Restructuring of Relationships between School Education and Religion in the Process of Making the Ministry of Education Instruction No. 12 in 1899

Abstract

The Ministry of Education issued the Instruction No. 12 of August 3, 1899, which prohibited religious education and ceremonies in all government and public schools and private schools whose curricula were regulated by provisions of law, even outside the regular course of study. Thus far, scholarship has generally agreed that the Ministry took a hardline stance to implement the prohibition and drafted the Instruction to enforce it, which was later eased as a compromise with the other governmental organs. However, this paper reconsiders those assessments on the basis of new-found materials, such as the minutes of the Code Investigation Commission, and argues that the Ministry had almost realized its plans to prepare for the enforcement of the revised treaties and to supervise all “religious schools” as “private schools” in the face of the opposition of the Ministry of Home Affairs. This paper will be helpful to understand more accurately the process of making a fundamental policy that restructured and stipulated the relationships between school education and religion in modern Japan.