Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The establishment of Shrine Shinto in Meiji Japan

1975; Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture; Volume: 2; Issue: 2-3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.18874/jjrs.2.2-3.1975.137-168

0304-1042

Wilbur M. Fridell,

Japanese History and Culture

In what follows I propose to inquire more fully into the admini strative relations between the Japanese state and Shinto shrines during the Meiji period, or 1868-1912.The specific problem I wish to investigate is the process whereby the shrines of the nation were " established" as institutions of state.Although consider able work has been done on the early-Meiji history of shrine ad ministration,1 from mid-Meiji the record is not nearly so clear.To help rectify this situation, a first step is to analyze shrine ad ministrative patterns at least through the crucial late-Meiji years; for it was during this late-Meiji period that the government, after years of uncertainty, finally fixed upon a formula for shrine governance which subsequently held in its basic essentials until 1945.2In order to place pre-1945 Shinto shrines in their broadest national context, we must begin with the notion of kokutai.This was the "sacred canopy， '3 which overarched the entire Japanese 1 .See, e.g.