This is a work of history documenting the late 19th- and early 20th-century transformation of State Shinto into a radical ideology that ultimately drove Japan into a holy war against Western civilization.

From constitutional monarchy to absolutist theory -- Hozumi Yatsuka : the religious völkish family-state -- Minobe Tatsukichi : the secularization of politics -- Kita Ikki: a social-democratic critique of absolute monarchy -- The rise of mass nationalism -- Uesugi Shinkichi : the emperor and the masses -- Kakehi Katsuhiko : the Japanese emperor state at the center of the Shintåo cosmology -- Radical Shintåo ultranationalism and its triumph in the early Shåowa period -- Terrorism in the land of the gods -- Orthodoxation of a holy war.