Kume affair

The Kume affair (久米邦武筆禍事件, Kume Kunitake Hikka Jiken) refers to the controversial forced resignation of Kume Kunitake from the University of Tokyo in Japan during the Meiji Era (1868 - 1912). The controversy was centered around Kunitake's analysis of historic documents retracing the mythological foundation of Japan. In the October 1891 edition of Shigaku zasshi, he argued that Shinto is an outdated religious belief; an assertion that shook the Meiji establishment, whose State Shinto was based in the divine origin of the emperor.

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

• Japan portal