Finding Religion in Japan’s Empire

Abstract

Scholars now take for granted the modern invention of “religion” as an intellectual and administrative category in modern history. How the discursive formation of religion relates to Japan’s empire remains, however, relatively obscure. Historians increasingly apply the historiographic approach of “new imperial history” to Japan’s modern empire, spatially and chronologically prioritizing the colonial periphery in relation to the imperial metropole. Our understanding of the emergence of shūkyō as a discursive category in the nineteenth century continues to treat empire as a chronological sequel to the modernization of Japan’s nation-state. This chapter attempts to mesh the historiographic challenge posed by new imperial history with the intellectual history of “religion” in modern Japan, arguing that the political genesis of shūkyō was always, already an imperial project aimed at subduing and disciplining a heterogeneous population deemed vulnerable to conversion, especially at the periphery.