Kume affair

The Kume affair (久米邦武筆禍事件, Kume Kunitake Hikka Jiken) is an academic controversy taking place in Japan, during the Meiji era (1868 – 1912). It concerns the analysis made by the historian Kume Kunitake of historical documents retracing the mythical founding of Japan.

In the edition of October 1891 from the journal Shigaku zasshi, he argues that Shintō is an outdated religious belief; a statement that caused a stir in a country where the ruling power has just established a state Shintoism of which the divine origin of the imperial lineage is one of the founding pillars. Indeed, the republication of Kume's article, the January 25, 1892, in a magazine with a wider readership, sparked a public controversy. Attacked by conservative and religious circles, and unable to count on support in the academic world, the professor at the Tokyo Imperial University is forced to resign.

For historians who have subsequently studied it, this affair is a case of attack on academic freedoms and constitutes one of the main censorship cases of the Meiji era.

Context

Historiographical developments

The constitution adopted by Japan in 1890 is based on a traditional reading of Japanese history. According to this, the emperor is a direct descendant of a first mythical emperor: Jinmu . The latter is said to have founded the country in -660 and is the descendant of the Shintō goddess Amaterasu . All of this mythology is developed in the first Japanese historical work: the Kojiki , which describes this Age of the Gods and which links it to the history of Japan.

Bibliography

• John S. Brownlee, Japanese Historians and the National Myths, 1600-1945: The Age of the Gods and Emperor Jinmu, University of British Columbia Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0774806459, pp. 92–106
• Margaret Mehl, Scholarship and Ideology in Conflict: The Kume Affair, 1892, in Monumenta Nipponica, volum 48, n°3, 1993, pp. 337–357