State Shinto as an Engineered Religion and the Deification of the Emperor — Structure and Contemporary Warnings

This paper analyzes State Shinto, established by the Meiji government (1868–1912), as an engineered religious system designed for governance, centering on the deification of the Emperor. Framed under the rhetoric of “non-religion,” State Shinto integrated the shrine system and ritual practices into legal structures, education, and public culture to secure national unity and loyalty. The Emperor’s deification granted him both religious transcendence and legal supremacy, forming a dual-lock mechanism that transformed loyalty into a religious duty and suppressed dissent. Although Japan’s postwar constitution redefined the Emperor as a “symbol” of the state, remnants of the prewar apparatus remain embedded in public ceremonies and discourse. These remnants, coupled with the “non-religion” label, risk enabling constitutional revisionist movements that seek partial restoration of the prewar national polity, including emergency powers, military autonomy, and prewar-style moral education. This paper proposes a return to “natural Shinto”—local, pluralistic, and tolerant of syncretism—not as restorationism but as post-postmodern reconstruction: dismantling the political use of religious symbolism, clearly separating religious and cultural elements of imperial rituals, enforcing strict neutrality in public funding and education, and restoring voluntary participation in local religious practices.