However, it would be too Orientalistic to assume that the
modern Japanese study of religions has been predominated
by Zen Buddhist philosophy with a somehow mystical meth-
od of intuition. Japanese students majoring in shu ̄kyo ̄gaku
(the study of religion) have been reading classic and contem-
porary works that are more or less similar to those on the
reading lists at Western graduate schools. Moreover, the ear-
liest Japanese scholars of religion regarded themselves as
more scientifically objective than their Western counterparts
who were struggling to detach themselves from the influence
of Christian theology. Although those Japanese scholars
were, in reality, far from ideologically neutral, the establish-
ment of the study of religion as a nonconfessional university
department (at Tokyo Imperial University in 1905) and of
an academy of religion (in 1930) were quite early in compar-
ative terms. In addition, the ninth Congress of the Interna-
tional Association for the History of Religions took place in
Tokyo in 1958. Nevertheless, the study of religion has never
been granted a high status in Japan. Whereas the number of
academy members had reached 2,000 by the end of the
twentieth century, less than ten universities had departments
of shu ̄kyo ̄gaku, that is, only 1 percent of all four-year universi-
ties and colleges in Japan. This paradoxical position of the
Japanese study of religion reflects the sociopolitical contexts
of religion in modern Japan.
PREHISTORY OF THE STUDY OF RELIGION. It is commonly
accepted that the modern study of religion in Japan started
in the Meiji era (1868–1912), after Japan opened its doors
to the Western world. The Japanese word for religion,
shu ̄kyo ̄, was also coined at the beginning of the era as a trans-
lation of the Western term. This does not mean that there
were neither precursors of shu ̄kyo ̄gaku nor concepts similar
to religion before Japan became fully exposed to Western
culture. Nakamoto Tominaga (1715–1746) is one of the
Japanese scholars who developed comparative, historical, and
critical approaches to religion without Western influences.
Tominaga’s rational thinking derived from Confucian edu-
cation, which was promoted by the Tokugawa government.
Rather than defending Confucianism, however, Tominaga
compared it with Buddhism and Shinto ̄, and then attempted
to present a new teaching that surpassed all three. Like the
Western thinkers of the Enlightenment, he criticized existing
religions by exposing the historically conditioned nature of
their ideas and scriptures.
Tominaga’s comparative study of religion was not
unique; it was a common practice among scholars at that
time to consider Shinto ̄, Buddhism, and Confucianism as re-
lated concepts. However, there was no fixed word, like the
later shu ̄kyo ̄ (religion), that placed them in a single category.
Sometimes people called them kyo ̄ (“teaching”) in order to
emphasize their doctrinal aspects; at other times they used
a word with more practical connotations, do ̄ (tao, “way”).
This terminological ambiguity indicates that a generic
category called religion was not yet needed. Japanese scholars
in those days did not ask the question that was central to the
Enlightenment and gave rise to the modern study of religion
in the West: what is the essence of religion? Nor was there
any further development in methodology, in contrast to the
West, where the methodology of the humanities was pol-
ished through imitating and challenging the methods of the
rapidly progressing natural sciences. Although the Japanese
did access the abundant data about the various religions
found within their religiously pluralistic country, they did
not embark on the systematic study of comparative religion
by themselves.A drastic change to this situation came about at the out-
set of the Meiji era. “Religion” was developed as a formal
concept, initially to serve political and juridical needs. In
order to integrate the country as a nation-state, the Meiji
government adopted an imperial system and chose Shinto ̄ as
its moral guideline. The government then defamed Bud-
dhism, which was once amalgamated with Shinto ̄, while reaf-
firming the long-standing ban on Christianity. At the same
time, however, the government strove to modernize Japan
by following Western systems, and in so doing it soon real-
ized that religious freedom was regarded as one of the re-
quirements of a modern society. The government was
pressed to permit the freedom of religion yet sought to main-
tain the special status of Shinto ̄. It managed to solve this
problem by making rhetorical use of the concept of religion.
The concept, which was an import from the West, was mod-
eled after Christianity, in particular belief/doctrine-centered
Protestantism. In light of this definition of religion, Shinto ̄,
which mostly consisted of ritual practices, was termed non-
religious. The government declared that Shinto ̄ was not a re-
ligion, but a system of state rituals superior to individual reli-
gions. “Non-religious” was promoted as a positive virtue
rather than implying something less than a religion. This was
the rhetoric used to legitimize what later was called State
Shinto ̄. The government insisted that it was different from
state religion and thus compatible with freedom of religion.
Not all Japanese were convinced by this reasoning, and a
heated dispute arose when the Kyo ̄iku chokugo (Imperial re-
script on education) was enacted in an effort to infuse all
schoolchildren with national morality shaped by Shinto ̄
ideas.
Scholars debate what other effects were caused by the
conceptualization of religion in the Meiji society. The con-
sensus is that practice-based folk religions were suppressed,
being categorized as superstitions. Established religions such
as Buddhism imitated the modern features of religion epito-
mized in Protestantism for the sake of survival. In addition,
Japan was unique among the cultures encountering the mod-
ern West in the failure of Christian missionaries to expand
Christianity in the country, which was supposed to be per-
fectly religious already, according to the newly adopted con-
cept of religion. It was under these circumstances that the
study of religion gradually took its form in Japan.
EARLY DEVELOPMENTS (1905–1945). Toward the end of
the nineteenth century, universities modeled after Western,8776 STUDY OF RELIGION: THE ACADEMIC STUDY OF RELIGION IN JAPAN