Word: shintoism
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...Premier overlooked no opportunity to nail down his job. In the tradition of prewar Premiers, he hurried to the great Ise shrines to notify the Shinto gods of his election-a gesture of nationalism and a studied slap at foreigners who had tried to reduce the chauvinistic role of Shintoism. He distributed promises-cheaper fertilizer, lower taxes, more jobs. But most of all he appealed to Japan's reawakened pride as a nation, able once-more to stand on its own, free to make foreign friends and commitments as it pleased...
...Five hundred thousand padded to the Yasukuni Shrine, above which the souls of Japan's war dead are said to hover, and clapped hands respectfully to get the souls' attention. Amid the wooded hills of Ise, southwest of Tokyo, 360,000 worshiped at the Grand Shrines of Shintoism...
...Maebashi, a crumbling provincial capital near Tokyo, Handa spent just enough time at his little bicycle shop to keep his wife and two children in rice and modest clothes; the rest of his time he fribbled away in an aimless search for a milder spiritual refuge than the stern Shintoism of his ancestors...
Civil liberties were decreed-freedom -of press, speech, worship, assembly. Terroristic secret societies were ferreted out and abolished. The titles of the peerage were removed. Shintoism was dislodged as the state religion, although the people were permitted to practice it privately. The Emperor was reduced from the status of a god to a symbol of the state and of national unity. Streetcars passing the Imperial Palace no longer stopped so that the conductors could get out and bow. Young Prince Akihito might soon be asking his father what it had been like...
...Premier Hideki Tojo, still on trial as a war criminal, got a rather wistful new name, now that he had junked Shintoism for Buddhism. The name, to be chiseled on his tombstone: Eishoin Shakuji Komyoro Koji. Approximate English translation: "By Buddha's grace, all sins committed while living are absolved...