| Nationalism is impacting upon Japan's foreign relations. Because nationalism influences actions and ideology, one must understand from where nationalist sentiment derives when analyzing such actions. Throughout Japan's post-Meiji history, an enduring pattern of interaction between nationalism and the Shinto religion emerges. This study argues that Shinto is related to contemporary Japanese nationalism through memories formed around the period of World War II. These war memories, interacting with globalization, formed two opposing groups: revisionist nationalism and cosmopolitanism. These two identities contend with one another on several battlegrounds, including the Senkaku/Diaoyu island debate, the Yasukuni shrine controversy, and the Japanese public education system. Furthermore, Shinto priests, who were directly connected to Japanese nationalism during the Meiji Restoration through World War II, currently find themselves in the middle of this battle. Oral history interviews conducted in Japan with Shinto priests revealed that while none of the Shinto priests want to be associated with State Shinto, many, if not most Shinto priests expressed interest in initiating nationalistic efforts in restoring traditional Japanese values to Japanese citizens, especially within the Japanese educational system. By combining oral history interviews with reports from Japanese newspapers and magazines, historical and political documents, and previous scholarship, this paper will demonstrate that many Shinto priests would like to institute a moral public education curriculum based on Shinto, but they cannot do so because of Shinto's link to contemporary Japanese nationalism through memories formed around the period of World War II. |
