Journal of religious studies
Online ISSN : 2188-3858
Print ISSN : 0387-3293
ISSN-L : 2188-3858
Current issue
Special Issue: Religion and Religious Studies during the Interwar Period
Displaying 1-23 of 23 articles from this issue
Articles [Special Issue: Religion and Religious Studies during the Interwar Period]
  • Editorial Committee
    2023 Volume 97 Issue 2 Pages 1-2
    Published: September 08, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: February 29, 2024
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • Jun'ichi EGAWA
    2023 Volume 97 Issue 2 Pages 3-26
    Published: September 08, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: February 29, 2024
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    By analyzing Pettazzoni's activities during the fascist period, this paper sheds light on the study of religions in the interwar period. While his primary goal was to establish the study of the history of religions as a discipline, he faced challenges in achieving this. Pettazzoni aimed to establish a university chair and start a journal, but the journal he began with Roman Catholic modernists was prohibited by the papacy, and establishing a chair was not an easy task.

    However, the fascist regime provided support to Pettazzoni. He was granted a chair and a journal by the regime, which led to his involvement in fascist cultural policies such as the New Academy, the oath of allegiance to the regime, and the Italian Encyclopaedia. He also published texts that catered to fascism, such as emphasizing Giambattista Vico's accomplishments in the field of history of religions and proposing that Rome be regarded as the center of world religious history.

    Despite being engaged in various social movements throughout his life, the fascist period was a period of uncertainty for Pettazzoni. His attitude offers us a glimpse into what Italy was like during the interwar period.

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  • Catholicism or Protestantism?
    Norihiro ŌKUBO
    2023 Volume 97 Issue 2 Pages 27-50
    Published: September 08, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: February 29, 2024
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    Since the early nineteenth century, when most Latin American countries achieved independence, politicians and intellectuals of this region have had long debates about religion over the treatment of Catholicism, which exerts a powerful influence on politics and society. For a combination of several reasons, including the fact that after the end of World War I, Protestant missionary activity from the United States increased and Latin America became one of its main targets, and the influence of the Mexican and Russian revolutions, by the 1920s the debate about religion in Latin America was developing in some different directions. The Spanish-language monthly magazine La Nueva Democracia (The New Democracy), launched in 1920 under the leadership of American Protestant missionary Samuel Guy Inman (1877-1965), published articles, some of which were written by high-ranking politicians and well-known intellectuals, and provided the authors with a forum for discussions on religion. This paper will focus on those articles, with particular attention to discussions involving Catholicism and Protestantism and how the debate evolved into “spirits” and civil religion.

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  • Organization and Activities of the Bukkyō Rengōkai (Federation of All Japanese Buddhist Sects and Schools)
    Kōji ŌSAWA
    2023 Volume 97 Issue 2 Pages 51-74
    Published: September 08, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: February 29, 2024
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    The Japan Buddhist Federation (Zen-Nihon Bukkyōkai), which is an alliance of Japanese Buddhist sects and schools, has its roots in a group that opposed the state's control of religious policy in 1900.

    The true origin of the alliance was the Bukkyō Kakushūha Konwakai (Group of Buddhist Sects), which was formed in 1912. This organization changed its name to the Bukkyō Rengōkai (Federation of All Japanese Buddhists Sects and Schools) in 1916.

    The organization appealed to the government to establish a secular legal system for the Buddhist world and rectify the legal treatment of monks. Through this organization, Japanese Buddhist sects united to form a coalition to strongly advocate systemic reform in the interwar period.

    In 1938, after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the organization became an incorporated foundation to strengthen its management base. Subsequently, the name of the organization was changed to the Dai-Nihon Bukkyō Rengōkai in 1940 and then to Dai-Nihon Bukkyōkai in 1941.

    The Bukkyō Rengōkai, while working with the government, sometimes confronted and objected to its policies. It has been an organization that guides the research on the relationship between politics and religion surrounding the Buddhist world in the interwar period.

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  • The Cases of the Japanese Religious Convention Commemorating the Emperor's Enthronement and the Japanese Conference of Religion and Peace
    Eiichi ŌTANI
    2023 Volume 97 Issue 2 Pages 75-99
    Published: September 08, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: February 29, 2024
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    Under the system of international cooperation based on the Versailles and Washington regimes after World War I, movements in pursuit of peace and outlawry of war were being developed internationally, and a worldwide collective security system was being established. The Japanese religious convention commemorating the enthronement of Emperor Hirohito (Shōwa Tennō) in 1928 and the Japanese conference of religion and peace in 1931 were held under these circumstances.

