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ahorbinskiBibliographic Data: Bellah, Robert. Tokugawa Religion: The Cultural Roots of Modern Japan. New York: The Free Press, 1985. [1957]
Main Argument: Bellah argues that "Tokugawa religion" [sic] inculcated socio-cultural values which provided the foundation for economic and political modernization and rationalization (i.e. industrialization) in the modern period.
Historiographical Engagement: This book is essentially shackled to modernization theory, by way of Talcott Parsons and also Paul Tillich, which should tell you a lot right there (and which, in fairness, does make Bellah's conception of "religion" somewhat easier to swallow).
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples This introduction, written in 1985, situates the book in terms of the heyday of modernization theory, which Bellah describes as "a kind of late child of the enlightenment faith in progress" (xii), amidst the postwar atmosphere in which "the belief that social science was rapidly becoming scientific and the belief that its results would be socially ameliorative" held sway (ibid). He also discusses Maruyama Masao's main criticism of the book, which "was what he considered my overly optimistic interoperation of the major developments in modern Japan as tending in the direction of 'rationalization' and 'modernization'" (xiii), although Maruyama did like "the strong theoretical framework of the book" (bid). [For those of us playing along at home, this should be anything but surprising.] In Bellah's own evaluation of the book, he notes that "I characterized Japanese society as one that emphasizes group loyalty on the one hand and individual and collective achievement on the other. This combination makes for strong and effective group action. …I failed to see that the endless accumulation of wealth and power does not lead to the good society but undermines the conditions necessary for any viable society at all" (xvii-xviii). [This seems true as far as it goes to me; the problem is how Bellah gets there.]
Chapter 1: Argument, Sources, Examples In this introduction, Bellah says that he wants to understand "what the whole of Japanese religion in this period [early modern Japan] meant in the lives of Japanese people," paying "particular attention to any elements which might be connected with the rise of a modern industrial society," which Bellah oddly defines as "a society characterized by the great importance of the economy in the social system and of economic values in the value system" (1, 3). Following Paul Tillich, Bellah defines religion as "man's [sic] attitudes and actions with respect to his [sic] ultimate concern" (6). According to Bellah, "It is one of the social functions of religion to provide a meaningful set of ultimate values on which the morality of a society can be based. Such values when institutionalized can be spoken of as the central values of a society" (ibid).
Chapter 2: Argument, Sources, Examples In good totalizing Weberian fashion, this chapter presents "an outline of Japanese social structure in the Tokugawa period." What's important to note is that Bellah takes Tokugawa laws and regulations at face value as describing the society they attempted to control, and that he finds that "the institutional structure was held together largely through ties of loyalty between superior and inferior" (55) and that "the central values…give primacy to the goal-attainment dimension, [and] naturally have important implications for values with respect to the other three dimensions" (15).
Chapter 3: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter provides a general view of "Japanese religion" [sic], which according to Bellah constituted Confucianism, Shinto, and Buddhism in the Tokugawa period; the anachronistic nature of this view does not merit further discussion. Bellah concludes that "the two types of religious action" in the period "come to reinforce the central values of achievement and particularism," that "the values of performance and particularism are seen as defining the religious object" and that "religion reinforced the input of pattern conformity from the motivational system into the institutional system" by placing emphasis on "loyalty and the return of gratitude" (82-83).
Chapter 4: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at "religion and the polity," looking in particular at bushido, nativism, and the Mito school, and concludes that the "sonnô-kokutai ideology" has "further[ed] the process of political rationalization in Japan" and that it is "a fusion of religious and political ideas, and that at least in part its dynamism is attributable to religious motivation" (106).
Chapter 5: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at "the economic ethic in Japan, the various forms it took in the different classes, its relation to the political ethic and to religion, and the effect of these relations on economic rationalization" using "the more important Tokugawa developments" as evidence (107). Bellah finds this economic ethic to be "characterized by strong inner-worldly asceticism and an analogue to the concept of the calling [i.e. vocation] through which labor becomes a 'sacred obligation' which is rooted in these religious, political, and familistic ideas" and which Bellah finds to have been widely shared between social groups (131).
