designated as such. The two explicitly designated ‘Shintÿcolleges’, Kokugakuin
and Kÿgakukan, were exceptional, because they offered ministry programs for
Shintÿpriests. With the end of the war, ‘State Shintÿschools’ were reformed
to be regular public schools. Only Kokugakuin and Kÿgakukan were left as
‘Shintÿcolleges’, which have been training Shintÿpriests up to the present.^28
The negative legacy of State Shintÿhas also affected the number of Shintÿ
classes among colleges in the post-war period. All of the Shintÿcourses (i.e.
courses with such titles as ‘ShintÿStudies’ and ‘The History of Shintÿ’) in Figure
1 (= I, J) are given by the two Shintÿcolleges and one Shintÿ-based new
religious college. Colleges that are unaffiliated with Shintÿrarely offer such
courses because establishing courses in Shintÿcould have been taken as
reactionary.^29 Furthermore, there has been a problem of the lack of teachers.
After the war, in order to sever the liaison between State Shintÿand education,
departments of Shintÿwere closed in all universities except in Kokugakuin
and Kÿgakukan.^30 Consequently, it became difficult to produce scholars
specializing in Shintÿstudies.Intraregional divisions and interregional connections
A new national university, Tsukuba University, established in 1973, soon
became another center of religious studies, led by Michio Araki, who had
studied under Mircea Eliade and Joseph M. Kitagawa at Chicago. The
phenomenology of religion, though of a different kind, is also popular at
Tohoku University, also a national university. While Buddhist studies, normally
under the name of Indian philosophy or studies, is usually strong at national
universities with religious studies departments or programs, at Hokkaido
University Christian studies stands out, reflecting the tradition of vigorous
Christian missions in Hokkaido prefecture.
International relationships are represented by the 9th and the 19th World
Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions in Japan
in 1958 and in 2005. Japanese scholars also began to participate in the meetings
of the Conférence Internationale de Sociologie Religieuse (now SISR) in the
1970s. The Tokyo meeting of CISR was held in 1978. In addition, it has become
easier for students to study abroad, above all in the United States, owing to the
Fulbright Program and other exchange programs. It is also noteworthy that the
first meeting of the World Conference of Religions for Peace was held in Kyoto
in 1970. Furthermore, whereas Japanese scholars have long been oriented to
Western scholarship, they are currently eager to cooperate with Asian scholars
as well, in particular with East Asian scholars. For example, Japanese scholars
of religion held a special exchange forum with Chinese scholars, mainly those
from the People’s Republic, at the end of the 19th World Congress of the IAHR
in Tokyo. Half a year later, they also dedicated the main symposium of the
annual meeting of the JARS to exchanges with South Korean scholars.210
SATOKO FUJIWARA