[caocao74]

JAPAN AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SECULAR AND SPIRITUAL IN GOVERNMENT


An important issue in Japanese history, from the perspective of politics and religion is the actual role of the Emperor, and whether or not he (and occasionally, she) represented a united figure, a representative of so-called ‘caesaro-papism’, as opposed to hierocracy, by which state and church were separate organs. Of course, this would not be unique to Japan. It had precedents in the Egypt of the New Kingdom, ancient Israel and Lamaist Tibet to name just two.
Caesaro-papism is present throughout Japanese history. In its earliest forms, the Yamato emperor was both a military chieftain and intermediary between the people and the heavens. In the Japanese Middle Ages, the Shogun suppressed the authority of the Buddhist Kenmon temples and the rising sects, and then with the expansionist military policies of the 20th Century, state policy and religion were subordinated to the imperial Army and Navy. Never was religion allowed to develop separate from the secular interests of the state. Therefore, although Japanese culture and society owed so much to imported Chinese models, the development was very different.
In Chinese, the Emperor had to maintain the Mandate of Heaven to ensure his continued hold upon the magical charisma and therefore rule. In Japan, the authority of the Imperial Line was not questioned, since the Yamato line was perceived to have descended from the Sun-deity Amaterasu. This divine origin was never challenged, despite the pressures upon the Imperial Throne from powerful Shoguns and manipulative warlords. Pestilence or famine, drought or disease were never attributed to the Heavens being discontented with an Emperor’s rule as in China.

Casaro-papism means that secular authority encompassed and subordinated religious authority, the opposite of theocracy (as in Tibet) which subordinates secular authority, using it to reach religious ends. Therefore caesaro-papist states like Japan, China, Russia and Byzantium controlled the powers of religious charisma to consolidate secular objectives; religion being a tool of secular government.
Caesaro-papist regimes treat religion as ritual, but generally closely supervise it and suppress any particularly divergent forms of ethics or religiousity, and their development when perceived to be opposed to the state-controlled religion. This was fundamentally the situation in Japan prior to the end of World War Two in 1945.

In Japanese the term caesaro-papism translates as saisei-itchi, or ‘the unity of religion and polity’. In pre-modern Japanese, there was simply no differentiation between religious ritual and polity, united in the term itchi under the authority of the Emperor. However, throughout its history, the actual authority was held by various persons. From the 2nd to the late 12th Centuries, authority was held by the Emperor, although the Soga and Fujiwara families held a great deal of actual power in (respectively) the periods of the 6th-7th Centuries and 11th-12th Centuries. Between the late-12th and mid-19th Century the Emperor was still upheld as the hereditary titular head of state, while actual authority in government lay in the hands of manipulative aristocrats and warlords. In the post-feudal world of military-bureaucratic Japan (1868-1945), real authority in making political decisions was in the hands of the Army and Navy although they upheld the sanctity of the Emperor.

However, there can be no empirical study of how a state based caesaro-papism can subjugate the religious to the ends of the secular, but rather an idea of an existing reality. Such a study depends more upon the material and non-material interests (as described by Max Weber) of those involved in any social action. For a caesaro-papist ruler, the material interests are authority and economics (respectively enforcement and wealth), while the non-material interests would be prestige and legitimacy (dignity and justification). In Japan, the principal motivating ideas concern the nation’s polity and religion, a nation chosen by the gods. For this reason, the kamikaze pilots were motivated not just by military orders but by a sense of their death being meaningful to the good of their divinely-protected nation.
For instance, in China Confucianism was an ethos at the very heart of society, determining the legitimacy of the Emperor, granting authority to the scholar-bureaucracy, sanctifying the ideals of filial piety and the fundamentals of a patrimonial state. In Tokugawa Japan, Neo-Confucianism was an ethic not an ethos. The Shogun claimed no Mandate of Heaven, instead overseeing the state based upon the principles of chusei (personal fealty), obligations and status recognition; issues more important in medieval Japan than filial piety (ko) or obedience to a supreme ruler (jyujun).
Legitimacy, or at least the belief in, is the cornerstone to any regime’s existence, but it is not enough to ensure the regime can maintain a solid foundation. That required popular acceptance in the legitimacy of a regime. This can be done through religion, just look at the examples of Emperor Shomu who constructed Buddhist temples in the 8th Century or the Meiji regime whiched created state-Shinto and the compulsory worship of the person of the Emperor, while persecuting autonomous groups such as the hijiri (Buddhist ascetics) of the 8th Century, the Ikko and Nichiren Buddhist sects in the 16th Century, Catholicism in the 17th Century, Omoto Shinto sects in the 19th Century and Protestantism in the 20th.