Chapter 6: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at Shingaku, a "religious movement" founded in 1729 by one Ishida Baigan that became one of the "new religions" of the 19thC, appealing mostly to urban merchants. Bellah finds that "as a religion it taught enlightenment and the selfless devotion which was both a means toward it and a consequence thereof," emphasizing "the great importance of loyalty and the selflessness of the retainer" as well as "productivity and minimized consumption" and finally "universalistic standards of honesty and respect for contract," giving them "religious underpinnings" (175). According to Bellah, it was one of the cultural foundations for Japan's industrialization.
Conclusion: Argument, Sources, Examples In the conclusion, Bellah gives a "cursory glimpse of the post-Tokugawa situation" and concludes that "we say that the central value system which was found to be present in the Tokugawa Period remained determining in the modern period, in perhaps even more intense and rationalized form" (188) and goes on to say some rather nasty and sweeping things about China as compared to Japan. His general conclusions are that "a strong polity and dominant political values in Japan were distinctly favorable to the rise of industrial society," and that "religion played an important role in the process of political and economic rationalization in Japan" in various ways (192, 194).
Critical assessment: I really, really dislike this book, to an extent that I have actually tried to keep secret from my advisor, as Robert Bellah was his outside examiner in his PhD exam here at Berkeley, lo these many years ago. The fundamental problem is that Bellah was trying to do for Japan what Weber did for Prussia--except that Weber was totally wrong about the "Protestant ethic" and the "spirit of capitalism." Even if either of those things exist as such, neither of them caused the Industrial Revolution, and Weber's entire theory is deeply chauvinistic at best and out and out bigoted at worst. Basing your entire method on a theory that is totally wrong is not likely to yield accurate analysis, and that is basically what happens to Bellah here. The modernization theory that is a more proximate base for Bellah's analysis here is also essentially bunk, and I am a skeptic about the notion of "social science" in general as well.
There are other problems, such as Bellah's definition of the category of "religion" and his reading it back into the Edo period uncritically; historians such as Kano Masanao have pointed out since (and may well have done so beforehand) that in Japan there was no category of "religion" as such before the bakumatsu and Meiji period, when the whole of Japanese thought on this domain changed radically. Much of what Bellah calls "religion" isn't. In other words, when your fundamental premises are factually incorrect, I don't think you're going to get much of value out of your analysis.
In some ways reading this book and discussing it in seminar with my advisor was like a funhouse reflection of my own time at St. Olaf College, where we had serious discussions about our vocation and how to find it and also where I participated in a two year "Great Con[versation]" program in which we read the "classics of the Western canon," which FYI includes no women according to my syllabi, including Paul Tillich. I can't overemphasize how much Tillich in particular is conditioned by his time period and by his reading of existentialism--it's essentially a postwar optimistic essentialism from a German-American Christian, which should tell you a lot. In light of that experience and in general, I question Bellah's uncritical application of concepts across societies and cultures in general and in particular.
In his defense, Bellah had hoped to go to Japan to research something completely different, but in 1950 he was told that, because he had led a discussion group on the works of Marx in undergrad in the 1940s, the State Department was unable to grant him a passport, and it was strongly intimated to him that his graduate funding would not be renewed after the current academic year--so he shut himself in the library for six months to write his dissertation before that deadline, and produced this book entirely from library sources. Tell me again about how the United States is the land of the free. It's possible to write excellent books about the Tokugawa period entirely from library sources; Beth Berry's Japan in Print is one of them. But Bellah's premises are so off the mark that there is very little worth saving in here--although I will say, his position that the Tokugawa period bequeathed positive legacies to modern Japan is somewhat remarkable for the time in which he was writing.
Further reading: Jan DeVries, The Industrious Revolution; Mary Elizabeth Berry, Japan in Print; Ken Pomeranz, The Great Divergence; Sebastian Conrad, The Quest for the Lost Nation; Najita Tetsuo, Visions of Virtue in Tokugawa Japan; Maruyama Masao, Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics
Meta notes: The "Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism" [sic] did not cause the Industrial Revolution.