    In this paper, I analyzed these two events as case studies to examine peace activities by the Japanese religions and scholars of religion during the interwar period. Religious leaders and scholars of religion discussed ways to prevent and exterminate war and to send messages of international peace and repudiation of war both domestically and internationally. However, their views on “war and peace” varied, and there was some conflict and confusion among them. Nevertheless, the two events were an interreligious cooperation effort, and a project to appeal for peace that promoted the renunciation of war from the standpoint of religious persons while questioning the illegitimacy and guilt of war. They also had the potential to be linked to the international network of religious peace movements.

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  • Focusing on the Interwar Period
    Takuji OKAMOTO
    2023 Volume 97 Issue 2 Pages 101-125
    Published: September 08, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: February 29, 2024
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    While during the Edo period, the conflict between science and religion did not cause significant disturbances, towards the end of the Tokugawa shogunate, with the increased influx of Western culture, concerns arose regarding the potential impact of the West on ethics and morals through the advancement of science. These fears subsided following the Meiji Restoration, as the separation of science and religion in the West became apparent. Simultaneously, the reverence for the emperor as the foundation of governance and morality gained acceptance. Nevertheless, when scientific socialism began to spread to Japan following the establishment of the Soviet Union, Japanese intellectuals became aware of the ideological challenge of reconciling science with the religious nature of the state. Hashida Kunihiko, who served as Minister of Education from 1940 to 1943, proposed a solution by emphasizing the morality of individuals involved in scientific pursuits. The moral integrity of its people, however, was not sufficient to compensate for the inferiority of Japan at “scientific war” with Britain and the United States. Reflecting upon Japan's defeat, particularly symbolized by the atomic bombs, the nation and society set a post-World War II goal of promoting science and technology.

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  • Reflections on “Free Protestantism” and “Religion” in Interwar Germany
    Hiroshi KUBOTA
    2023 Volume 97 Issue 2 Pages 127-152
    Published: September 08, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: February 29, 2024
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    The interwar period in Germany saw a remarkable development of the discipline of religious studies, both in terms of its theorization and its institutionalization. However, the interwar form of this discipline was later seen as theology in disguise, and the “confessional” influence of liberal Protestantism on its formation has been discussed. This paper aims to shed light on the historical context in which this interwar discipline emerged. It will show how the legacy of nineteenth-century religious liberalism was recalled in the interwar period and was a factor in the formation of both a diagnosis of the present and a vision of the future. Concrete objects of research will be neither liberal theology in the narrower sense nor cultural Protestantism as a social milieu, but the ecclesiastical-political and cultural activities of “free Protestantism,” which sought in theory and practice to “believe freely” in the Protestant orthodox establishment that still continued to exist after the post-war collapse of the summus episcopus system of secular authority over the church. This paper will highlight the conciliatory role played by “free Protestantism” both in its ecclesiastical-political and theological controversies and in its cooperation with non-Christian groups and Christian fringe movements outside and on the periphery of the established churches.

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  • The Libyan Sufi Order That Led the Anticolonial Movement
    Kazuko SHIOJIRI
    2023 Volume 97 Issue 2 Pages 153-173
    Published: September 08, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: February 29, 2024
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    Since 1911, before World War I, Libya suffered from the harsh colonial rule by Italy. The Sanusi's activities aiming for a new mystic order with social participation, under such circumstances, were regarded as part of neo-Sufism under armed conflicts.

    Their movement developed with the aim of achieving the unity of the nomads of the desert. Commanding armed groups with the claim of Jihad, they finally got rid of the European great power invading Libya.

    After several zāwiya were established in Libya by The Founder Grand Sanusi, Muhammad Ali al-Sanusi, the people of the desert had come to engage in fighting against foreign powers in Egypt and Sudan as well as in Libya, particularly under the Third Leader of the Sanusi's Order.

    The guerrilla fighters of this order were often defeated. However, they joined the Allied Forces and took part in attacking together with them. Consequently, they achieved the independence of the United Kingdom of Libya in December 1951.

    The Sanusi Order gave religious meaning to the political action of resistance to the colonial policies by the Western powers.

