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This chapter studies the nature and degree of Japan's defense preparedness in Kyushu in the summer of 1945. Scholars claim that Japan dramatically expanded its defense forces on Kyushu to anticipate the American invasion. Others argue that the Japanese preparations were far from complete. An entry in the top secret journal of the Imperial General Headquarters Army War Operations Plans Division states, “Overall, there is no determination for the final battle against the United States or in the continent [against the Soviet Union].” The only focus is on protracted withdrawal (jikyu kotai). Far from being only determined to fight the final battle against the United States or the Soviet Union or both, the Imperial General Headquarters attempted “to look beyond” the collapse of Japan's colonial empire.

This chapter examines how secrecy can confer protection against persecution by focusing on the case of Kirishimakō, a covert Shin tradition that developed in southern Kyushu in the Edo period and incorporated Shinto elements of Mt. Kirishima that helped conceal its Shin beliefs and practices. The chapter first considers the wider historical context out of which Kirishimakō grew before discussing its genealogy, organization, texts, and practices to show how secrecy that was initially used for protection led to practices and narratives about Amida distinctive from overt Shin Buddhism. It explains how the new practices and narratives, which grew in a context of concealment, resulted in a new religious identity.

The island of Kyushu has an exceptionally high concentration of documentary and physical evidence of past Six Kannon practice in Japan. The miraculous story of the Six Kannon images that appeared at Six Kannon Lake in the Kirishima Mountains fueled the worship of the cult. The varied cult imagery from Kyushu includes the incised bronze sutra container from Chōanji dated to 1141 that had been buried in a mountain in Kunisaki, to a sixteenth-century set from Chōkyūji made by the Shukuin busshi group of sculptors, to the Fumonji seventeenth-century set that had dual Buddhist-kami identities, which was relocated several times over the centuries between different temples and shrines in the Sagara domain. This chapter’s geographic approach makes clear that the strategy of matching Six Kannon with six kami, or six gongen, was a major driving force for the cult in the region of Kyushu.

This chapter presents two mutinies that broke out at army posts in the large Kyūshū prefectures of Kumamoto and Kagoshima. Both incidents resulted in acts of arson and desertion of thousands of soldiers. The Meiji government attempted to conscript peasants to replace those who deserted the military. However, the government were resisted by peasants who feared their sons would be “naturally influenced by the manners and mores of warriors.” Such episodes illustrate the contradictions at the heart of Japan's establishment of universal military service in 1873. The attempt to create a national conscript army composed of imperial subjects drawn from all sectors of society marked a decisive step toward the modern nation-state the Meiji government was trying to create.

This chapter contests the popular notion that since alternate attendance continued largely unchanged for more than two centuries, the daimyo's performance of them did likewise. The routes taken by individual daimyo to and from Edo could vary for a number of reasons. For instance, the performance of alternate attendance by Tosa involved travel by sea as well as overland; thus, its experience is representative of many domains from Shikoku, Kyushu, and parts of western Honshu. Depending on the route taken, the trip for Tosa's retinue could require one month each way. As a result, daimyo living at some distance from Edo, like the Yamauchi lord, actually spent more time outside their domain than in it.

This concluding chapter asserts that the book's analyses demonstrate that one cannot get a sense of transformations in landownership rights across Japan without conducting regional and local studies and incorporating them into an understanding that accounts for minority as well as majority practices. The scale of minority practice detailed reveals that emphasis on just the largest trends leaves out too much. At minimum, a substantial minority of Japan, up to a third of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu practiced some form of joint village control of arable land. Even within joint landownership, three patterns existed—per capita, per family, and per share.