STATE SHINTOISM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26028, 17 December 1945, Page 5

STATE SHINTOISM

ABOLITION ORDERED NO ANCESTOR WORSHIP (Rec. 11 p.m.) TOKIO, Dec. 16. With the expressed aim of freeing the Japanese from direct or indirect compulsion to believq in a manufactured religion, General MacArthur ordered State Shintoism to be abolished. The directive demands:— 1. The withdrawal of all Government control and support of State Shinto. 2. The purging of the. militaristic, ultranationalistic ideology which preaches ancestor worship and deifies the Emperor. This embraces the doctrine that the Emperor is superior to the heads of other States and the Japanese are superior to other peoples through ancestral descent or special origin. 3. The removal of Shihto teachings from schools. The directive abolishes the home ministry’s shrine bureau, which exercised jurisdiction over all shrines, and abolishes written nature-loving rituals and the priests of State Shinto. Allied officers emphasised that the directive involves State Shintoism, but

does not affect the Shinto sect, of which there were 17,000,000 adherents in 1941. They added it was not an attempt to dictate religious beliefs. The Associated Press of America correspondent comments, however, that the entire population are considered to be members of State Shinto, including 45,000,000 Buddhists and 315,000 Christians. Brigadier-general Dyke, chief of the information and education section, describes the development of State Shinto as a masterly job of promotion. He added that the directive liberates the, Japanese from compulsory support of an ideology which contributed to war guilt, defeat, suffering, privation, and their present deplorable condition. The Emperor is still the spiritual head of Japan and can continue to worship at the grand shrine of Ise, but cannot in future be accompanied thither by State officials. General Dyke said all creeds would henceforth be on the same legal basis.