“Conventional Wisdom” and the Politics of Shinto in Postwar Japan, John Breen
Japan's postwar constitution creates a wall between religion and the state, prohibiting the state from engaging in any “religious activity” and from using public moneys “for the use, benefit or maintenance of any religious institution or association.” Nevertheless, as John Breen explains in the following reading, Japanese leaders have often engaged in activities at Shinto sites that test these legal boundaries - and the Supreme Court has ruled that some degree of state involvement with religion in such instances is permissible if it does not exceed “an appropriate level.” When then-Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro visited the Yasukuni shrine for the Japanese war dead in 2001, a shrine associated symbolically with Japan's recent imperial past, he triggered an intense debate about the relationship between law, religion, and politics in contemporary Japan.
His supporters observed that virtually all Japanese Prime Ministers paid New Year's visits to the Shinto shrine at Ise to venerate Amaterasu omikami, the Sun Goddess who was the mythical founder of the Japanese imperial line. Why, they asked, should the Shinto shrine at Yasukuni raise greater constitutional problems concerning the separation of church and state than the Shinto shrine at Amaterasu? Breen's discussion illustrates the extreme difficulty of disentangling religion and the state, even in an Asian polity that has no formally established religion and whose constitution appears to require strict separation. Breen also highlights the extremely volatile politics associated with activities that challenge or arguably transgress the boundaries between church and state.The post war Japanese state's relationship to Shinto (and to other religions) is framed in two well-known articles of the Constitution. Article 20 holds both that “freedom of religion is guaranteed to all”, and that “no religious organization shall receive any privileges from the State, nor exercise any political authority.” Further, it stipulates that “no person shall be compelled to take part in any religious acts, celebration, rite or practice [and that] the State and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity.” Then there is Article 89, which forbids the use of public moneys “for the use, benefit or maintenance of any religious institution or association”.
[...]The single most important issue in post war state-religion relations has concerned Yasukuni, the Shinto shrine in Tokyo dedicated to Japan's war dead. A small majority of post war Japanese premiers (14 out of 27) have gone to Yasukuni to pay their respects. In doing, they have invited the charge that they breach Article 20, but do they? The jury, it seems, is out. Article 20 clearly guarantees the Prime Minister's right to venerate at Yasukuni as a private citizen, but it does not obviously allow him to patronise, and so privilege, Yasukuni (or any other religious institution) as Prime Minister. For, as such, he represents the state. So when, it may well be asked, is a Prime Minister not a Prime Minister, but a private citizen? Ever since the 1970s, the answer has come to hinge on such niceties as whether he arrives at Yasukuni in an official or private car; whether his shrine offerings come from his own pocket or the public purse, and how he signs himself in the shrine register. [...]
On August 13, 2001, the first year of his premiership, Koizumi worshipped at Yasukuni. He went in an official car, accompanied by his Chief Cabinet Secretary, and signed himself Prime Minister Koizumi; his shrine offerings, however, came out his own pocket. This visit triggered, as surely it was intended to, legal action. The suit that has attracted most media attention was that filed by a citizens' group in the Fukuoka District Court. They sought remuneration from the state for the “spiritual damage” inflicted upon them by Koizumi's act of veneration. In April 2004, Judge Kamekawa granted that the plaintiffs experienced “concern and apprehension”, but found no evidence of “infringement of legal interests”. Judges in the Matsuyama and Osaka District Courts had reached the very same conclusion in the previous year. What distinguished the Fukuoka suit, however, was that the judge made further comments on the case by way of obiter dictum.
In Japan, unlike Germany say, there are no constitutional courts, and so a plaintiff wishing to get a constitutional ruling in a civil case has to file a suit seeking compensation for infringement of his or her rights.
The presiding judge may then choose to refer to constitutional issues, but usually he does not. Judge Kamekawa was thus an exception. The effect of Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni in 2001 was, indeed, he opined, to “aid, assist and promote Yasukuni shrine, a religious institution that disseminates Shinto”. “One has to conclude [therefore] that the Prime Minister's Yasukuni visit corresponds to those religious acts prohibited by Article 20”. In 2005, the Osaka High Court judge issued another obiter dictum, which similarly deemed Koizumi's actions unconstitutional. Obiter dicta are the judge's “expression of opinion on matters of law, which is not of binding authority”. They are thus not “rulings”, which of course explains why Koizumi was able to return with impunity to Yasukuni in August 2006....Yasukuni has been at the heart of state-religion issues in the post war period, but there is a justifiable sense amongst some Japanese that the law is applied inconsistently. After all, the prime minister can attend Christian churches and Buddhist temples without a murmur of discontent. Why, it might be asked, is the state's patronage of Yasukuni alone the focus of such keen interest? This question is especially pertinent since prime ministers patronise with impunity the greatest Shinto shrine of them all. I refer to Ise, the shrine dedicated to Amaterasu omikami, Sun Goddess and mythical founder of the imperial line. Since the 1970s, it has been the custom for Japanese Prime Ministers of all hues to lead their cabinets to the Ise shrines at New Year. There, they venerate Amaterasu, and pray for Japan's flourishing. The Christian ohira Masayoshi, the Socialist Murayama Tomiichi and Hatoyama Yukio of the Democratic Party (incumbent at the time of writing) have all participated in clearly “official” acts of Ise veneration. The media gives this annual event very little critical attention, and so far it has prompted no legal action. Prime Minister Koizumi quite reasonably asked why he cannot venerate at Yasukuni, when he is free to worship annually at the Shinto shrines of Ise? Of course, it could equally well be asked why there is so little controversy over the state's patronage of Ise given the legal problems over Yasukuni? To these two questions, no answers are presently sought.
[...][W]hat is abundantly clear is that there is a yearning on the part of the Shinto establishment for the type of polity that shaped imperial Japan in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This has been shared, albeit with considerably more caution, by successive LDP administrations. Article 20 and the revised Imperial household law have stood athwart these yearnings, interfering with their reproduction in the post war.
As we have seen, the Shinto establishment idealises a model of state and society in which the imperial institution, the Amaterasu myth, the Ise shrines, and the emperor himself as sacred presence are central. This is the essence of the Shinto spirit that must be located at the foundation of governance. [...]
Yasukuni is above all an imperial shrine. Its war dead died for imperial Japan; its rituals are graced by the presence of imperial emissaries. Those rituals celebrate the imperial virtues the dead exhibited in their dying: patriotism and loyalty and self-sacrifice. No prime minister or cabinet member who worships at Yasukuni can be ignorant of the shrine's powerful imperial symbolism. The shrine and its ritual performances provide a clear and unbroken link to the pre-war period, affirming the glories of Japan's imperial past.
This nostalgia for the imperial past, shared by the Shinto establishment and the LDP, encounters Constitutional obstacles - by no means all of them insuperable - at every turn. It is this conflict between the nostalgia and the Constitution that goes a long way to explaining why state-religion, and specifically state-Shinto, issues assume such importance. On these issues is seen to hang the very fortunes of post war democratic Japan.