mobilize 復習

伊勢志摩サミットを控えている安倍首相が、２５日伊勢神宮に参拝しました。２６日には、G-7首脳は安倍首相の案内のもとに参拝をする予定です。

Abe visits Shinto holy site before G-7 summit

ISE —Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday made a pilgrimage to the Ise Grand Shrine, the holiest site in Japan’s Shinto religion, a day before he hosts a Group of Seven (G-7) summit nearby.

Abe is expected to escort other G-7 leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama to the expansive grounds of the shrine in central Japan on Thursday before they gather for the two-day annual meeting.

Abe, who like other Japanese leaders pays his respects at the shrine every January to mark the new year, has said the grounds are a good place to get a sense of the true Japanese spirit and culture.

Japanese wartime leaders used state Shinto ideology to mobilise the masses to fight World War Two in the name of a divine emperor, but Japan’s post-war constitution established the separation of church and state.

Abe sparked outrage in China and South Korea for his December 2013 visit to Yasukuni Shrine for war dead in Tokyo, seen in those neighboring countries as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism.

Far less attention was paid to what some see as his equally symbolic participation in October that year in a ceremony at Ise Shrine.

The ritual is held every 20 years, when Ise Shrine is rebuilt and sacred objects representing the emperor’s mythical Sun Goddess ancestress are moved to a new shrine on the same grounds.

Abe became only the second prime minister to take part in the centuries-old ritual, and the first since World War Two, drawing attention to a conservative base that wants him to steer the nation back toward a traditional ethos mixing Shinto myth, patriotism and pride in an ancient imperial line.

“He’s making these associations between his administration and sacred sites,” said John Breen, a professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto. “Ise is particularly important to him.”

The shrine is made up of two main sets of buildings, the Inner and Outer Shrines. Abe will show the G-7 leaders the Inner Shrine, dedicated to sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami.

Ordinary citizens can only view the buildings, said to hold religious articles such as a sacred mirror, from behind fences that leave only the rooftops visible.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/abe-visits-shinto-holy-site-before-g-7-summit

今回注目した表現は、“mobilise”です。『ウィズダム英和辞典』(第３版、三省堂)には“mobilize”という綴りで載っていたので「英辞郎 on the WEB：アルク」で確認したところ、どちらの綴りでも可能だそうです。意味としては、１.「〈人・物〉を結集する、集める」２.「〈軍隊など〉を動員する；〈産業など〉を戦時体制にする」３.「〈体の一部など〉を自由に動けるようにする」とありました(『ウィズダム英和辞典』)。今回は２の意味で用いられています。

Macmillan Dictionary.comでは、“if an army or large group of police officers mobilize, or if a government mobilizes them, they prepare to do something such as fight a war”と定義されていました。

今回の“mobilise the masses to fight World War Two”の箇所は、「第二次世界大戦を戦うために、多数の国（皇）民を動員した」などと解釈できると思います。(Blue Sky)