How Did Japan's Ministry of Education Assume Control over the Administration of Religion?

Abstract

The present article focuses on the administrative and financial reforms enacted between around 1900 and the early 1910s. Specifically, it traces the developments that in June 1913 led to the Ministry of Education establishing jurisdiction over the Bureau of Religions (Shūkyōkyoku)―or, to put it another way, led to the Ministry institutionally assuming control of the administration of religions.

I begin by delineating how the so-called Okuda Draft submitted in July 1902 by then-head of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau Okuda Yoshito to the First Katsura Tarō Cabinet was deliberately ignored, thus frustrating the plans for the administration of and jurisdiction over religion that Education Ministry bureaucrats had conceived.

Second, I lay out how the Home Ministry reforms carried out by Home Minister Hara Takashi (Kei) in the Second Saionji Kinmochi Cabinet as well as Hara's reforms of prefectural-level administration led by the Ministry had an enormous impact on existing approaches to the administration of shrines and religions. I will show how this resulted in an enormous setback to Education Ministry bureaucrats' plans for jurisdiction.

Finally, I trace how a collaboration between Home Minister Hara and Education Minister Okuda in the First Cabinet of Yamamoto Gonnohyōe led in June 1913 to formal transfer of the Bureau of Religions from the Home Ministry to the Education Ministry. I argue that this development was in fact the fruition of that desire held ever since around 1900.