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2022 December 21 - 2023 January 10 TOP3 [POLITICS]

Ignoring constitutional principle of separation of state and religion, PM Kishida visits Ise-jingu Shrine as his 1st political act of this year

This year again, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio visited Ise-jingu Shrine as his first task of the year. Looking back on the negative history of the prewar/wartime state-sanctioned Shinto system, his repeated visits to Ise-jingu are problematic.

The Meiji government (1868-1912) treated Shinto shrines differently from other religious facilities and placed them under state control as "the nation's house of worship". Ise-jingu which enshrines Amaterasu Omikami (Sun Goddess), the ancestral god of the Imperial Family, was the most revered of shrines under this state Shinto system.

With the patronage of the Meiji government and Imperial court, state shrines were used to deify the Emperor and to ideologically control the general public for the sake of promoting the divinity of the Emperor. During the war, Yasukuni Shrine enshrined soldiers killed on duty as "war gods" and played a central role in mobilizing the public for the war of aggression. The Japanese Army and Navy supervised the shrine as a religious military installation.

After Japan was defeated, the General Headquarters of the Allied Forces (GHQ) ordered the dismantling of the state Shinto system. Article 20 of the postwar Constitution of Japan stipulates the principle of the separation of state and religion. Shrines became nothing more than religious facilities both in law and in the Constitution.

Many Prime Ministers and Cabinet ministers have been visiting Ise-jingu despite the negative history of militarism associated with the state Shinto system, giving the general public the impression that the government and Ise-jingu still have a special relationship.

Ise-jingu is now a member of the Shinto Political League which seeks a revival of the state Shinto system and is also a member of "Nippon Kaigi" which aspires to a return to the ideology of prewar Japan by adversely revising the present Constitution.

Meanwhile, PM Kishida hopes to allow the country to possess an enemy-strike capability which successive governments have regarded as unconstitutional, and repeats visiting Ise-jingu in opposition to the constitutional principle of the separation of state and religion. In a double sense, he is showing his attitude against the current Constitution both at home and abroad.

Past related article:
> PM Kishida’s visit to Ise Shrine violates constitutional principle of separation of state and religion [January 5, 2022]