matsumoto shirõ - buddhism and the kami: against japanism - p. 356

7/31/2019 MATSUMOTO Shir - Buddhism and the Kami: Against Japanism - p. 356

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Buddhism and the Kami

Against Japanism

MAT SUMOTO Shir

T

HE AIM OF THIS SHORT essay is a critique of Japanism (nihonshugi

). Let me begin by noting that the approach I take stands

directly opposed to those who insist on objective and value-freescholarship. My standpoint is subjective and value-laden throughout. In

Science as a Profession,1 Max Weber argued for freedom from values

(Wertfreiheit), held up as the ideal an objective approach that eliminates

subjective value judgments, an ideal in which technical scholarship is

restricted to its own specialization and refrains from excursus into other

elds. This runs directly counter to my own ideal of scholarship, which is

fundamentally subjective and thus forever informed by values.

Weber must be given credit, however, for having touched on the

heart of the matter. As his title makes clear, he felt it necessary to insist on

value-free objectivity in order to distinguish scholarship from other profes-

sions and to establish it as an independent discipline. The problem is thathis denition is tantamount to insisting that the scholar cease to be

human. Nothing is easier for us scholars than to abstract from the fullness

of our humanity and erase from the picture anything that smacks of values

or ideals. Such a perspective is of course welcomed by the social estab-

lishment. Aside from those predisposed to accept the status quo without

question, no group could be more innocuous than a community of schol-

ars who, in the name of objectivity and freedom, have forsworn

themselves against meddling in the status quo. From the start, the retreat

from values supports the values in force, and all too often leads to com-

promising objectivity in order to remain in the good graces of the enforc-

ing powers-that-be. If we ask what is the foremost establishment value in

Japan today, the answer can be put quite simplyJapanism. It is on thistheme, accordingly, that I shall concentrate my comments.

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IMPLICIT JAPANISM

Japanism may be dened roughly as the location of ultimate or absolutevalue in Japan. I further distinguish two forms of Japanism: implicitand pure. By implicit Japanism I mean the direct or indirect gloricationof Japan, independently of whether those who subscribe to it are aware ofthe fact that they are glorifying Japan or not. The theory of a Japanesefolk Buddhism (W[) is a good example of this implicit Japanism.2

I cannot claim to have researched the premises of this theory ade-quately and am even somewhat unsure of how to dene it properly.

Tentatively we may say that the basic idea of folk Buddhist theory is thatBuddhism has been absorbed into the indigenous ethos of Japan and inthe process effected the absolutizing of that ethos. Typical of this

approach is the claim that whatever foreign religious traditions have beenintroduced into Japan, the basis (or original mentality) behind the reli-gious consciousness of the Japanese remains unchanged: a reverence forthe ancestors (memorials for the dead). A concrete example of this gen-eral formulation can be had from the following discussion betweenUmehara Takeshi and Yamamoto Shichihei:

Umehara: And so lately I have begun to question whether or notJapanese Buddhism can be considered real Buddhism.

Yamamoto: Yes, one does start to wonder.

Umehara: Doctrinal matters aside, if we look at what is actually donein the name of Buddhism, it consists mainly of funerals, theO-bon and O-higan festivals for the ancestral spirits, and

other anniversary memorial services. Is there any way thatthis can be considered Buddhism? The most ancient formsof Shinto survive in the north and south of Japan, whichleads one to suspect that the ancient religious ceremoniesof Japan are still preserved among the Ainu or aroundOkinawa. And if we look at their understanding of religion,

what we nd in fact is that it consists entirely ofmemorialservices for the dead.When we die, our ancestors await us inheaven. The spirits of the dead are sent off to heaven, thenreturn at O-bon or O-higan, only to be sent back again. Byand large this is the form of religion that is preserved in thenorth and the south of Japan. In actual practice, then, this is

what Buddhism does. Because doctrine is unimportant to theJapanese, it is assumed that a Buddhist monk need do nothingmore than perform funerals, O-bon services, memorial

BUDDHISM AND THE KAMI

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services, O-higan services and the like. If this is so, I am not

sure that these ceremonies can really be called Buddhist somuch as pre-Buddhist Shinto.3

The above exchange shows that the theory of folk Buddhism is one ofthe main pillars of support for the kind of Japanology (Nihongaku) that Umehara espouses. Umeharas words also typify the folk

Buddhist position that, in general, Buddhist doctrine is of no value or atbest only of formal value, thereby uncritically absolutizing the base of reli-gious consciousness shared by the Japanese masses. In this way, theidea of ancestor worship seems to be revered without qualication.

