title: The Invention of Religion in Japan
author:  Jason Ananda Josephson 
description: "<em>The</em><em>Invention of Religion in Japan</em> is truly revolutionary. Original, well researched, and engrossing, it overturns basic assumptions in the study of Japanese thought, religion, science, and history....This book will absolutely reshape the field."--Sarah Thal, University of Wisconsin-Madison<br /><br />
zlib_text: ![](images/00001.jpg)
  
  
  # The Invention of a New Religion
  
  
  ### Basil Hall Chamberlain
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
      
  
  Scanned by Peter Evans, peter@despammed.com
  
  
  
  
      
  
  Etext editor's notes: A few diacritical marks have had to be
  
  
  removed, but Chamberlain did not use macrons to represent lengthened
  
  
  vowels. What were footnotes are numbered and moved to the end of
  
  
  the relevant paragraphs.
  
  
  
  
      
  
  THE INVENTION OF A NEW RELIGION
  
  
  BY
  
  
  B. H. CHAMBERLAIN,
  
  
  EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF JAPANESE AND PHILOLOGY AT THE IMPERIAL
  
  
  UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO, JAPAN
  
  
  1912
  
  
  The Invention of a New Religion [1]
  
  
  [Note 1] The writer of this pamphlet could but
  
  
    
  skim over a wide subject. For full information see
  
  
    
  Volume I. of Mr. J. Murdoch's recently-published
  
  
    
  "History of Japan," the only critical work on that
  
  
    
  subject existing in the English language.
  
  
  Voltaire and the other eighteenth-century philosophers, who held
  
  
  religions t