Traditional rulership is a structure of governance based upon the population accepting an authority because it is used to that authority being in place, such as patrimonial government. Then there are charismatic rulerships, systems reliant upon a nation’s belief in the special qualities of the person in charge, whether they are a martial hero, a demi-god or a humanitarian stalwart. However, such regimes are generally short-lived as few ruling houses can maintain the glories and miracles that marked their charisma. Finally, there are legal rulerships, established by agreement or imposition, based upon constitutions; legal legitimacy whereby laws are obeyed not the person in authority.
Generally, regimes are made up from a number of complex factors, composed of hereditary, feudal, bureaucratic and charismatic reasoning. In Japan, charisma lead to the creation of hereditary rulership, which was superceded in the Middle Ages by feudal rulership; patrimonial government with the addition of administrative posts and functions, along with vassals and the accompanying elements of personal fealty. Modern Japan saw the creation of bureaucratic rulership, a combination of charismatic, legal and traditional legitimacy; a legitimacy for the new system based upon internal discipline, the mutually beneficial relationship between the ruler and his administration and the hereditary nature of the Japanese Emperor.

In the early phases of Japanese history, the Emperor was the head of an administration manned by nobles who possessed hereditary rights, which meant later efforts at reforming the system met instantaneous opposition from the nobles, while an alternative source of administration was difficult to establish. This only changed when the Bakufu was established in Kamakura by Minamoto no Yoritomo in 1192. This only signaled a switch in actual authority as the samurai replaced the noble families, and the Emperor remained a titular figure, although the focus of crises switched from between the Emperor and the nobles but to the Shogun and his vassals. This problem was not reduced until the time of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who introduced measures such as instituted hostage-taking and the periodical maintenance of presences in the capital to reduce the ability of vassals to truly establish themselves as independent from the Shogun in Edo, suppressing the concepts and practices that had ravaged Japan for over one-hundred years during the Sengokujidai.
The pressure that caused the switch from feudal to bureaucratic rulership was exerted by the US and European powers, whose incursions into Japan caused the impotence of the Shogun to be clearly demonstrated. This resulted in the death of the Tokugawa Bakufu, and the substitution of Shogun-vassal pressures for military-civil bureaucratic rivalry, which resulted in the military dominance of the government’s policies and the subsequent brutal, often ill-conceived policies of expansionism and religious suppression of the first half of the 20th Century that lead to the disastrous results of World War Two.


Historical Actuality


In terms of this study, the concept of Japanese caesaro-papism can be divided into three successive periods;

