ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the dynamic and paradoxical nature of the relationship between secular nationalism and religious nationalism in the case of modern Japan. To show this, the chapter focuses on the political thoughts of two key figures in the Meiji era: Inoue Kowashi (1844–1895) and Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901). Unlike the common characterization of prewar Japan as based on religious nationalism, it will be argued that Inoue and Fukuzawa, though diametrically opposed to each other on important political issues, basically conceived of nationalism as a secular project. Yet, due to their instrumentalist view of religion, they did not hesitate to utilize religious aura for political purposes. It is argued that it is their instrumentalist attitude towards religion that involves modern Japan in a paradoxical, dialectical nature of the relationship between religion and politics: it planted within itself the seeds that would develop into religious nationalism and irrational fanaticism culminating in wartime Japan, while secular nationalism receded. The chapter will illustrate first that political and intellectual elites of the Meiji regime share the aspiration for a secular type of nationalism, and second that their secular nationalism is not robust enough to prevent religious nationalism from dominating the regime in the course of time, mainly due to their elitist politics of interpretation and their instrumental view of religious sentiments for their secular nationalist project.
