Religious Universalism in Modern Japan: Unitarians as Mediators Between Intellectuals and the West
Aki Yamaguchi and 山口亜紀
Japanese Journal of Religious Studies
Vol. 32, No. 2, Essays from the XIXth World Congress of the IAHR, Tokyo, March 2005 (2005), pp. 305-318 (14 pages)
Published By: Nanzan University
https://www.jstor.org/stable/30234065
Abstract
At the outset of the modern nation-state in the early part of the Meiji period (1880s to 1890s), Japanese intellectuals engaged in serious discussions concerning the spiritual restoration of the country. They envisioned a reorganization of Japanese religious traditions that had fallen apart into various sects of Buddhist and Shinto traditions along with folk practices. As they sought to reorganize Japanese religious traditions with a more universalist outlook, the opinion leaders of the day, such as Fukuzawa Yukichi, Yano Fumio, Nakamura Masanao, Katō Hiroyuki, and Sugiura Shigetake were in sympathy with the Unitarianism that was introduced into Japan at that time. While they began to understand "religion" as a pillar of the modern nation-state, they expected that Unitarians would make contributions to social development and national unity as mediators with universalistic perspectives. Yet, their understanding of the Unitarian type of universalism was, by and large, intricately connected with nationalism.
