SINGAPORE -- Religion and the state in East Asia have always had a tenuous relationship. But as political and social development accelerate with the accumulation of wealth and a growing middle class, East Asia appears to be ultimately confronting the issue of separating religion from secular politics.
In fact, East Asia may be taking a road similar to Europe's a hundred years back. After Catholic France in 1905 passed a historical law separating church from state, most European countries followed suit. But do recent elections in Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as developments in Japan, presage a real separation?
On April 7 Japan's Fukuoka District Court ruled that a visit by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to Yasukuni Shrine, the memorial to the nation's war dead, was unconstitutional. The ruling has been highlighted as a further move toward separating Shinto from the Japanese state. The principle initially was enacted in postwar Japan when the Emperor and his embodiment of Shinto were constitutionally "separated" from the modern Japanese state, which was fashioned in the image of the Western liberal concept by American Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Koizumi, however, has visited Yasukuni four times since he took office in April 2001.