“Religion” and “Politics”: A Japanese Case

Timothy Fitzgerald’s The Ideology of Religious Studies should not be read as something just about “religion,” but about the modern Euro- American “secularity,” which functions to mystify the colonial matrix of power of Euro-American modernity. Fitzgerald’s later work focuses on two mutually para...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Horii, Mitsutoshi 1977- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Equinox [2020]
In: Implicit religion
Year: 2020, Volume: 22, Issue: 3/4, Pages: 413-428
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Fitzgerald, Timothy 1947-, The ideology of religious studies / Japan / Religion / Concept of / Politics / Postcolonialism
IxTheo Classification:AD Sociology of religion; religious policy
KBM Asia
ZC Politics in general
Further subjects:B Secularity
B Japan
B Mystification
B Politics
B Timothy Fitzgerald
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:Timothy Fitzgerald’s The Ideology of Religious Studies should not be read as something just about “religion,” but about the modern Euro- American “secularity,” which functions to mystify the colonial matrix of power of Euro-American modernity. Fitzgerald’s later work focuses on two mutually parasitic categories of “religion” and “politics.” As a case study of the Fitzgeraldian perspective, this article examines the construction of the religion-politics distinction in Japan since the late nineteenth century. In the latter half of the nineteenth century the aggression of Euro-American colonial power motivated Japan’s elites to institutionalize the nation based upon the Euro-American concepts of “politics” and “religion.” After Japan’s defeat in the Second World War in 1945, the US-led Allied Occupation redefined prewar Japanese state orthodoxy and institutions as “religion,” in order to eliminate them from the post-war Japanese statecraft.
ISSN:1743-1697
Contains:Enthalten in: Implicit religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1558/imre.41013