> I do think their religious beliefs were relevant to policy. The US was very cognizant of this when they demanded the unconditional surrender of Japan. That's

> I do think their religious beliefs were relevant to policy. The US was very cognizant of this when they demanded the unconditional surrender of Japan. That's certainly the Chrysanthemum and the Sword take on it. I'd agree that American conceptions of Japanese religious beliefs influenced American policy. The extent to which emperor-worship was truly inculcated in the population at large is still subject to scholarly debate, but the trend is toward understanding that Japanese internal religious propaganda doesn't necessarily reflect deeply-held cultural beliefs. It's unquestionable that タケヤリで (with bamboo spears) was a thing to an extent and that an invasion of the mainland would have been a clusterfuck, but I personally see it (as described up-thread) as more ascribable to the comprehensive failure of the nation's autocratic elites at holding non-idiotic worldviews, rather than them (or the population at large) being hyper-fanatic State Shintoists.