Chonggyo wa kukka ŭirye sai: 1920-30 nyŏndae Ilbon Sindo rŭl tullŏssan Chosŏn nae kaltŭng kwa sŏguindŭl ŭi insik” [Between religion and state ritual: disputes about the Japanese Shinto and westerner’s perception in colonial Korea during the 1920-1930s]

Between Religion and State Ritual: Disputes about the Japanese Shinto and Westerners’ Perception in Colonial Korea during the 1920-1930s This article has an aim to survey the disputes about Japanese shinto and to see how westerners understood this issue in colonial Korea during the 1920-1930s. During the 1920s Japanese government did not enforce shintoism upon all the Koreans because Japan pursued a conciliatory policy toward the UK and the U. S. In the 1930s, especially around the Second Sino-Japanese War, Japan forced all the schools to go to Shinto shrine for war mobilization in Korea. American missionaries, therefore, had to reveal their attitudes towards this issue since they managed mission schools. Majority missionaries assumed the 'shinto-religion' theory, the position that is well shown in George S. McCune's case. The faculty members in Religious and Law Department at the Tokyo Imperial University supported this ideas based upon nationalistic thoughts. While these people such as Inouye Tetsujiro and Hozumi Nobusige resorted to anti-western and Japanese particularism with imperial way of historical thoughts and emperor-based legal theory, western missionaries actively appropriated these nationalistic ideas for their ends: anti-shintoism. However, there is a person like Horace H. Underwood who argued that even christians are able to participate into shinto shrine worship except religious parts in the ceremony. Moreover, American diplomats and several missionaries in Japan would be eager to accept the ceremony based upon religious relativism. Considering the close relationship between shinto and emperor system, these diverse attitudes about shintoism suggests the ways how the emperor system was handled in post-war Japan.