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Rabindranath Tagore's avatar

Another major change was that America made Japan renounce Shinto shrines as the basis of national ceremony. Starting in the 1910s and especially from 1937-1945, grammar school students would go to Shinto shrines regularly as a regular civil ritual. The Japanese government insisted to everyone that as Shinto shrines were non-sectarian and open to everyone, they formed a shared civil tradition of Japanese culture. (For details, see the essays in Bernhard Scheid (ed.), Kami Ways in Nationalist Territory.) The GHQ decided that the way to fix this would be to call Shinto a "religion" that had been "perverted" by the nationalists. The GHQ's assessment was somewhat subjective, but it did change Japanese culture forever. Shinto is now "privatized."

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Yoko Uno's avatar

Hard but fair criticism! Japan has still not learned to say 'No'!

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