Formation of the Japanese Shinto modern state

• Grant number: 18/06281-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): April 01, 2019
• Effective date (End): December 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Modern and Contemporary History
• Principal Investigator: Henrique Soares Carneiro
• Grantee: Cássio Gabriel de Campos Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

From the end of the 18th century throughout the 19th century, the World underwent great changes; in England, the Industrial Revolution changed the means of production, the French Revolution and Napoleon's Empire, changed all the political ideas, creating the idea of modern nation-states and modern nationalism. After the Meiji Restoration (1868), Japan was strongly influenced by these ideas and tried to adapt itself to the Modern World. Among those efforts made to achieve this objective, ideas from the movement Kokugaku, a Japanese academic movement that tried to rediscovery Japaneseness (through poetry, fictional narratives and religion), which were used to help create the religion-ideology called "State Shinto", that was crucial in the formation of Japanese nationalism. As Helen Hardacre says in her study, Shinto and the State, "The term State Shinto (&) designates the relationship of state patronage and advocacy existing between the Japanese state and the religious practice known as Shinto between 1868 and 1945" (1989, pg.4). Our study will focus in the Sino-Japanese War, which was the first great victory of Japan over China, and in the Russo-Japanese War, that was the first victory of Japan over a Western country. In this work, we will analyze through specialized bibliography, didactic books of the period etc., and obtain a panoramic vision of the formation of the Japanese Shinto Modern State from the point of view of the religion, law and education from the end of the Bakumatsu (final years of the Edo Period, 1953 - 1868) until the final of the Russian-Japanese War, period that happened significant changes in all sections of the Japanese society.