- Convenor:
-
Maria Carbune
(Heidelberg University)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Raji Steineck
(University of Zurich)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Intellectual History and Philosophy
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).
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
During the Meiji period, shrines dedicated to Jingū kōgō became tourist destinations, forming part of an expanding landscape of ancient myths that people could visit. This paper examines shrines in Kyushu and Kansai, demonstrating how mythology was used to enhance the prestige of sacred sites.
Paper long abstract
“This shrine is also a renowned Hachiman Shrine, and many people come to worship here from near and far, drawn by its divine power.”
-- The Guide for Kyushu Railway Passengers (1893) on Umi Hachiman-gū
Jingū kōgō (trad. 169?–269 CE) was a household name during the Meiji period (1868–1912). The government featured her image on banknotes, postage stamps, and government bonds. She was also included in history textbooks and was a subject of ethics education. When Korea was annexed in 1910, her legendary conquest of the Korean Peninsula in the 3rd century CE was used by intellectuals to justify this annexation, and her Korean ancestry was cited as a reason for the 'reunification' of the two countries.
However, it is likely that the majority of Japanese people accepted such arguments less because of the government's skilful indoctrination of the public and more because Jingū kōgō had been a cultural cornerstone for a long time. This included fictional accounts of her story, such as theatre plays and magazine articles, as well as her worship as a deity — both as a symbol of (military) success and as a tutelary deity for pregnancy and childbirth. As such, the narrative of the Korean conquest was a familiar story that could easily be appropriated for other purposes.
Shrines dedicated to Jingū kōgō (and other deities, such as her son Ōjin tennō, commonly identified as Hachiman), often did not only serve as shrines, providing services and celebrating festivals, but also inscribed the mythological narrative of Jingū kōgō onto the physical landscape. This forged a tangible link between the tales of the imperial chronicles and the present day, aided by the often substantial age of the shrines themselves. As such, they became popular destinations for developing leisure tourism and formed part of an expanding landscape of ancient myths that people could physically visit.
This paper examines selected shrines in the northern Kyushu and Kansai regions, illustrating how national mythology was used to increase the prestige of sacred sites. It also explores why Jingū kōgō was such an ideal candidate for this purpose.
Paper short abstract
This paper shows how state-sanctioned poets used waka and shintaishi to disseminate political myths, shaping subjects through the New Year’s Imperial Poetry Reading, school songs, and wartime verse that framed the emperor as paternal ruler of a divinely sanctioned nation-family.
Paper long abstract
A Chicago Tribune article from January 1904, titled “Japan, the Land that Poets Rule: The Emperor’s New Year’s Poem Sets the Motive for Fashion in Art, Dress and Ceremony”, portrayed a country swept each year by the fervour of the New Year’s Imperial Poetry Reading (utakai hajime). Its imperially assigned poetic theme was said to shape practices across society, from amateur poetry circles to trends in art, fashion, photography, and the postcard industry. Examples from the international press show how Japan’s politicised poetry came to be perceived abroad as a defining national trait, especially during the Russo-Japanese War.
This phenomenon was rooted in the activities of conservative poets who served as government ideologues in the Imperial Bureau of Poetry (Outadokoro). They sought to forge a link between waka, regarded as quintessentially Japanese, and the newly articulated nation of restored imperial rule. Within this framework, waka for the utakai hajime became a tool of subject formation. Beyond organising the ceremony, Outadokoro poets dominated the literary world until the 1890s, publishing widely in newspapers and cultural journals for audiences ranging from intellectuals to women and youth. They also composed ideologically-laden school songs for national holidays and for the curriculum.
