Part 29: Summary of Kokutai no Hongi and Its Significance

Banner for Part 30 Summary of Kokutai no Hongi and Its Significance

This is part 29 of my series on Shinto as a civil religion, you can find the rest of the series here.

Kokutai no Hongi was an influential text widely read and known throughout Japan. It was used in education and emphasized that individualism had no place in the Japanese social ethos. Instead, the Japanese nation was presented as being built on a familial bond between the imperial family and the people. The nation was thus seen as a unified entity, not a collection of individuals.

A key part of the Japanese ethos, according to the text, was the willingness to set aside personal needs and individual thoughts to focus on the greater good of the community. This was achieved by unquestioningly following the divine emperor and being willing to sacrifice oneself for the nation. This stood in stark contrast to Western individualist nations, which, the text argued, were too focused on the individual to achieve true harmony. Japan, by contrast, was portrayed as having achieved harmony, which had propelled the nation forward and created the unity it now embodied.

Furthermore, Japan’s wars were framed as efforts to promote peace and spread harmony to the rest of the world. Japan’s mission, as described in the text, was to assimilate Western cultures into its own, benefiting both itself and the rest of the world.

Core Elements of Civil Religion in the Text

Kokutai no Hongi incorporates several elements from the ideology underpinning Japan’s civil religion:

The Divine Emperor as the Nation’s Father
The emperor’s divine status was reiterated as central to the nation’s unity and moral order.
Self-Sacrifice for the Greater Good
Citizens were encouraged to put aside individual desires and contribute to the community, framing self-sacrifice as a core Japanese virtue.
Contrast with the West
Japan was depicted as morally superior to Western nations, which were fractured by their focus on individualism.

Comparison to Yasukuni Shrine and War Memorials

While Kokutai no Hongi emphasized self-sacrifice and national unity, it approached the concept differently from other elements of civil religion, such as the Yasukuni Shrine and war memorials. These focused on sanctifying the self-sacrifice of soldiers who died in war.

Kokutai no Hongi, however, addressed the broader population, encouraging everyone to contribute to the nation, even those who could not physically participate in war. It emphasized maintaining morale on the home front through continued work and dedication. In this sense, Yasukuni Shrine and war memorials can be seen as the soldier-focused counterpart to Kokutai no Hongi, which targeted the general populace.

A Tool of Top-Down Civil Religion

Kokutai no Hongi is a clear example of top-down civil religion. The government used the text as a tool to reinforce its authority and promote a civil religious ideology. Through education and wide distribution, the text instilled the values of unity, loyalty, and self-sacrifice, tying them to the divine emperor and the state.

By addressing the entire population and emphasizing collective harmony, Kokutai no Hongi served to ensure that the civil religion extended beyond the battlefield, encompassing all aspects of Japanese society during a critical period in its history.

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