The concept of'State Shinto'was officially born in the'Shinto Directive'issued in 1945.The directive considered State Shinto the source of militarism and extreme nationalism.However,it did not clearly define the concept and connotation of State Shinto,which foreshadowed the emergence of a variety of State Shinto cognition in the Japanese academia.Driven by a strong sense of the crisis about the'revival of State Shinto',Murakami Shigeyoshi and others regarded the State Shinto as a'State religion'.On the basis of the value judgement of State Shinto in the directive,they argued that State Shinto was formed by the combination of the shrine Shinto and the sacrifice in the palace,which played an important role in integrating the national thought and driving the people to participate in the war.Ashizu Uzuhiko and others adopted the narrow interpretation of the concept of State Shinto in the directive and'narrowed'State Shinto into shrine Shinto.They proposed that State Shinto was only a'bureaucratic Shinto'managed by government bureaucrats on the basis of the principle of modern rationalism,and diluted the ideological role of State Shinto.In the face of the right-leaning trend in Japan since the 21 st century,Shimazono Susumu criticised the studies of Ashizu and others.On the premise of returning to the value judgement of instruction,he regarded State Shinto as a kind of'religious nationalism'and argued that State Shinto was a Shinto thought and practice which was closely intertwined with the Japanese nationalism,with the core content of sacrifice in the palace and reverence for the emperor.The formation and evolution of those three typical understanding of State Shinto are closely related to the political situation,social trend of thought and academic development level of postwar Japan,and their specific contents reflect the realistic understanding of the relationship between the politics and the religion in different periods and different subjects.
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