The Origin of Modern Shinto in Japan: The Vanquished Gods of Izumo

Description

Yijiang Zhong analyses the formation of Shinto as a complex and diverse religious tradition in early modern and Meiji Japan, 1600-1868. Highlighting the role of the god Okuninushi and the mythology centered on the Izumo Shrine in western Japan as part of this process, he shows how and why this god came to be ignored in State Shinto in the modern period. In doing so, Zhong moves away from the traditional understanding of Shinto history as something completely internal to the nation of Japan, and instead situates the formation of Shinto within a larger geopolitical context involving intellectual and political developments in the East Asian region and the role of western colonial expansion. The Origin of Modern Shinto in Japan draws extensively on primary source materials in Japan, many of which were only made available to the public less than a decade ago and have not yet been studied. Source materials analysed include shrine records and object materials, contemporary written texts, official materials from the national and provincial levels, and a broad range of visual sources based on contemporary prints, drawings, photographs and material culture.

Yijiang Zhong is Associate Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo, Japan and a Research Fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions at Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan.

Zhong's book maintains a refreshingly wide gaze, focusing simultaneously on local, transregional, and transcultural flows that, by his argument, all impacted the internal developments of the Izumo Shrine and its shifting position within the nascent intellectual and political fields of early modern and modern Japan. Such a dynamic framework is new, and its expanding scope is yielding exciting results. * American Historical Review * Zhong moves away from the traditional understanding of Shinto history as something completely internal to the nation of Japan, and instead situates the formation of Shinto within a larger geopolitical context involving intellectual and political developments in the East Asian region and the role of western colonial expansion. * Reading Religion * Fills a prominent hole in the existing literature by addressing the early modern and modern history of Izumo Shrine and its deity ... Zhong's volume is timely, well researched, and focused ... An important contribution to our understanding of Shinto in the Edo- and early-Meiji periods. * Japanese Journal of Religious Studies * This volume contains a collection of insightful materials for those scholars, students, and practitioners who are in Japanese studies, or the fields of history, philosophy, ethnology, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, and religious studies. * Journal of Religion in Japan * This book presents a stimulating case study of the interdependent relationship between the secular and the religious. Yijiang Zhong convincingly argues that the establishment of the public and secular Japanese nation-state was possible only by consigning some Shinto schools to the private, religious sphere. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Shinto and Japanese history as well as critical study of religion and secularization. -- Jun'ichi Isomae, Professor, International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Japan With this rich, nuanced, carefully researched and deeply thoughtful work, the sophistication and maturation of Shinto studies continues. Too long over-looked, Izumo, its grand shrine, and complex tradition, are illuminated by Zhong in ways that nothing else in English gets close to. A tour de force, this work sets new standards for works in Japanese religion and thought. -- James E. Ketelaar, Professor of Japanese History, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, USA