What is Shinto?

In 1947 the United States "disestablished" Shinto, but this was confusing to Japanese people, because Shrine Shinto was never a religion in the first place. Shinto was officially taught as a set of non-religious civil ceremonies similar to saluting the flag in the US. The prewar Japanese government taught this to children in schools and used shrines as non-religious symbols of the country in adult propaganda as well. To accomplish this image of non-religion, since 1882 Shinto priests had been forbidden from preaching, conducting funerals, etc. (The 1882 decision was a political one and many Shinto priests disagreed with it at the time, for complicated reasons, but I don't want to get into that because I'm trying to get us to 2002!)

Why do Japanese elites go to shrines, and why do they become priests, if they are non-religious? With knowledge of that imperfect 1947 decision, we can understand that they do not completely consider it religion, even today. Paying respects at a Shinto shrine does not involve any faith commitment. Even non-elite Shinto priests frequently describe themselves as atheists, but they feel the ritual is necessary to honor the country or their ancestors. It is kind of like dressing up as a Confucian court scholar in order to perform some ancient civil ceremony. It must feel like a very prestigious thing to be able to wear those ancient clothes and honor national ancestors in shrines over a thousand years old, even if Shinto is not the "established" civil ceremony anymore.

What role does Shinto play in politics? This is messy. There is a "Shinto Association for Spiritual Leadership" (Shinseiren), founded in 1969, which is closely tied to the LDP including Abe Shinzo. Their goal is not to declare Shinto the national faith of Japan, but to slowly and gradually make Shinto the common, non-religious basis of civil custom again. They promote "traditional family values," monarchism, and positive images of the nation. Conservative politicians also do things like paying Shinto priests to conduct groundbreaking ceremonies, which the Japanese Supreme Court ruled is not religious because it's a longstanding custom.

If I can step over the 20-year line briefly to answer your specific question about Abe, a major victory for Shinseiren was when Abe hosted the G7 summit in the town of Ise. Ise has nothing to recommend it as a resort location, but it is home to Japan's most important imperial family Shinto shrine, honoring the sun goddess Amaterasu. Abe got world leaders including Obama to visit this shrine, explaining that it was not a religious act. He also used the money from G7 funds to renovate the city a bit, even though they did not ask for this and hadn't even put in a bid for the G7. This sort of symbolic gesture, which dances around the separation of religion and state without questioning it, is meant to keep Shinto normalized and nationally relevant.

The year of Shinseiren's founding, 1969, says a lot about the interests at work. In 1968 many Japanese universities were occupied by Marxist groups, the construction site of Narita Airport became a literal war zone due to militant opposition from students and farmers, and there was widespread feeling that young people were not committed to the preservation of the Japanese state or the future of the imperial household. In 1970, Yasukuni Shrine passed a resolution declaring that it would enshrine war criminals. The chief priest strongly disapproved of this, so it was delayed until after his death in 1978, but after this it became an international issue, polarizing Japanese people on the question of how to remember the war. Shinto successfully swung many ordinary, apolitical Japanese people to the right.

So yes, after the 1970s Shinto priests have often been considered experts on conservative ideology, and prominent elites serve as priests, but there are delicate lines which they cannot cross. Priests only communicate their desires to politicians; they do not run for office themselves, not because it's illegal but because it would be a misuse of their station. The opinion of the Emperor himself is also a very touchy subject, because Hirohito and his son reportedly disapproved of the enshrinement of war criminals and never once visited Yasukuni after 1978.

The question of whether this constitutes a new kind of "State Shinto" is very contested among scholars because State Shinto was never the name of a formal policy in the first place. It refers only to that vague, supposedly non-religious thing that Americans tried to privatize in 1947. Progressive academics often say that the Americans did not go far enough in reorganizing and privatizing shrines. Conservative academics say the Americans were confused and "State Shinto" never existed at all, with shrines indeed being local historical monuments that Americans misunderstood out of cultural difference and religious hostility.