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Article 20 of the 1947 Constitution states, "Freedom of religion is
guaranteed to all. No religious organization shall receive any privileges
from the State, nor exercise any political authority". Contemporary religious freedom fits well with the
tolerant attitude of most Japanese toward other religious beliefs and
practices. Separation of religion and the state, however, is a more
difficult issue.
Historically, there was no distinction between a scientific and a
religious worldview. In early Japanese history, the ruling class was
responsible for performing propitiatory rituals, which later came to be
identified as Shinto, and for the introduction and support of Buddhism.
Later, religious organization was used by regimes for political purposes,
as when the Tokugawa government required each family to be registered as a
member of a Buddhist temple for purposes of social control. In the late
nineteenth century, rightists created State Shinto, requiring that each
family belong to a shrine parish and that the concepts of emperor worship
and a national Japanese "family" be taught in the schools.
In the 1980s, the meaning of the separation of state and religion again
became controversial. The issue came to a head in 1985 when Prime Minister
Nakasone Yasuhiro paid an official visit to Yasukuni Shrine, which honors
Japanese war dead, including leaders from the militarist period in the
1930s and 1940s. Supporters of
Nakasone's action (mainly on the political right) argued that the visit
was to pay homage to patriots; others claimed that the visit was an
attempt to revive State Shinto and nationalistic extremism. The visit was
protested by China, North Korea, South Korea, and other countries occupied
by Japan in the first half of the twentieth century, and domestically by
leftists, intellectuals, and the Japanese news media. Similar cases have
occurred at local levels, and courts increasingly have been asked to
clarify the division between religion and government. Separating religious
elements of the Japanese worldview from what is merely "Japanese" is not
easy, especially given the ambiguous role of the emperor, whose divinity
was denied in 1945 but who continued to perform functions of both state
and religion.
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