My paper examines how Outadokoro poets employed waka and shintaishi to disseminate political myths centred on the imperial institution, which played a central role in Meiji state ideology. These included the myth of an unbroken imperial line descending from the sun goddess Amaterasu and the foundational myth of Emperor Jinmu, reinforced by Confucian thought and, from the 1880s, by a conception of the nation as a family with the emperor as its father. Numerous poems published under the Bureau’s auspices reflect these ideological elements: from Emperor Meiji’s 1904 poems portraying him as a concerned father of a nation at war, to military poems, school hymns, and utakai hajime compositions that highlight mythological motifs and the continuity of Japan as a land granted to the emperors by the kami.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines the contrasting approaches of two historians to reinterpreting Japanese myths concerning Japan-Korea relations. Comparing academic historiography and pseudohistory, it highlights the plurality of attempts to rewrite myths, influenced by the political context of late Meiji Japan.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines the discourses of two prominent figures—an academic historian and a pseudohistorian—both of whom reinterpreted Japanese myths concerning Japan-Korea relations.
The first, Kume Kunitake, born in northern Kyushu, is well known as a leading founder of positivism-based history in Meiji Japan, but was expelled from the Imperial University in 1892, following his controversial article “Shinto is the Ancient Custom of Heaven-Worshipping Rituals”. From the 1880s into the 1910s, Kume was also one of the pioneers who claimed that Japan and Korea were one nation in the mythical age. Unlike other advocates, he based his interpretation on the “shared” ruler Susanoo and common ritual practices, without relying on notions of blood lineage or linguistic affinity. Kume repositioned Japan and Korea as a community bound together through the worship of “heaven”.
The other figure, Kimura Takatarō, is notorious for advocating a pseudohistory called “Neo-History” from 1910 onward. He traced the origins of the Japanese people to the Mediterranean world and attacked positivist history, which he had once studied. Kimura’s methodology involved, for example, identifying Jingū Kōgō with a Norse deity he called “Jingō” (non-existent), relocating her legendary conquest as an event on the Italian Peninsula, and claiming her as the origin of the term “jingoism”. His pseudohistory emerged from a denial of racial connections to Koreans. In relation to the West, he also accepted the concept of “religion”, which he had previously disliked, as a new principle to combine nations without geographical restriction. His vision of worldwide “Divine Restoration” influenced various pseudohistorical discourses.
Both of these approaches differed from conventional Japanese-Korean common ancestry theory, which emphasized the homogeneity of clans and language families. Kume rejected kinship-based models, while Kimura imagined Japan outside East Asia. From contrasting positions, they illuminate the range of interpretations of Japan’s political mythology.
Paper short abstract
This paper traces the role of mythical state founders such as Amaterasu and Jinmu Tennō in Meiji era framings of Japan as a family state and the ideological incorporation of Korean subjects into this state conception as well as Korean intellectuals’ engagement with these discourses.
Paper long abstract
This paper traces the role of mythical state founders in the construction of national identities in modern Japan and Korea. During the Meiji period, Japanese elites utilized the political myth of an unbroken dynasty stretching back to the sun goddess Amaterasu to justify the emperor’s exalted position as father of the nation. Describing Japan as a family state with the emperor at its apex allowed Meiji oligarchs to forge a connection between the imperial institution and the populace, while at the same time claiming distinctness from Western nation states. In this context, Jinmu, the legendary first emperor, served as a model for the modern image of the Meiji emperor as a military ruler. From the first decade of the 20th century, Tan’gun started to play a similar role in discourses on Korean national identity. Nationalist historians such as Sin Ch’aeho traced the history of the Korean nation back to Tan’gun as the founder of the first Korean state and ancestor of the Korean people. Like their Japanese peers, Korean intellectuals often likened the nation state to an enlarged family. With the annexation of Korea into the Japanese empire, Japanese thinkers started to incorporate the new Korean subjects into the Japanese family state by describing Tan’gun as Amaterasu’s little brother. While some Korean intellectuals resisted this so-called theory of common ancestry, others, such as Na Ch’ŏl, tried to modify it in order to raise Koreans’ status within the Japanese empire.
The paper emphasizes the significance of ancient mythical texts in the formation of modern national identities by arguing that mythical state founders occupied a central position in discussions of national identity in both Japan and Korea in the late 19th and early 20th century. Attention is called on parallels, such as a distancing from Chinese traditions, opposition to (Western or Japanese) Orientalism and the widespread use of family metaphors in discussions of the nation, but also to differences, such as the role of the respective royal families in Korean and Japanese discussions and the vastly different statuses of Japanese and Korean intellectuals in the colonial situation.