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  • Kōji SUGA
    2023 Volume 97 Issue 2 Pages 175-199
    Published: September 08, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: February 29, 2024
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    Most attention on the work of American religious scholar W. P. Woodard has focused on his works about the Japanese occupation and after the Peace Treaty, because of the attention given to his major volume The Allied Occupation of Japan 1945-1952 and Japanese Religions, which was published in 1972.

    In this paper, however, I note that Woodard argues that the “Kokutai Cult,” as the target of Shinto directives, emerged in the latter half of the interwar period. I will then examine his sympathies for the American intellectual diplomats, examples of Japanese extremists who intervened in the emergence of the Kokutai Cult, and the behavior of those who were the accusers of the cult, as described in Abe Yoshiya's Japanese translation of what is a part of Woodard's book manuscript.

    As a result, we understand that Woodard drew the context of the banning of the Kokutai Cult as a wedge between the Emperor, Shintoism, and militarism, based on his own experience of staying in Japan. On the other hand, its establishment corresponded to the period of social change due to the total war system. Following this paper, I will discuss the implications of this view, reinforcing it with further document research.

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  • Masataka SUZUKI
    2023 Volume 97 Issue 2 Pages 201-226
    Published: September 08, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: February 29, 2024
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    In Japan, the academic field of shūkyō minzokugaku (ethnology of religion) was established as an independent discipline in the 1920's. The ethnology of religion began as a comparative study of primitive religions and sub-sequently developed into the study of the religions associated with various ethnic groups, which led to war collaboration as colonization progressed. The concept of “Ethnos” or “Volk” (minzoku) was reinterpreted in various ways as modernization moved on, embracing ideological overtones, and exalting nationalism. Under the total war system, the term “spirit” or “mind” (seishin) changed in association with ethnic group or nation, giving rise to compound terms such as “national spirit,” “ethnic spirit,” and “Japanese spirit.” Even the term “ethnology of religion” was constructed in connections with the word minzoku shūkyō (“ethnic religion”), but it kept its own semantic connotations with “spirit” or “mind.” In religious studies, “ethnic religion” is a type of religion that is contrasted with “world religion” but, in the case of “Japanese ethnic religion,” the expression has come to be associated with the “inherent Japanese religion.” Descriptions of contemporary Shintō, for example, often explain that Shintō is an ethnic religion inherent to Japan. This paper explores various aspects of continuity and discontinuity in the scholarship by examining the prewar and postwar discourses on ethnology of religion.

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  • Takashi NAGAOKA
    2023 Volume 97 Issue 2 Pages 227-249
    Published: September 08, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: February 29, 2024
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    This paper examines trends in new religions during the interwar period with a focus on the body. During this period, new forms of religious groups emerged alongside existing older new religions that had been active since the late nineteenth century. Overall, the new religions had a large presence in Japan at the time. However, these various religions were also subject to criticism and scorn from the majority of society. In particular, their teachings and practices aimed at curing diseases were regarded as “superficial” and “bogus.” Yet, their approaches to the body involved different aspects of practices than those of the established religions, and it is precisely this bodily practice that distinguishes their modern experience in ways that are different from other religions. I will therefore examine the approach of the new religions to the body in modern society from the perspective of the cultivation of the “working body” and the “disciplined body,” and revisit the modernity of the new religions in relation to capitalism, statism, and the total war regime.

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  • Various Aspects of “Polytheism”
    Kikuko HIRAFUJI
    2023 Volume 97 Issue 2 Pages 251-274
    Published: September 08, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: February 29, 2024
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    The term “polytheism” emerged during the Meiji period. While it can be used in its literal sense to refer to a religion that believes in multiple gods, it also acquired the image of a less evolved and backward religion when contrasted with monotheism in the context of religious evolution theory. Particularly among Shintoists, objections arose against classifying Shinto as polytheistic.

    This article points out that the play Polytheism by Izumi Kyōka, published in 1927 during the interwar period, is a work based on the assumption of such a polytheistic complex. It also discusses how the interwar period marked a turning point in the image of polytheism. This shift involved liberating polytheism from the framework of evolutionary theory and emphasizing the developmental nature of Shinto as a polytheistic religion. This discourse resonated with the assertion made during the fascist era of colonial domination that polytheistic Japan had an advantage over monotheistic religions in terms of domination.

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