Harvard East Asian Monographs, 365. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center; Harvard University Press [distributor], 2014. xiii, 330 pp. (Figures.) US$49.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-674-49199-1.
Maxey’s book is a well-presented investigation into the “problem” of religion during the Meiji period. Following a number of other studies that examine the uncertainties surrounding the early Meiji state, Maxey’s research contributes to this theme by examining how religion was not simply a given category to be easily manipulated, even by the imperial institution. Rather it was shaped by a number of actors, both domestic and international, who sought to transform the definition and contents of the term religion largely to further the project of nation-building. Thus, the main focus of the book is to trace the shifting boundaries between the state and religion. To assist in this quest Maxey introduces his term “grammar of religion” in order to describe how the state carefully crafted policies regarding religion so as to not undermine its own position.
The first half of the book provides a history of state policies towards Christianity from the Edo period into Meiji and in some ways is what forms the original problem regarding religion in Japan. Balancing the potential for Christianity to produce local agitation and the imposition of Christianity by Western nations and their unequal treaties throughout the nineteenth century, the Japanese state had to quickly formulate a response to the question of religion despite it not being high on the agenda for many Restoration bureaucrats. The Iwakura Mission helped shape the state’s response to Christianity but, as Maxey argues, it also opened up the question of religion in regards to domestic practices. The second half of the book deals with the state’s response to religion as something that needs to be managed domestically. Treating religion “as an object of policy” (180) the Meiji state sought to neutralize the debate through secularizing public institutions and even cutting off their support of Shinto. Nonetheless, the problem of religion continued to haunt both the secular authorities as well as the project of modernity, as scholars like Gerald Figal and Marilyn Ivy have already observed.
Perhaps Maxey’s greatest contribution to the study of religion in the Meiji period is to show how the restoration of the imperial institution “produced as many problems as solutions” (243) regarding the question of political power in Japan. The discussion on how to differentiate between what was private or public religious belief is a good example of how the state produced a problem by not wanting to unravel the contradiction that constituted its own authority. The solution was found in Article 28 of the Imperial Constitution, which enshrined the ideals of freedom of religion but situated that freedom within the boundaries of upholding the imperial authority. The “grammar of religion” was thus simply a means to navigate the politics of building a nation-state without having to confront the material problems that modernization presented to the everyday life of the masses.
It was this materiality of ritual and everyday life and its connection to the overall nation-building project of the Meiji state that was lacking from Maxey’s analysis of the state and religion in Meiji Japan. While this might fall outside of the author’s intended project, at times the focus on policy and the rhetoric of national integration limits religion to belief (as public/private or its absence) without understanding the place of ritual in grounding religion within the everyday. For example, Yasukuni Shrine through the majority of the Meiji period would best be understood not through the lens of religion and state power but rather through ritual. The majority of people who visited the shrine grounds knew very little if anything regarding the state ideology of enshrining the war dead and yet their participation in festivals and the consumption of entertainment on the shrine grounds tied them to the modernizing aims of the state which, in many ways, Yasukuni symbolized. Without understanding the place of ritual (and its many manifestations) within the bounds of the secular state, religion will always be a category that produces problems and anxieties similar to that experienced by the political leaders of Meiji Japan.
Nonetheless, Maxey’s book offers the reader a wealth of primary sources, from state documents and journals to newspapers, which are carefully organized so as to produce a dialogue with each other. In particular the focus on state policy and debates on the issue of religion will be of use to students of the Meiji period.
Joshua Baxter
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
pp. 711-712