1. Tenno (the Emperor)
2. Shogun (the Generalissimo)
3. Gunbu (the Military Elite)


1. The Tenno

The caesaro-papist rulership of Japan commenced with the legendary foundation of Yamato by Jimmu, sometime in the 2nd Century AD. According to Tsunoda (1958, 5) Jimmu emerged from the island of Kyushu and invaded the main island of Honshu, which was followed by seven or eight decades of battling the indigenous peoples to establish Yamato in the Kinki region, in a region that became called Yamato. These periods were formative in the gradual creation of a political and social community, an event as important to Japanese values as the Exodus from Egypt or the Long March mean to Israel or the Peoples Republic of China.
In the 3rd Century AD, a prophetess of Amaterasu, Queen Himiko, proclaimed that it was the mission of Yamato prince-generals to conquer the whole archipelago. As recorded in the Nihon Shoki (trans. Aston, 77), “This reed plain 1500 autumns-fair rice-ear land is the region which my descendants shall be Lords. Do you, my August grandchild, proceed thither and govern it. Go! And may prosperity attend thy dynasty, and may it, like Heaven and Earth endure for ever.” The expedition became unification and the feuding factions became the ruling class. Thereby, Japan had been unified from Kyushu to the Kanto.
By the 4th Century Yamato was extending itself into Tohoku, southern Kyushu and even the Korean Peninsula. As recorded by Tsunoda (1958, 8), Emperor Yuryaku in 478 presented to the Chinese Emperor a memorial marking the achievement; “From of old our forebears have clad themselves in armour and helmet and gone across the hills and waters, sparing no time for for rest. In the east, they conquered fifty-five countries of hairy people [presumably the Emishi]; and in the west, they brought to their knees sixty-six countries of various barbarians. Crossing the sea to the north, they subjugated ninety-five countries.” This marked the establishment of the hereditary Imperial line and its authority over both spiritual and secular affairs, unified under the auspices of the term matsuri-goto.
Unlike Imperial China, the validity of the Imperial line in Japan was unquestioned; it was not a first among equals, with the nobles rewarded with hereditary rights and territorial holdings. However, in Japan the hereditary rights of the nobility overwhelmed the often disregarded Emperor, ensuring his secular authority remained limited, subject to favourable conditions.
Unsuccessfully the Imperial line attempted to reassume the actual control of patrimonial administration, but importantly their attempts included the introduction and propagation of monastic Buddhism. Chief among those who introduced Buddhism to the archipelago was Prince Shotoku (574-622) who introduced Buddhism and a degree of Tang Chinese political doctrine and modeling to counter-balance the dominant position of the clans. Under these circumstances, a capital (Heijokyo, present-day Nara) was founded and a tax administration (kubunden) established, and later under Emperor Shomu (701-756) the Kokubunji, a state monastery, was founded. With such measures, the Court balanced the authority of the Buddhists and the population they presided over. Threatening elements, such as the wandering hijiri and ubasoku were prohibited in 701, 717, 729, 764 and 807. Those who accepted state control were favoured, those who did not risked exile.
However, Buddhism arrived after the establishment of the Yamato Imperial line so was unable to truly legitimize the ruling house. Instead, legitimacy was provided by the Emperor being descended from the Sun-deity Amaterasu. Therefore, early in the 8th Century, Shinto was institutionalized as the body of spirituality behind the state’s sacrificial rites and honoured sanctuaries; a refined system of hereditary priests without any independent authority.
However, the Buddhism that had been introduced by the state was perceivably, by the 11th Century a threat to the balance as its vast wealth and property holdings were accumulated and exempt from legal control. The whole basis of the ownership of shoen (private estates) centred upon bodies like the temples being commended the land, therefore removing it from the public domain. By the later-12th Century, the Kenmon temple complexes had become the centres of aspiration for nobles and the lesser-members of the Imperial clan.

Between the 10th and 12th Centuries (the latter half of the Heianjidai) the transition to feudal rulership emerged, as the titular Emperor’s control by the Fujiwara family led to the establishment of Insei (Cloistered) Emperors who sought to find authority through their abdication and the retinues they formed; a general attempt to reaffirm the Emperor’s secular authority, which Weber (1968, 1137) described thus; “The transition from this condition to the feudal state is regularly motivated by the ruler’s interest in the destroying the autonomous legitimacy of hereditary cland and in replacing it with feudal legitimacy derived from his own person.”


