ABSTRACT
Today, there will be few even in Japan who remember Tanaka Yoshitō (1872–1946), and yet he was one of the great names in prewar Shinto studies. While teaching at Kokugakuin and other universities, Tanaka Yoshitō was in charge of the only existing Shinto programme at the time at Tokyo Imperial University, where he was an associate professor (jokyōju). Even more importantly, he was the first to advocate the study of Shinto as an independent academic discipline (Shintōgaku, perhaps translatable as ‘Shintology’), and must therefore be regarded as one of the fathers of modern Shinto studies.
