Abstract
This original research on Restoration Shinto Norito seeks to explain the rhetorical devices used in the composition of a morning prayer ritual text. The nativist scholar, Hirata Atsutane, crafted this ritual to create a Japanese imperial subject with a particular understanding of native identity and national unity, appropriate to the context of a Japan in the shadow of impending modernity and fear of Western domination. The conclusions drawn concerning Hirata’s rhetoric are meant to inform our understanding of the technique and power of the contemporary Japanese morning television viewing ritual used to create post-modern Japanese citizens with an identity and unity appropriate to a global secular context.
Highlights
This article is an attempt to explicate modern Japanese identity by examining in detail a Shinto morning Norito, a prayer ritual that originated in the 19th century just a few decades before the vaunted modernization and Westernization that occurred after American ships forced the opening of Japan in 1854
The following analysis offers a new understanding of the 19th century Japanese religious ritual entitled Maichô shinpai shiki, written by the “national learning”4 scholar, Hirata Atsutane, while it models a method for analyzing the inner workings of one particular Japanese ritual text, which I
Norito composed by Motoori Norinaga years earlier
Summary
This article is an attempt to explicate modern Japanese identity by examining in detail a Shinto morning Norito, a prayer ritual that originated in the 19th century just a few decades before the vaunted modernization and Westernization that occurred after American ships forced the opening of Japan in 1854. More important for this essay’s suggestions about secular ritual concerning NHK in the morning is the 15-minute daily installment of a six-month, approximately 150-episode renzoku terebi shôsetsu, or asadora, that is, a serial morning drama usually featuring the struggles and successes of young women learning how to take on adult roles in a traditional yet changing Japanese society This program began in 1961 and is broadcast from Monday through Saturday at 8:00 to 8:15 every morning, and repeated at. The very devices explained in the following analysis and their functions of producing a Japanese subject, should be informative for comparing and contrasting the devices and the functions of NHK morning television viewing ritual
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