Education and religion are basically interrelated in that both are concernd to elevate humanity through contributing to the all-round development of man's faculties. The intimate relationship between the two, religion and education, has been lost sight of in our country, since they have both lost their own identity. All the different religions of Japan have lost their inner spirit, have become secularized as they were in pre-modern times, and have invited the suspicion and distrust of those in education. Educators, on the other hand, have given over the idea that education has as its goal the complete formation of man as a person; instead, they have allowed education to come to serve practical or political ends.
Properly speaking, religion and education are intimately connected. The former attempts to provide a final solution for man's problems, which spring from his finiteness, through reliance on supernatural transcendence, while the latter with clear under understanding of man's real situation as a being facing anxiety and cleavage between existence and values, strives to form the unified personality, if both, being firmly based on a correct understanding of man, confront the subject of the meaning of human existence and really work for the realization of man, they could cooperate, and while adhering to the twin principles of modern states-religious freedom and separation of religion and politics-could firmly establish their mutual bonds.

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Education is essentially a relation based on authority, which presupposes some sort of belief. In the final analysis, belief is based upon a belief in the divine (God, god). Education is rooted in belief.
The present age is one in which, owing to the “death of God” belief and authority have been lost. It is an age of nihilism, culture having been torn from its moorings.
The present age tries to transcend the dangers it faces by following the path of materialism, vitalism, and existentialism. These three ways, however, demand a unification in a higher unity. The mediating force for this work of unification is self-transcending intelligence.
Contemporary man cannot stand either the existence or the non-existence of the divine (God, god). It is seeking for “God beyond God.” Salvation for contemporary man consists in waiting longingly [for “God beyond God”] without shrinking from the troubles of day-to-day life.

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I have tried in this essay to follow the educational thought of Comenius in its formation and evolution. Through a study of his main writings I have endeavored to make clear the logical development of his thought, and through an analysis of the sketches of seventeenth century urban life and development of industrial techniques that appear throughout his writings I have tried to bring out the practical meaning of his educational theory.
In his The Labyrinth of the World, a work of realistic criticism of the turmoil and destruction that accompanied the Thirty Years War, Comenius returned to the idea of creation and made it clear that man is capable of transforming the earth and establishing peace. This theme of harmony he carried over into his Didactica Magna, and education as the technique of forming man was systematized therein as an academic discipline. This theme was developed further in the Janua and Schola Ludus which included discussions on the development of industrial techniques and the corresponding new society. In the Panpaedia the theme developed further into an analysis of human desire. This was the system coordinating the tremendous mechanism of the Pansophia and the movement of knowledge, the system that envisaged the realization on earth of the “religion of paradise.”

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Taken as a whole, English education is integrated through religion and religious education; secular and religious education are not carried on according to completely different principles. Stemming from the Middle Ages, this tradition of religious education, though weakened by the rise of churches in opposition to the established Church and by the rising strength of secularism, continued in its essentials until 1870. Against the background of this traditional development of education by the Church, we can see that the Education Act of 1870 was intended to provide, through the “dual system, ” a complement to non-sectarian religious teaching in the public schools and to the sectarian religious instruction in church-established schools. This it did by legalizing exemptions from religious instruction. Legally speaking, the Act of 1870 put an end to the educational unity which had been achieved through religious education. Thanks, however, to the cooperation of the churches, both established and non-established, religious education of a non-sectarian nature was given new life through the introduction and establishment of the “agreed syllabus.” Sectarian religious instruction was given improved status by reason of the abolition of the “time table conscience clause” for sectarian schools, by revival of a system of school inspection, by increased financial assistance, and by other measures. The rights of minority groups was thus provided for. The effect of the Education Act of 1944, from both a legal and a realistic point of view, was to strengthen both religious education and the integration of all educational activities in and through religion.

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Following the promulgation of the Imperial Rescript on Education, the controversy on the “collision between religion and education” broke out on the occasion of Kanzo Uchimura's refusal to show what was deemed proper respect for the Emperor. Nominally, this was a “collision between religion and education, ” but, in reality, should it not be looked upon as a collision between two religions, Christianity and the Religion of the Imperial Way (Nationalistic Shintoism) which the government was trying to form? The government's plan was to establish a state based on the emperor system in order to build up a strong and rich commonwealth with full independence. To this end it not only invested full political and military powers in the Emperor but also strove to foster the idea that the people should revere him as incarnate deity. Thus, the Religion of the Imperial Way was formed, and it was taken as the moral code to be followed by the entire people.
On the surface it may be considered as standing outside the realm of religion, but it must be stated that, though imperfect as a religion, religion it was.
The collision was not between religion and education or religion and morality but between two religions, as mentioned above. Otherwise, such a violent controversy would not have ensued. Does it not seem that, as a result of this collision, the Religion of the Imperial Way won an apparent victory over Christianity and that true religious faith was thereby paralyzed?

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The thought of Dogen, which makes the dialectic of Zen meditation the direct path to the Way of the Buddha assumes that the triad-Faith, Action, Realization are one. This teaching can be condensed into the acetical training of Zazen, inherent in which is the dialectic of absolute affirmation, that is to say, the negation of the negation of the triad, reflective consideration, denial of reflective consideration, and forgetfulness of self. The dialectic of Zen meditation is the process of self-realization of spirit, forming a circular movement from ogiginating absolute to terminal absolute and, in self-developing rhythm, reaching a reconciliation on a higher level of the relative tension between reflective consideration and its negation. Dogen's teaching draws man beyond the particular categories of “the Absolute” and “Ignorance, ” insisting always on the possibility of the asceticism of dialectic negation. In Zen meditation the reconciliation of the two worlds-namely, that “everything is holy” and “identity of asceticical training and enlightenment” -cannot be considered conceptually as the object of reflective thinking. It presupposes the decisive work of faith, the so-called arousing of the heart for enlightenment and can be intuitively achieved only in the intense fervor of Zen meditation. What makes the dialectic found in the dialectic of Buddhism the authentic thing is this arousing of the heart for enlightenment, and its process of self-realization is the absolute term of forgetfulness of self. Precisely because it is absolute, if we wish to understand it as an educational principle we can grasp it only in its conditioned from. Herein we recognize the nature of its educational limits.

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Theodor Litt was an active scholar who, through the 81 years of his life, was constantly in search of truth. Basing himself on the historical reality of his times, he led his German fellow-citizens in the right direction. He was not merely a speculative philosopher and educator but one who strove to realize in concrete ways the truth he had ferreted out. Freely using thoughts and ideas of all schools of modern philosophy, he worked out a foundation for educational activities from this broad perspective. He was able to range through many mutually interrelated fields of culture.
It was in the dynamic, mutual relations between being and action, liberty and destiny, theory and practiue, one's mother country and the world, and youth and age that he discovered the possibility and limits of education. Litt's lasting contributions to pedagogy are the following : his giving a philosophical and historical bath to educational theory ; his clarification of the dialectical relations between religion on the one hand and education and culture on the other ; his elucidation of the necessity of unity between science and morality.

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