Main Argument: Bellah argues that "Tokugawa religion" [sic] inculcated socio-cultural values which provided the foundation for economic and political modernization and rationalization (i.e. industrialization) in the modern period.
Historiographical Engagement: This book is essentially shackled to modernization theory, by way of Talcott Parsons and also Paul Tillich, which should tell you a lot right there (and which, in fairness, does make Bellah's conception of "religion" somewhat easier to swallow).
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples This introduction, written in 1985, situates the book in terms of the heyday of modernization theory, which Bellah describes as "a kind of late child of the enlightenment faith in progress" (xii), amidst the postwar atmosphere in which "the belief that social science was rapidly becoming scientific and the belief that its results would be socially ameliorative" held sway (ibid). He also discusses Maruyama Masao's main criticism of the book, which "was what he considered my overly optimistic interoperation of the major developments in modern Japan as tending in the direction of 'rationalization' and 'modernization'" (xiii), although Maruyama did like "the strong theoretical framework of the book" (bid). [For those of us playing along at home, this should be anything but surprising.] In Bellah's own evaluation of the book, he notes that "I characterized Japanese society as one that emphasizes group loyalty on the one hand and individual and collective achievement on the other. This combination makes for strong and effective group action. …I failed to see that the endless accumulation of wealth and power does not lead to the good society but undermines the conditions necessary for any viable society at all" (xvii-xviii). [This seems true as far as it goes to me; the problem is how Bellah gets there.]
Chapter 1: Argument, Sources, Examples In this introduction, Bellah says that he wants to understand "what the whole of Japanese religion in this period [early modern Japan] meant in the lives of Japanese people," paying "particular attention to any elements which might be connected with the rise of a modern industrial society," which Bellah oddly defines as "a society characterized by the great importance of the economy in the social system and of economic values in the value system" (1, 3). Following Paul Tillich, Bellah defines religion as "man's [sic] attitudes and actions with respect to his [sic] ultimate concern" (6). According to Bellah, "It is one of the social functions of religion to provide a meaningful set of ultimate values on which the morality of a society can be based. Such values when institutionalized can be spoken of as the central values of a society" (ibid).
Chapter 2: Argument, Sources, Examples In good totalizing Weberian fashion, this chapter presents "an outline of Japanese social structure in the Tokugawa period." What's important to note is that Bellah takes Tokugawa laws and regulations at face value as describing the society they attempted to control, and that he finds that "the institutional structure was held together largely through ties of loyalty between superior and inferior" (55) and that "the central values…give primacy to the goal-attainment dimension, [and] naturally have important implications for values with respect to the other three dimensions" (15).
Chapter 3: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter provides a general view of "Japanese religion" [sic], which according to Bellah constituted Confucianism, Shinto, and Buddhism in the Tokugawa period; the anachronistic nature of this view does not merit further discussion. Bellah concludes that "the two types of religious action" in the period "come to reinforce the central values of achievement and particularism," that "the values of performance and particularism are seen as defining the religious object" and that "religion reinforced the input of pattern conformity from the motivational system into the institutional system" by placing emphasis on "loyalty and the return of gratitude" (82-83).
Chapter 4: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at "religion and the polity," looking in particular at bushido, nativism, and the Mito school, and concludes that the "sonnô-kokutai ideology" has "further[ed] the process of political rationalization in Japan" and that it is "a fusion of religious and political ideas, and that at least in part its dynamism is attributable to religious motivation" (106).
Chapter 5: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at "the economic ethic in Japan, the various forms it took in the different classes, its relation to the political ethic and to religion, and the effect of these relations on economic rationalization" using "the more important Tokugawa developments" as evidence (107). Bellah finds this economic ethic to be "characterized by strong inner-worldly asceticism and an analogue to the concept of the calling [i.e. vocation] through which labor becomes a 'sacred obligation' which is rooted in these religious, political, and familistic ideas" and which Bellah finds to have been widely shared between social groups (131).
