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Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates a Nichiren Buddhist network among officers in the Imperial Japanese Navy. It focuses in particular on Vice Admiral Satō Tetsutarō (1866-1942), the father of modern Japanese naval strategy, his Buddhist faith, and his engagement with Japanese interwar society.

Paper long abstract:

This paper brings to light the roles of military officers in the religious and ideological spheres in modern Japan. In the field of the history of religion in Japan, the support of official Buddhist churches for the military, expansionist, and ideological efforts of the Japanese state is now well known. However, comparatively little is known about the role of religion among the higher echelons of the armed forces in pre-1945 Japan, and how they actively intervened in and shaped the religious and ideological world of pre-war Japan. In comparison to the Army, the Imperial Japanese Navy has enjoyed an image of “non-political” professionals, and has thus been relatively free of scrutiny into its ideological and religious aspects. In recent years, Japanese scholars have begun to rethink this image of the “apolitical” navy. This paper aims to bring to light another overlooked dimension in the interplay between the military and the civilian sphere in pre-war Japan: religion.

This paper investigates Nichiren Buddhist thought and ideology in the writings of key officers in the Imperial Japanese Navy. It focuses in particular on Vice Admiral Satō Tetsutarō (1866-1942), the father of modern Japanese naval strategic thought, his Buddhist faith and his political and religious writings. Satō Tetsutarō was part of a larger Nichiren Buddhist network comprising of high echelon officers who envisioned a maritime and naval Japan, and who employed the status of the navy to promote Buddhism, and used Buddhist tropes and symbols to promote militarism. This network connected high-ranking naval officers with important Buddhist clergy such as Honda Nisshō (1867-1931), as well as civilian intellectuals and politicians. Satō and other navy officers made a particular religious and naval intervention in the ideological landscape of modern Japan. A close scrutiny of military officers and their engagement with Nichiren Buddhist thought and ideologies reveals vast differences. Satō Tetsutarō promoted navalist ideology with Buddhism and the emperor-system, but in contrast to Pan-Asianist expansionists, he was more closely aligned with the “small-Japan” faction opposing continental expansion. This opens up larger questions for categories such as “militarism” in prewar Japan.