2. The Shogun.

At the decisive naval Battle of Dan-no-Uran in 1185, the last of the Taira forces under Munemori were defeated (and their puppet-Emperor Antoku drowned) by Minamoto no Yoshitsune. In the wake of the victory, Minamoto no Yoritomo was able to force the Court into making him Shogun in 1189. Previously the position of Shogun had been a temporary posting, but under Yoritomo the post absorbed authority over the world of secular affairs.
However, after his death, the Bakufu established by Yoritomo was in trouble as the vassals rose and fell in search of the means to secure the title for themselves. With the added effects of a declining Emperor, for nearly four centuries the post of Shogun became the target of numerous contenders. Simultaneously, the feuding over the post of Shogun and the impotence of the Throne meant that in the regions numerous autonomous opportunities arose, both religiously and politically.
In terms of Buddhism, the self-achievement/enlightenment faith of Nara-Buddhism gave way to Pure Land Buddhism, one of its greatest figures being Shinran (1173-1262), a disciple of Honen (1133-1212) who rejected the monastic life and celibacy of Tendai Buddhism ands established a rather more rational form of belief based upon faith alone. Only a few years later, prophetic Buddhism emerged, lead by the controversial son of an Awa fisherman, Nichiren (1222-1282). He declared that the principal form of faith was the Lotus Sutra, a Sutra more important than any family, clan or political body or person. Nichiren was truly unprecedented in the history of Japanese Buddhism, not simply because of his faith in the Lotus Sutra but because of his hatred for those who opposed his nationalistic faith.
Both these two founders sects (respectively the Ikkoshu (One Mind Sect of Jodo-Shinshu) and Hokkeshu (Lotus Sect) saw the creation of community-based faiths, something prohibited by the Yamato State of the 1st Millennium AD, which held great authority in local areas. In the meantime, the Kenmon temples with their huge swathes of land were able to reclaim the authority previously lost to the secular authorities. The clash between authorities was inevitable, particularly after the temples and sects became increasingly militarized. The climax to the complex relationship came with the warlord Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582). With a rational eye upon the big-picture, Oda commanded forces to destroy the Enryakuji of the Tendai sect (upon Hieisan near Kyoto) in 1572, and then after a decade of bitter rivalry, the Ishiyama-Honganji (present-day site of Osaka Castle) in 1580, the most militarized sects in Japanese history and clearly a threat to his personal prestige. With militant Buddhism crushed and Catholicism supported, Oda Nobunaga represents a watershed in Japanese history.
After the murder of Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi took the reins of unification until his death in 1598, and he was finally succeeded as the dominant force in the land by Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1600 after his victory at the Battle of Sekigahara. With Buddhism restored as a source of faith rather than political militancy, Tokugawa Ieyasu and the second and third Shoguns, Hidetada and Iemitsu) turned to persecuting Christianity, a hierarchical Catholic church with 300,000 members that ran contrary to the Japanese concept of caesaro-papism. The Shogunate, by the edict of 1614 also banned the Fuju-Fuse branch of Nichiren’s Hokkeshu, banishing the leaders of the group, Nichio (1565-1630) and Nikko (1626-1698).
Finally, the Tokugawa Bakufu instituted a state Buddhist church. As part of a nationwide religious system, each household was obliged to be affiliated with a danka-dera (parish temple) and possess a tera-uke (certificate to prove the individual did not belong to an illegal sect), and with each denomination organized into the hierarchy of honmatsu-ji. At the head of the church was the Shogun himself with matters controlled by the jisha-bugyo (department for temples and shrines). Buddhism simply became a department of state (Kitagawa 1966, 175) and although the number of actual shrines and temples increased, the authority of them withered.


3. Gunbu

In 1868 the Tokugawa regime collapsed and the Meiji government was established. The subsequent system of caesaro-papism was marked by the division of society between the military elites and the ruled masses. The military elites were essentially hampered by the bureaucratization of society, while the masses were placed in a vacuum created by the lack of religious authority.
The Tokugawa Bakufu was toppled in 1868 by the allied armies of Choshu and Satsuma, which restored the Emperor as the head of government. They then declared the reunification of polity and religion (saisei itchi), but in reality Emperor Meiji was neither the decider of policy nor the actual holder of authority. These were in the hands of the Choshu-Satsuma leaders, but they proved unpopular. Therefore, from 1889 Japanese rulership was based upon the parliamentary cabinet model learned from Western Europe.
The dawn of Japanese bureaucratization could be traced to the introduction of universal conscription in 1870, which created both a disciplined army (as shown by the results of the 1877 Seinan War) and across society. In 1877 class segregation was abolished and then in 1886 compulsory education, then male suffrage in 1890 and examinations for the appointment of officials in 1893. Generally, nationwide society was leveled. This was what is called ‘passive-democracy’, democracy and social leveling introduced by the ruler, the masses remaining passive and the servants of the bureaucrats. The masses were then manipulated into believing in the legitimacy of the system through the state’s control of education and the universal ideas of obedience..
The military bureaucrats emerged as the actual holders of power after military successes against China then Russia either side of the turn of the 20th Century (1895 and 1905 respectively), pushing aside the elected parliamentarians. Finally, the military ignored the civilian leadership, and then in 1932 established a military cabinet. This administration drove the nation towards its rapid overseas expansion, sanctified by the concept of the divinity of Japan, a throwback to the earlier Tenno caesaro-papism. The military bureaucrats exploited the ideas that the Japanese were the komin (people of the gods), driven by the concept of hakko-itchu (the One Roof of the World), a sense of racial superiority that justified expansion.
Religiously, the Gunbu disestablished the state-Buddhist church in 1868, confiscating the temples’ lands and disavowing the monks and nuns. There was little resistance to the loss of this church. Immediately the government revived Shinto, as a national cult, and then in 1870 the institution of state Shinto. Shinto provided the links with the legendary past that Buddhism did not, and these links provided the strongest foundations of legitimacy. Shinto, like mass education, the ‘Imperial Rescript of Education’ of 1890 and the ‘Cardinal of the Japanese Nation’, was a vast indoctrination programme. Other sects were attacked, such as the Tenri and Konko sects from the 1870s, the Omoto and Hommichi sects from the 1920s. These sects were not as opposed to the divine-Emperor concept as Christians or Marxists, but since they lay outside the state-system they were persecuted. Not all Christian and Buddhist groups were persecuted, but among those that were, were the Salvation Army, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Seventh Day Adventists, the Mukyokai (‘Non’Church’) and the Buddhist Soka Gakkai. During the Pacific War (1941-1945), the government instituted ‘Order Maintenance Law’ and the special police to control religion and thought. War only increased the Gunbu’s level of intolerance to those groups who were not aligned to the quasi-religious nature of Japanese caesaro-papism.