Although this way of thinking dominates current research in Japanese folkstudies and cultural anthropology, the warning of the historian KurodaToshio is very much to the point:

Most importantly, as long as this sort of (perverted) perception is takenas a self-evident truth, the connection between right-wing Shinto ideol-ogy and the folk studies and cultural anthropology that support it canonly grow stronger.4

In other words, while on the surface these disciplines advocate objectivityand freedom from value judgments, the reality is that their idea of aJapanese folk Buddhism puts their work at the service and support of estab-lishment values. Such is the invariable fate of all value-free theories.

As the distinction between implicit and pure Japanism implies, I takethe ethnocentrism of the former to be of an impure sort, and in thisregard I offer the Japanology of Umehara as a prime example. From

beneath the utter of the monks robes the glint of polished armor quicklycatches the eye. While robing himself outwardly in a critique of NationalStudies (kokugaku) that espouses an objective, value-free, many-faceted, multilayered, global approach to Japanese research,5 next to theskin he wears the heavy plated armor of belief in the superiority of theJapanese race. In a discussion between then Prime Minister Nakasoneand Umehara, Nakasone summed up his understanding of Umeharasideas: The original character of Japanese culture, the most ancient in the

world, is still fully present in the Japan of today, and it is that to whichboth Buddhism and Confucianism have been adapted. Umehara agreedentirely with the characterization. Even though no mention is made ofthe superiority of the Japanese race, the context in which these words

were spoken, and repeated almost verbatim, establishes it as a clearassumption:

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Nakasone: You have written that the basis of Japanese culture was

formed before the Yamato court, in the time of the Jmonperiod, prior to the introduction of agricultural cultivation.In Japan we have excavated earthenware that is twelve thou-sand years old, theoldest in the world. This is four-thousand

years older than the oldest earthenware discovered in Meso-potamia, the so-called birthplace of civilization. The originalshape of that culture is still entirely alive in todays Japan, and

both Buddhism and Confucianism have adapted to it. Theframework of the Jmon period lived on in the midst of theseforeign cultures or ideas, and took them in. In other words,

you are saying that Buddhism and Confucianism did noteffect any great changes in Japan. Have I caught your sense?

Umehara: When I was thirty-ve years old I began to question whetherEuropean philosophy was enough, and realized that a won-derful philosophy was hidden right beneath my feet. Fromthat time on I changed directions and have spent twenty-ve

years since studying Japan. My conclusion from these twenty-ve years, as the Prime Minister has just said, is that after all issaid and done, Japanese culture is indeed a most ancient culture.6

Likewise, in his Speech on Intellectual Standards (22 September

1986) Prime Minister Nakasone again referred to the oldest earthenware

in the world, as the spiritual structure of our ancestors from the Jmon

period. In any case the oldest earthenware in the world has been dis-

covered in Japan. The discovery of earthenware from twelve-thousand

years ago proves just how old the history of this country is.7What makes

it possible for him to draw a straight line from the presence of the worlds

oldest earthenware remains to the great age of Japanese culture and his-

tory is nothing other than his conviction of the superiority of the

Japanese race.

It was in this speech, it will be recalled, that Nakasone laid the blame

for Americas educational problems on the countrys Afro-Americans. But

the real underlying problem with his remarks is not so much the open insult

as the fact that it was premised on his conviction of Japanese superiority.

As a Buddhist, I opposed the establishment of Umeharas International

Research Center for Japanese Studies on the grounds that it is no more

than a faade for the promotion of ideas of cultural supremacy, which ofcourse devalues all foreign religions, including Buddhism.8


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Umeharas view that Buddhism consists in the doctrine oftathgata-

garbha,9 the attainment of Buddhahood by mountains, rivers, grasses,and trees ([u[), and Prince Shtokus teaching of harmo-

ny (wa) is well known. What is often forgotten is just how much this

very philosophy of harmony was touted in wartime Japan. I would cite,

by way of example, the following remark from the same dialogue cited

above:

Another thing is the Japanese attitude towards nature. I mean, we havealways protected nature because we have managed to preserve intactfrom our days as hunters an understanding of nature according to whichmountains, rivers, grasses, and trees all attain Buddhahood. We needto resurrect this unique characteristic.10

Note also the following comment of Prime Minister Nakasone:

