōha shintō 教派神道) was officially introduced in 1882 (Hardacre 2018: 100). To subsume these socio-cultural formations under the category of shūkyō and to distin- guish them from ‘secular’ institutions by granting them a special legal status was rather unproblematic—in contrast to the bricolage of various cultural ele- ments then defined as Shrine Shintō. In a few earlier essays (Kleine 2012a, 2012b, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c) I have tried to show that the medieval paradigm of “the interdependence of the nomosphere of the ruler and the nomosphere of the Buddha” (ōbō buppō sō’i 王法佛法相 依), propagated by Buddhist thinkers as a warrant of social order, established a discourse of distinction and a practice of differentiation, which may—for 3 For a discussion of this matter, see Imaizumi (1926). 4 This is not to say, of course, that Buddhism entered Japan as a full-fledged voluntaristic reli- gion. In the early days, it rather functioned as yet another technique of statecraft, which implied the application of ‘magical’ means. Nevertheless, Buddhism provided new options and choices for an ever-growing number of people and gradually turned into the voluntaris- tic religion it was ‘designed’ as, even though non-voluntaristic aspects were retained—as in all voluntaristic religions. 5 Note that Martin uses the term ‘communitarian’ slightly differently from Fogarty (1993) and others, as he contrasts it with ‘voluntarism,’ the latter being represented prototypically by Protestantism (Martin 2014: 96). I would argue that some religions are characterised by a form of ‘voluntary communitarianism.’ Journal of Religion in Japan 8 (2019) 9–45 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:59:14AM via free access 12 kleine some contestable heuristic reasons—be described as a form of premodern secularity, i.e. secularity avant la lettre. The semantics of a binary distinction and the corresponding socio-structural differentiation between ‘political’ and ‘religious’ institutions, I have argued, may have paved the way for a relatively smooth process of appropriating and implementing modern Western concepts of secularism after 1868, because the idea that Buddhist institutions represent independent social entities that are not allowed to intervene in state affairs but are to be controlled by the state, was already firmly established in the Edo period. Inasmuch as the policy of the Tokugawa regime—representing the bu 武 element of domination (whereas the emperor represented the bun 文 aspect) and leaning towards Neo-Confucianism rather than Buddhism— aimed at a complete subordination of Buddhist organisations under a ‘secular state’,6 one might even speak of a form of indigenous early modern secularism (cf. Teeuwen 2013).7 Furthermore, the early Meiji elite, with their Confucian background, had “a humanist, mostly atheist, this-worldly mindset” (Hardacre 2018: 90) and were thus well prepared for establishing a secular state. Focussing on a medieval Buddhist perspective, however, I paid scant attention to the above-mentioned controversial