Short Abstract

This panel explores the creation, continuity, and dissemination of political myths in Meiji-era Japan across religion, intellectual history, and literature, through four case studies centered on narratives surrounding mythical figures and the theory on Japanese-Korean common ancestry.

Long Abstract

In recent decades, the creation and dissemination of political myths has become an increasingly prominent area of research within Japanese Studies (Antoni 2017, 2022, 2025 (ed.); Steineck 2017; Weiss 2022). Scholarship has shown that Japanese political myths cannot be neatly separated from sacred mythological narratives, as they are deeply rooted in Shintō traditions centered on the divine origins and unbroken continuity of the imperial house, as well as on other mythical figures such as the legendary first emperor, Jinmu Tennō, and Jingū Kōgō. This panel seeks to nuance ongoing discussions of political myths in Meiji-era Japan by focusing on the processes of their creation, their overlap — whether religious or transculturally enforced — and their dissemination across different domains of the period's intellectual and religious landscape, including, but not limited to, religion, intellectual history, and literature.

The first paper challenges the prevailing emphasis on state-driven indoctrination by presenting Jingū Kōgō as a preexisting cultural and religious cornerstone. It examines shrines dedicated to her in northern Kyūshū and the Kansai region and demonstrates how the government’s later appropriation of her image and narratives further enhanced the prestige of these sacred sites. The second paper examines the dissemination of political myths concerning the unbroken line of emperors descended from Amaterasu, as well as the mythical figure of Jinmu Tennō, through waka and shintaishi poetry composed under the auspices of the Imperial Bureau of Poetry (Outadokoro). It analyses the mobilization of Meiji Tennō's poems and the institutionalization of the New Year's Imperial Poetry Reading as mechanisms that symbolically united the nation through poetic composition. The third paper compares and contrasts the works of Kume Kunitake and Kimura Takatarō. While Kume put forth the theory that Japan and Korea were one nation in the mythical age, Kimura Takatarō both developed and influenced the writing of pseudo-histories of Japan in a global context. The fourth paper addresses the contributions, perspectives and reactions of both Japanese and Korean intellectuals to the reconfiguration of Japan and Korea under the framework of the “nation-family” and the role of mythical founding figures therein (Amaterasu, Jinmu Tennō and Tan'gun).