2018 Volume 92 Issue 2 Pages 81-105
The purpose of this paper is to avoid generalizing about modern Shinto policy and the history of Shinto shrines after the Meiji Restoration (1868). Instead, I examine local community shrines. It is held that modern Shinto shrines were protected under the national system and played an important role in the religious life of the Japanese. At first glance this argument has validity, but we also need to consider that the situation was more complicated. Hence, I discuss three topics for further research and make arguments based on a case study. They are: A) How local residents who venerated small shrines reacted as these informal shrines disappeared from their daily life; B) Why the local government permitted the unusual treatment of the late-Meiji shrine merger policy; and C) The nature of mutual influence between the modern idea of landscape and the environmental design of local shrines.
In conclusion, I emphasize the necessity for further research on local community shrines and the need to rethink modern Shinto and the state from such a perspective.
