Sacred Narrative - the political dimensions of Japanese mythology

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Klaus Antoni
• Subject Area: Asian Studies ; Protestant Theology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 398344141

The project's overarching research goal is to critically analyze the reciprocal historical processes of sacralization and desacralization of the Japanese source works Kojiki (712) and Nihonshoki (720). The investigation is methodologically committed to a historical-hermeneutical approach. A detailed text, reception, and contextual analysis will be undertaken to clarify why these two works, with the KiKi mythology they incorporated, played such a fundamental role in the formation of identity discourses in modern and contemporary Japan and to what extent these processes of ascription favored certain strategies of interpretation and excluded others. The premise underlying the project as a whole, according to which texts are not profane or sacred per se, but rather - also in gradual gradation - are sacralized and/or desacralized in an ongoing process, proves to be particularly productive for the Japanese field, especially with regard to the (political) mythology of Japan. Originally written as official scriptures on the legitimation of imperial authority in the early eighth century, these sources experienced a consistent and intentional sacralization in modern and contemporary Japan. Consequently, after the collapse of the concept of sacred rule in 1945, a counteractive desacralization soon took place. The explicit desacralization of rule and the texts on which it was based was now the only prerequisite for guaranteeing the continuity, or rather the survival, of the institutions of the modern imperial system in the postwar period.These general questions will first be examined in detail by means of three exemplary focus areas for the modern, contemporary, and modernist periods in Japan: Focus area 1 (Edo period, 1603-1868) analyzes the critical reinterpretation of the sacredness of the sources already in the pre-modern era: "Ueda Akinari and the debate on the validity of the KiKi mythology" (Louise Neubronner). Focus area 2 (Meiji to early Shōwa period, 1868-1945) examines the genesis of sacralization and ideologization of the KiKi myths in the context of the Meiji Restoration: "The Founding of the Empire as Political Mythology of Japan" (Klaus Antoni). Focus area 3 (Late Shōwa - Time to Present, since 1945) is devoted to the radical counter-movement to sacred mythology in the wake of the Japanese war defeat after 1945: "Depoliticization and Desacralization of the Myths in Popular Media?“ (Julia Dolkovski). In a projected fourth focus area (Reiwa - Present and near future): "Resacralization of the KiKi myths?", conceivable topics will be discussed for a continuation of the work beyond the first funding period.Finally, the findings from the individual studies will be integrated into the joint research question concerning the historical modalities of sacralization and desacralization of the two source works Kojiki and Nihonshoki and their KiKi mythology(s) within the context of the overall project: the sacralization and desacralization of texts.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2828: De/Sacralization of texts