We Japanese are not monotheists. We go through a cycle that draws usinto the world of polytheism, being born into Nature and returning toNature at death. The mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees are our broth-ers: this is the origin of the notion that mountains, rivers, grasses, andtrees all attain Buddhahood. In a larger sense, however, the idea thatmountains, rivers, grasses, and trees all attain Buddhahood belongsless to Buddhism than it does to a transmission of the Japanese peopledating from the Jmon period.11

Obviously Umehara and Nakasone are in complete agreement, and

the point on which that agreement pivots is the conviction that the idea

that mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees all attain Buddhahood ispraiseworthy not for being Buddhist but for representing a traditional and

uniquely Japanese worldview or understanding of nature that has persisted

from the ancient Japanese days as hunters or the Jmon period. This

is entirely coincident with Umeharas claim that doctrine is unimportant

for the Japanese. In his Speech on Intellectual Standards, Prime Minister

Nakasone again alluded to the idea of all of nature attaining Buddha-

hood, but made himself look rather ridiculous by quoting Dgen to the

effect that grasses, trees, and the land (F) all attain Buddhahood.12

He had also cited this passage earlier in a policy speech to the Diet on 27

January 1986, which makes me wonder just how happy Buddhists, and in

particular St Zen Buddhists, can be with this sort of attention.13

Similarly, there are many examples of Umeharas lauding the philoso-phy of harmony (wa) inscribed in the Seventeen-Article Constitution.14

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As a concrete example of emphasis on this philosophy in wartime Japan,

we may cite the Kokutai no hongiu (Cardinal Principles of theNational Entity of Japan). The signicance of this work, compiled and

published in March 1937 immediately after the controversy over whetherthe role of the emperor transcended the state or was simply an organ of the

state (February 1935) and the February 26th Incident (FebruaryMarch

1936), is well known. By explicitly rejecting the idea that the emperor

was simply a functionary of the state and conrming the ideology of a

divine nation, the aim was to mobilize popular sentiment for nationalpurposesthe most important of which was to prepare for full-scale war.

The rst chapter of the Kokutai no hongi includes a section on

Harmony and Truth in which the ideology of harmony is spelled out.

The Lu-kou-chiao Incident took place in July of 1937 (the year that the

Kokutai no hongiwas published), provoking Japan to invade China and

launch itself into an all-out war of aggression. This, together with thelater Nanking Incident (December 1937), reveals the true character and

historical reality of the philosophy of harmony taught in the text. It

seems apropos of the discussion here to cite from this rather lengthy

workwhich, in its entirety, ought to be considered required reading for

all Buddhists in Japanin order to get a clearer idea of the sort of har-

mony it was advocating:

When we trace the marks of the facts of the founding of our country andthe progress of our history, what we always nd there is the spirit of har-mony. Harmony is a product of the great achievements of the founding

of the nation, and is the power behind our historical growth; while it isalso a humanitarian Way inseparable from our daily lives. The spirit ofharmony is built on the concord of all things[lit., the fusion of all things].

When people determinedly count themselves as masters and assert theiregos, there is nothing but contradictions and the setting of one againstthe other; and harmony is not begotten. In individualism it is possible tohave cooperation, compromise, sacrice, etc., so as to regulate and miti-gate this contradiction and the setting of one against the other; but afterall there exists no true harmony.

Harmony as of our nation is not a mechanical concert of independentindividuals of the same level that has its starting point in (cold) knowl-edge [lit., reason], but a great harmony that holds itself together by havingthe parts within the whole through actions that t the parts with all thingshaving their characteristics, mutually different and yet manifesting their

[individual] characteristics, that is, manifesting the essential qualities[lit.


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essential nature] through the parts that thus harmonize with the

monastic world[sic; lit., monistic world, world of one truth: ichinyo nosekaisu]. That is, harmony as in our nation is a great harmony ofindividuals who, by giving play to their [individual] characteristics, andthrough difculties, toil and labor, converge into one. Because of [indi-vidual] characteristics and difculties, this harmony becomes all the greaterand its substance rich. Again, in this way individualities are developed,and special characteristics become beautiful and at the same time evenenhance the development and well-being of the whole. 15

Here we see the basic premise of the philosophy of harmony. The

passages I have italicized strike me personally as a statement of Hua-yenphilosophy, but in any event there is no other word that sums up the base

ideology than totalitarianism. No reason for the existence of the many

elements that make up the whole is allowed other than that they consoli-date the whole into a single unity. In effect, what is demanded of each

element is simply that it eliminate the self and return to the one or

extinguish the self to serve the public. More conventionally, the idea of

fullling ones destiny is laid out as follows:

