Religion and secularism in overseas shinto shrines: A case study on hilo daijingū, 1898-1941

Abstract

The United States and Japan both subscribed to secularism as modern nationstates, but the sphere in which Shinto shrines were legally located-religious or secular-differed between them. This article takes Hilo Daijingū, an overseas Shinto shrine in the periphery of Territorial Hawai’i, as a case study to examine how its Japanese community adapted to differing secularisms. This local shrine was largely conceived of and treated in a manner similar to secular shrines in Japan by its Hawai’i-Japanese community, but was also translated into the religious sphere of an American context. The community’s Japanese secular conception of its shrine helped connect the Hawai’i-Japanese in the periphery to the Japanese center and locate them within the Japanese sphere. This legitimized local customs as Japanese rather than foreign and became the framework through which many Hawai’i-Japanese interpreted their reality.