The subject of this volume is the historical development of shintô and national thought in premodern and modern Japan. After examining the first instances of shintô-confucian syncretism in the early Edo period, the author investigates the function of shintô as a religious system to legitimize political power and explores how during the late Edo period this culminates in the concept of a specific Japanese national polity(kokutai).
Though the main caesurae in the process of modern Japanese history (e.g. Meiji restoration and the end of the Pacific War in 1945) play a dominant role in this context, the author points out that the main historical, religious and ideological continuities are of much greater importance; The ideas and concepts elaborated by shintô thinkers during the Edo period became reality in modern Japan.