Spiritual restoration and religious reinvention in late Meiji Japan: The Three Religions Conference and religious nationalism

This study investigates the background and the debates surrounding the Three Religions Conference (sankyo kaido) held in Tokyo in 1912 between the Meiji government and the leaders of Shinto, Buddhism and Christianity. This conference developed as the plan of Home Office Vice-Minister Tokonami Takejiro, aided by Honda Nissho, a Nichirenite priest. The conference and the public debate surrounding it formed a significant moment in religion and state relationships during the Meiji period (1868–1912) through the assertion by politicians and religionists that Japan was in need of “spiritual restoration.” It further signified a general rehabilitation of religion as a positive social category in the development of nationalist ideology. Specifically, it functioned as a public rehabilitation of Buddhism and Christianity after their suppression and persecution during the early Meiji period. The Japanese imperial government came to view religion as a potentially useful resource in the maintenance of an ideological moral category termed “national morality” (kokumin dotoku). Though the government initially utilized the thought of Tokugawa social reformer Ninomiya Sontoku to help define the content of national morality, it eventually appealed to Shinto, Buddhist and Christian leaders to put these moral categories into practice. This appeal ignited a vigorous public debate within the political and religious worlds. Home Office Minister Hara Takashi defended the conference in the upper and lower houses of the imperial Diet. New Buddhist writers, such as Sakaino Koyo, argued that religion and the state were absolutely independent categories, and that Buddhism should be freed from a governmentally regulated “abbot system.” Institutional Buddhists, such as Shaku Soen, also called for liberation from this system, pointing out that Christianity was already free from such governmental regulation. Christian leaders, such as Ebina Danjo and Kozaki Hiromichi, attempted to reimagine Christian identity as a new foundation for a new Japan, while others such as Uchimura Kanzo remained skeptical. Through the inclusion of Christianity, this vigorous debate signaled a reinvention of patterns of national religious identity. A historical three religions framework, formed out of Shinto, Confucianism and Buddhism, was altered to include Christianity.