Chapter 6: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at Shingaku, a "religious movement" founded in 1729 by one Ishida Baigan that became one of the "new religions" of the 19thC, appealing mostly to urban merchants. Bellah finds that "as a religion it taught enlightenment and the selfless devotion which was both a means toward it and a consequence thereof," emphasizing "the great importance of loyalty and the selflessness of the retainer" as well as "productivity and minimized consumption" and finally "universalistic standards of honesty and respect for contract," giving them "religious underpinnings" (175). According to Bellah, it was one of the cultural foundations for Japan's industrialization.
Conclusion: Argument, Sources, Examples In the conclusion, Bellah gives a "cursory glimpse of the post-Tokugawa situation" and concludes that "we say that the central value system which was found to be present in the Tokugawa Period remained determining in the modern period, in perhaps even more intense and rationalized form" (188) and goes on to say some rather nasty and sweeping things about China as compared to Japan. His general conclusions are that "a strong polity and dominant political values in Japan were distinctly favorable to the rise of industrial society," and that "religion played an important role in the process of political and economic rationalization in Japan" in various ways (192, 194).
Critical assessment: I really, really dislike this book, to an extent that I have actually tried to keep secret from my advisor, as Robert Bellah was his outside examiner in his PhD exam here at Berkeley, lo these many years ago. The fundamental problem is that Bellah was trying to do for Japan what Weber did for Prussia--except that Weber was totally wrong about the "Protestant ethic" and the "spirit of capitalism." Even if either of those things exist as such, neither of them caused the Industrial Revolution, and Weber's entire theory is deeply chauvinistic at best and out and out bigoted at worst. Basing your entire method on a theory that is totally wrong is not likely to yield accurate analysis, and that is basically what happens to Bellah here. The modernization theory that is a more proximate base for Bellah's analysis here is also essentially bunk, and I am a skeptic about the notion of "social science" in general as well.
There are other problems, such as Bellah's definition of the category of "religion" and his reading it back into the Edo period uncritically; historians such as Kano Masanao have pointed out since (and may well have done so beforehand) that in Japan there was no category of "religion" as such before the bakumatsu and Meiji period, when the whole of Japanese thought on this domain changed radically. Much of what Bellah calls "religion" isn't. In other words, when your fundamental premises are factually incorrect, I don't think you're going to get much of value out of your analysis.
In some ways reading this book and discussing it in seminar with my advisor was like a funhouse reflection of my own time at St. Olaf College, where we had serious discussions about our vocation and how to find it and also where I participated in a two year "Great Con[versation]" program in which we read the "classics of the Western canon," which FYI includes no women according to my syllabi, including Paul Tillich. I can't overemphasize how much Tillich in particular is conditioned by his time period and by his reading of existentialism--it's essentially a postwar optimistic essentialism from a German-American Christian, which should tell you a lot. In light of that experience and in general, I question Bellah's uncritical application of concepts across societies and cultures in general and in particular.
In his defense, Bellah had hoped to go to Japan to research something completely different, but in 1950 he was told that, because he had led a discussion group on the works of Marx in undergrad in the 1940s, the State Department was unable to grant him a passport, and it was strongly intimated to him that his graduate funding would not be renewed after the current academic year--so he shut himself in the library for six months to write his dissertation before that deadline, and produced this book entirely from library sources. Tell me again about how the United States is the land of the free. It's possible to write excellent books about the Tokugawa period entirely from library sources; Beth Berry's Japan in Print is one of them. But Bellah's premises are so off the mark that there is very little worth saving in here--although I will say, his position that the Tokugawa period bequeathed positive legacies to modern Japan is somewhat remarkable for the time in which he was writing.
Further reading: Jan DeVries, The Industrious Revolution; Mary Elizabeth Berry, Japan in Print; Ken Pomeranz, The Great Divergence; Sebastian Conrad, The Quest for the Lost Nation; Najita Tetsuo, Visions of Virtue in Tokugawa Japan; Maruyama Masao, Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics
Meta notes: The "Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism" [sic] did not cause the Industrial Revolution.