The relationship between religion and state in modern society is primarily defined by the separation of state and religion that assumes the "freedom of religion." The relationship between state and religion in modern Japan, admittedly with some limits, is one that is defined by these two principles of the "separation of state and religion" and the "freedom of religion." These two principles, however, are established through various conflicts, compromises, and modifications that constantly threaten to encroach upon or obscure them. By considering these two principles in the midst of such conflict, we are able to gain an important perspective for viewing the historical changes in modern Japanese society.

Modern Japanese society was established as a national state within the framework of the capitalist world system at the time of the Meiji Restoration, and it sought its principle of legitimacy in state nationalism. The extreme Shinto nationalism utilized by the Meiji Restoration regime, after conflict with actual religious circumstances, eventually retreated into a State Shinto of rites and rituals. The connotation of a national polity, however, aligned with a sense of national morality, was accepted as part of the public sphere of the national state, and this became the legitimizing principle of modern Japan.

If we systematize the religious systems of modern Japan with the above formative process as a premise, we can summarize them into the following, mutually related, four dimensions:

a. State Shinto: the Shinto of the imperial family and the system of shrines, and Shinto as a system of national rites
b. Publicly recognized religions: the various sects of Buddhism, sectarian Shinto, and later Christianity
c. Folk religion: customary folk beliefs and practices, confraternities and private religious figures without official status, basic elements of a. and b.
d. State nationalism: a combination of secularized daily life and social consciousness

Social stability is attained through constant compromise and adjustment among the roles of these four dimensions. However, there is a dangerous balance in these roles, and a sense of social crisis can cause one or more of these dimensions to develop a fundamentalist drive for unification. The important point I wish to make here is to point out the danger of a radical fundamentalism that combines a religious cosmology with state nationalism that is the legitimizing principle of modern Japan.

YASUMARU Yoshio was a professor in the history of Japanese thought at Hitotsubashi University until his retirement, and he is currently a professor emeritus of Hitotsubashi University and visiting professor at the graduate school of Waseda University. He is the top scholar in Japan in the field of the intellectual history of pre-modern and modern Japan. His book on "The thought of the common people and the modernization of Japan" clarified the ethos among common people that supported Japan's modernization. His book on "the formation of the modern image of the emperor" (1992) incorporated the thought of Michel Foucault and the sociological methods of Peter Berger, clarifying the convoluted relationship between the state and the common people. He also edited a voluminous "History of Japan" and a multi-volume work on "Thinking about the emperor and kingship." A collection of his essays are being collected and translated into English by Carol Gluck for publication in the near future.