This is part 7 of my series on Shinto as a civil religion, you can find the other parts here.
The word Kokutai is translated to national politics or national structure. The term was first used by Aizawa Seishisai (1782-1863). He was a Confucian scholar of the Mito school, which focused on isolationism, nativism, and great respect for the emperor. His book Shinron (New Theses) was published in 1825. This became the most influential text on kokutai and several of the suggestions made in it were later made into law during the Meiji Restoration.
Throughout Shinron Aizawa used the term Kokutai as a form of national-spiritual unit. A sort of natural feeling of togetherness with their national leader. As we saw with kokugaku, Aizawa looks back on an idealized time when the people and the nation’s leader had a strong bond. They had this bond because they had national rituals to gain the people’s trust. He calls this “The Way of Amaterasu” (Amaterasu is the Shinto sun-goddess). Aizawa saw this national-ritual connection as the way to national unity, which had been broken down by outside teachings.
Yet, Aizawa wasn’t only interested in bringing back the ritual relationship between the emperor and the people. He also wanted to see a better military, economic reforms, moral restructuring, and much more.
In the next post I will briefly go into the content of the Shinron and the ideology Aizawa expresses through it. It bears mentioning that this analysis is based on a translated version of the Shinron, as I unfortunately don’t read Japanese.
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Sources
Theodore De Bary, William(ed.). Sources of Japanese Tradition: Volume Two 1600-2000. Colombia University Press: New York, 2005. Print.
Hardacre, Helen. Shinto: a History. Oxford University Press: New York, 2016.
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