Characteristically, Japanese caesaro-papism was militaristic, the direct antithesis of Chinese caesaro-papism. The role of the early Emperors, the Shogun, and then the Gunbu was forming a national consciousness from militarism, not social welfare. In China, a Emperor risked losing his position when he could not maintain the ‘Mandate of Heaven’.
In Japan, this concept of caesaro-papism propagated the belief in divine ancestry, and neither Christianity, Buddhism, nor Confucianism could substantiate this concept in the same way that Shinto did. All the other religions played a role in Japanese history but only Shinto gave legitimacy to the Imperial line and the rulership of the military. To control Shinto, the post-Meiji Restoration governments created the state-Shinto church, as the Tokugawa Bakufu had done previously with state-Buddhism. Religious autonomy was too dangerous to be tolerated. This all fostered the belief that Japan was a divine nation, whose task was that of awakening the national consciousness and launching the country into wars of conquest.

This was destroyed in August 1945 when Japan unconditionally surrendered to the Allied Powers. Nearly two millennia of caesaro-papism was wiped away. The Occupying Forces introduced a new Constitution, and this created religious tolerance, erasing the beliefs that Japan was a divine nation led by a divine Emperor. State and church were separated, and state-Shinto disestablished (and legislation established that prohibited the creation of a state-religion). It was concluded in 1946 when Emperor Hirohito was obliged to renounce his divinity. The nation was completely demilitarized, another foundation stone of Japanese caesaro-papism.
However, the Yamato Imperial line was not disestablished, despite the controversial status of the Emperor as liable to face trial on charges of war crimes. Instead, the Occupying Forces realized that the Emperor represented the strongest element of social control then in place, a tradition that the general population were accustomed to. Without an Emperor, the Occupying Forces could see no alternative, and it even risked opening the door to a Communist takeover. The Emperor now served a negative function (Weber, 1968, 1148).

After defeat, Japan had been officially reversed, demilitarized (with a pacific Article 9 in the Constitution), secularized, purified with the imported concepts of justice, equality and freedom of expression.

[Gubook Janggoon]

Dude..you're just overflowing...

This will have to be "stickified" in the "Important Threads" thread too..

[caocao74]

Gubuk Janggoon, on Mar 12 2005, 02:46 PM, said:

Dude..you're just overflowing...

This will have to be "stickified" in the "Important Threads" thread too..

I have had a few days off works so I have been collating my old university notes. Errors admitted in the Kofunjidai thread (I posted it from disc before having checked it) and it'll be removed worthwith.

[Gubook Janggoon]

caocao74, on Mar 12 2005, 10:50 AM, said:

I have had a few days off works so I have been collating my old university notes.  Errors admitted in the Kofunjidai thread (I posted it from disc before having checked it) and it'll be removed worthwith.

Oh okay...when I first read it I was all like, "What! What's up with the Imperial Japanese History?" I felt like I was reading a history book from 1910....

But when you say history notes...do they still teach that stuff now adays?

[caocao74]

Gubuk Janggoon, on Mar 13 2005, 07:20 AM, said:

Oh okay...when I first read it I was all like, "What!  What's up with the Imperial Japanese History?"  I felt like I was reading a history book from 1910....
But when you say history notes...do they still teach that stuff now adays?

They tend to if you attend certain classes at Tokyo National, although I think the error regarding 'Baekje and silla being defeated by Wa' was my mistake. The caesaro-papist piece though is rather marginally more objective, based upon the application of Weber to history.