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カテゴリー1： 3. Institutions and Administrative Practices
カテゴリー2： Modern and Contemporary
Title
The Meiji Jingikan
Text
The early Meiji office for the administration of ritual and shrine affairs, established in the seventh month of 1869, and located above the Council of State (Dajōkan) in the institutional hierarchy. In the Ōnin wars of the fifteenth century, the ancient state's Jingikan building was burned to the ground, and was not rebuilt until the Meiji restoration. However, the Shirakawa and Yoshida court families (jingi dōke) continued to exercise special responsibility for ritual and shrine matters and styled their own residences as Jingikan dai or "Jingikan proxy." With the flourishing of national learning (kokugaku) and a growing sense of Japan as a sacred nation (shinkoku), scholars began to argue that the re-establishment of the Jingikan would best symbolize the defining concept of saisei itchi — the merging, in the emperor's person, of ritual and government. In the late Edo period, courtiers, kokugaku adherents and shrine priests (shinshoku) petitioned vigorously for the Jingikan revival.
The Restoration government inherited late Edo arguments in favor of the Jingikan, and its first step, in the first month of 1868, was to create a "Section for the administration of rites and shrines" (Jingi Jimuka), as one of seven administrative sections. The following month saw this Section upgraded to a Bureau (Jingi Jimukyoku) and, then, in the administrative reforms of the intercalary fourth month, the Jingikan was created as one of seven departments (kan) within the new Council of State (Dajōkan).
There was, thus, a gradual expansion of the functions and authority of the state organ for rites and shrines. However, at this stage, the Jingikan was remained as an office within the Council of State, and was structurally distinct from the Jingikan of the ancient state, which had existed outside and independent of the Council of State. Adherents of national learning (kokugakusha) and courtiers remained convinced the modern state would only ever embody the saisei itchi ideal when it re-structured the political system and positioned the Jingikan alongside, as opposed to within, the Dajōkan. To this end, they began a concerted campaign, which finally bore fruit in the new Jingikan established in the seventh month 1869; it existed as an independent office outside and above the Dajōkan in a fashion reminiscent of its ancient predecessor.
The Jingikan now assumed responsibility for rites, imperial mausolea, propaganda and the priesthood (hafuribe and kanbe, for example). The office was headed by Nakayama Tadayasu, with Shirakawa Sukenori as deputy; beneath them was Fukuba Yoshishizu. Subsequently, a mausoleum section was created under Toda Tadayuki, who had served as mausoleum magistrate in the late Edo period; his assistant was the nativist (kokugakusha) and scholar of mausoleums, Tanimori Yoshiomi. Propaganda was entrusted to a propaganda bureau known as Senkyōshi (the Office of Indoctrination) within the Jingikan; Nakayama headed this bureau with Fukuba as deputy. Several ranks of religious instructors, from the Bureau's Senior Religious Instructor (known as daisenkyōshi, later called senkyō daihakase, the Senior Professor of Instruction), down to the gonshōkōgisei (Provisional Junior Lecturer) were established, and these people were charged with disseminating propaganda to the populace. The special features of the Meiji Jingikan, when compared to that of the ancient state, were its responsibilities for mausolea and propaganda. In a completely new measure, the Jingikan's assumption of the state's anti-Christian and general propaganda strategy was especially notable.
In the twelfth month of 1869, ritual performance and propaganda got under way when a temporary shrine was constructed within the Jingikan. Jingikan staffing problems put a strain on the office's responsibilities for both rites and propaganda, however, and specific problems arose from the fact that the Jingikan and its propaganda arm were located outside the Dajōkan. This institutional fact undermined the very authority of the Jingikan. Thus there emerged from within the Jingikan increasingly strident voices demanding a greater institutional intimacy between state propaganda and the Council of State. Concrete proposals for the Council of State to incorporate the Jingikan and its activities led first to the chief officer of the Council of State (Sanjō Sanetomi) doubling up as head of the Jingikan and finally, in the eighth month of the year, to the substitution of the Jingikan by the Jingishō, a new Ministry within the Council of State. This new ministry had responsibility only for propaganda and shrines, however, as ritual matters were now entrusted to the care of court ritualists. In the ninth month of 1871, the spirits of the imperial ancestors, enshrined briefly in the Jingishō, were removed to the kashikodokoro, the main shrine within the imperial palace. This made propaganda the Jingishō's major task. In order to push ahead with a vigorous propaganda program, the government sought to mobilize Buddhist institutions, too. In 1872, it duly created a new Ministry of Religious Education to replace the Jingishō. The ministry was known as the Kyōbushō, and assumed responsibility for joint Shinto and Buddhist propaganda.
The Kyōbushō, overseeing all aspects of religious administration, integrated the administration of religious institutions and related affairs, which until this time had been partitioned among the Jingishō, the Finance Ministry and local governments. The ministry played its part in the modernization of Japanese religion by, for example, lifting the ban on women's access to sacred mountain sites, and by allowing Buddhist priests to eat meat and to marry. However, its main task, that of state propaganda (see taikyō senpu), floundered, due in part to the arguments developed by True Pure Land Buddhists (Jōdo Shinshū) who demanded the separation of state and religion, and the meaning for the ministry's existence weakened. At the same time, people within the ministry itself called the raison d'etre of the ministry into question. The ministry was abolished in January, 1877, and replaced by the Shrine and Temple Office (Shajikyoku) situated within the Home Ministry.
— Sakamoto Koremaru

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