Nevertheless, if Japan did not have a value system capable of initiating a fundamental breach with the past, it did have the religious and cultural resources necessary to defend its civilization against the West. And it has done that with astonishing success. As noted, modernization in Japan was essentially a defensive strategy. Its first objective was to secure Japan against against Western military aggression, its second was to defend Japan against Western economic aggression. Its ultimate purpose was to defend Japanese civilization against the destruction of its historic values that would most assuredly have ensued if Japan as a nation had been converted to any form of biblical religion. Japan would have been compelled to abandon the gods and ways of its ancestors as surely as had Abraham’s progeny in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. If Japan is not yet the world’s richest nation, it soon will be. Its extraordinary achievements have a meaning, both for Japan and the world, that transcends economic success. There is, for example, the question of whether Japan will become the leading military superpower in the twenty-first century. This writer has discussed that issue elsewhere. Here, we are interested in the cultural and religious rather than the possible military consequences of the Japanese “miracle.” One consequence is already apparent. The majority of Japanese have interpreted their postwar economic and technological achievements as confirming the superiority of their civilization over that of their trading partners and competitors. If ever the Japanese were amenable to conversion to a biblical religion, that time has passed. Recently, the prime minister’s office published a translation of a dialogue between Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and Professor Takeshi Umehara, one of the country’s leading Japanologists. In the course of the dialogue, the prime minister offered the following comment on Japanese religion: The Japanese tend toward polytheism rather than monotheism. We believe in many gods and consider ourselves part of nature’s unending cycle. There is broad and general acceptance of the idea that a man’s fate is inseparable from that of every animal, tree, and blade of grass. Side by side with this is the Indian concept that each man is the whole of nature unto himself–as is evident in Zen philosophy as well. The Japanese combine both of these concepts, oneness with nature and the individual as the whole of nature, within their being. It is my belief, however, that our sense of oneness with nature is indigenous and goes back to our Jomon roots. Japan’s ancestor worship is thus quite different from Christianity’s contract between man and his monotheistic god. In the process of honoring our forefathers, we create the harmony which is such an integral part of our life-style. According to Umehara, Japan’s “Jomon roots” cover a period that preceded the introduction of agriculture and lasted almost 10,000 years, coming to an end about 300 B.C. The prime minister thus asserts that Japan’s religious culture goes back to her earliest roots. This is not a heritage he or any other Japanese is likely to abandon. Nor do all Japanese regard the emperor’s postwar denial of his divinity as having really changed his “divine” status. In a document prepared for the Ninth International Congress for the History of Religions (1958), the Shinto Publications Committee declared, Since the change was merely a change in outward treatment, it is only natural that the Shinto of the imperial House and Shrine Shinto should still be considered orthodox. It is one of the noteworthy peculiarities of Shinto as a religion that, since these types of Shinto are not bound by dogmas and scriptures but preserve their life in traditional form, [insofar] as there is no great impediment in the continuation of the religious rituals, the wounds inflicted by this change are not too deep.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 23:03:23 +0000
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