The Invention of a New Religion

by Basil Hall Chamberlain

Basil Chamberlain was a professor at the Tokyo Imperial University. He wrote some of the earliest translations of haikus. His best known work is the encyclopedia Things Japanese. This was a popular one volume informal discussion of Japanese written in 1890. Chamberlain begins this pamphlet by saying, "Mikado-worship and Japan-worship--for that is the new Japanese religion--is, of course, no spontaneously generated phenomenon. Every manufacture presupposes a material out of which it is made, every present a past on which it rests. But the twentieth-century Japanese religion of loyalty and patriotism is quite new, for in it pre-existing ideas have been sifted, altered, freshly compounded, turned to new uses, and have found a new centre of gravity."

Genres: Japan, Nonfiction

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1912

About the author

B. A. Chamberlain was a professor of Japanese at the Tokyo Imperial University and was one of the greatest European Japanologists, along with Ernest Mason Satow, Lafcadio Hearn, and William G. Ashton.

He arrived in Japan on the eve of June 1873, left for Geneva in 1911 where he lived until his death in 1935.

Reviews

[Susan Molloy · Rating 5 out of 5]

🖊 This was an interesting short work by atheist Basil Hall Chamberlain on how “Mikado-worship and Japan-worship—for that is the new Japanese religion—is, of course, no spontaneously generated phenomenon.” Of course, “People can always believe that which it is greatly to their interest to believe.”
📙 This book was published in 1912.
🟢The e-book version can be found on Project Gutenberg.
🟣Kindle.
🔲 Excerpt of note:

🔹The new Japanese religion consists, in its present early stage, of worship of the sacrosanct Imperial Person and of His Divine Ancestors, of implicit obedience to Him as head of the army (a position, by the way, opposed to all former Japanese ideas, according to which the Court was essentially civilian); furthermore, of a corresponding belief that Japan is as far superior to the common ruck of nations as the Mikado is divinely superior to the common ruck of kings and emperors.

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[Frederick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very short, but eye-opening. His atheism is annoying, not because he is one but because he spends too much time attacking Judeo-Christianity in such a short work. In any event he claims that the so-called religion of Japan; Shintoism, was a primitive nature cult dusted off and lifted up by the government in the late 1800s to supplant Japan's popular Buddhist impulse and create a national religion. He also claims that Bushido, the way of the Samurai made popular in America in the 1960s, was also an invention, the name not being used in print before 1900. He saw Japan's government creating an ideology, a mythology, and a national mystique out of whole cloth. I am reminded of the Aztec's inventions about their own history. It is a pretty fascinating polemic. Leads to more research.

[Mario García · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not so well known pamphlet resenting Japan's acculturation from the late XIX century to the first half of XX, due to governmental propaganda and high-class interests.

Formerly a mostly secular country, accustomed to independent social interaction and revolts against unjust royal dynasties, Japan population became docile to vertical practices of power, the insertion of Shinto (religious syncretism) and revival of a not so historically successful practice: The Mikado. From there on, most university scholars denouncing this phenomena were ostracized and treated as treasonous liberals.

According to the author, Basil Hall Chamberlain -who was a professor at Tokyo Imperial University and one of the foremost British "japanologists" at that time- Japan's history was mostly rewritten on the basis of plagiarized Chinese myths, convenient poetry,outlandish stories of the people of the sun (Nihon / Nippon) and cult to the emperor (Mikado). This social engineering took place in about a single generation, and might be an accurate accounting for Japanese imperial expansionism around the same period of time.

The awkward part is this is not a work of fiction. I stumbled into it thanks to Bertrand Russell in his work "Free Thought and Official Propaganda -1922" who, at that time, resented also the fact that this book was out of print.

In my own opinion, an easy and thought provoking read that one has to stop by at some point if there is any interest in real history.

To paraphrase Adam Smith, divergent paths of history must be accounted for if one is to develop a proper intellectual life.

I bought the Kobo version, but -thanks to a free Internet that we are about to lose due to the same propaganda phenomenon- HERE

[Olia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though there are some things i didnt like about this very edition (as for example that i suddenly had a content of another book), still i give a high mark.

For me it was very important to know the contemporary thought about the changes in Japan during the Meiji Restoration. And B.H. Chamberlain can be said on of the most reliable sources, as he has always been famous for his search for truth and in English he could write really what he thought (as opposed to his works in japanese).