From Secular Institution to Religious Organization: Shrine Shinto in Postwar Japan
In the project Ernils Larsson explored how priests working within Shrine Shinto (jinja shinto) have related to the principle of secularism in the 1947 Constitution of Japan. The project consisted of both a textual study focusing on material produced by shrine actors in the period 1945 to 2024, as well as an ethnographic study based on interviews with priests working at shrines in the Tokyo and Osaka areas. The project’s preliminary results suggest that while actors within organized Shrine Shinto (e.g. Jinja Honcho, “the Association of Shinto Shrines”) continue to have a negative view of the strict separation of religion and state, individual priests can have a multitude of ways to relate to the postwar constitutional order. Regardless of their position in the question of constitutional reform, priests utilize range of strategies to deal with difficulties caused by the Japanese secular model on a daily basis, for instance when it comes to the maintenance of cultural properties or when interacting with the local community during shrine festivals.
The project was funded as an international postdoc from the Swedish Research Council and was carried out between December 2021 and January 2025.
Publications published as part of the project:
Covenantal Pluralism in “Homogenous” Japan: Finding a Space for Religious Pluralism
The Naha Confucius Temple lawsuit and religion-making in Japan’s courts of law