Going a step further, this harmony must also be made to materialize incommunal life. Those serving in Government ofces as well as those

working in rms must[all]follow this Way of harmony. In each commu-nity there are those who take the upper places while there are those who

work below them. Through each one fullling his portion is the harmony ofa community obtained. To fulll ones part means to do ones appointedtask with the utmost faithfulness, each in his own sphere; and by thismeans do those above receive help from inferiors, and inferiors are lovedby superiors; and in working together harmoniously is beautiful concordmanifested and creative work carried out.16

That this way of thinking was not restricted to the militarist extrem-

ists can be seen from comments made by Nishida Kitar in a public lecture

on philosophy sponsored by the Japan Committee for the Promotion of

the Sciences in October of 1937, the very year that the Kokutai no hongi

was issued. Japan, he announced, has preserved in all things its self-

identitywith the Imperial Family as the center. At the same meeting,

Takakusu Junjir also commented:

Our nation, from the time of its founding, has been totalitarian. Wehave preserved that totalitarianism until today. One needs to fullycomprehend the Kegon (Hua-yen) truth, with everything in perfect

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order, and should expect to devote oneself to public service with not a

speck of self remaining. I long to see everybody forget their selves, dis-carding their selves in order to countenance the affairs of the nation.17

Returning to the Kokutai no hongi, we see that the main accent is put

on an extreme nationalism:

The spirit of self-effacement is not a mere denial of oneself, but meansliving to the great, true self by denying ones small self. Individuals areessentially not beings isolated from the State, but each has his allottedshare asforming parts of the State. And because they form parts, they con-stantly and intrinsically unite themselves with the State; and it is this thatgives birth to the spirit of self-effacement.18

That even the principle of harmony is bent to the service of

afrming war becomes clear in the following passage:And this harmony is clearly seen also in our nations martial spiritonthe occasion of the Emperor Jinmus august expedition to the East mar-tial spirit was exercised. But this martial spirit is not(a thing that exists)for the sake of itself but for the sake of peace[lit., harmony], and is whatmay be called a sacred martial spirit. Our martial spirit does not have forits objective the killing of men, but the giving of life to men. This martialspirit is that which tries to give life to all things, it is not that whichdestroys. That is to say, it is a strife that has peace [lit., harmony] as itsbasis with a promise to raise and to develop; and it gives life to thingsthrough its strife. Here lies the martial spirit of our nation. War, in thissense, is not by any means intended for the destruction, overpowering,

or subjugation of others; and it should be a thing for the bringing aboutof great harmony[], that is, peace, doing the work of creation by fol-lowing the Way.19

Such is the real nature of the philosophy of harmony. Not surpris-

ingly, the Kokutai no hongiquotes the rst clause of Prince Shtokus

Seventeen-Article Constitution in full as the authoritative proof of its

philosophy of harmony. As the above citations make patent, the totali-

tarian and nationalistic understanding of august harmony in the rst

clause cannot be dismissed as mere misinterpretation. As Hakamaya noted

in his essay Thoughts on the Ideological Background of Social Discrimi-

nation, the Seventeen-Article Constitution itself is totalitarian and

nationalistic and in no sense can be said to teach religion.

So nowadays we have Prime Minister Nakasone and scholar UmeharaTakeshi singing the praises of the uniquely Japanesephilosophy of har-


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mony. Just how different their claims are from the claims of the Kokutai

no hongithat a mere fty years ago were made to support militarism andplunge Japan into disaster is a question the readerparticularly, theBuddhist readeris best left to ponder alone. Let me offer only the fol-lowing summary. The Kokutai no hongi, by not rejecting Buddhism in itsentirety as a foreign religion, represents a form of implicit Japanesenationalism, as do the claims of Prime Minister Nakasone and Umehara

Takeshi who insist that Buddhism was adapted to the Japanese spirit. Itis this idea of adaptationor perhaps better put, of homogenizationthat I nd so treacherous because it puts the full weight on the side of theJapanese spirit and relegates Buddhism to a position of insignicance.This is how the Japanese spirit became absolutized. Of course, the reason

this kind of nationalism is always kept implicit is that its proponents allbelong to the establishment, and the establishment, of course, can neveropenly espouse pure Japanism. This makes it all the more more dangerous.

CRITIQUE OF PURE JAPANISM

Let us move on to a critique of pure Japanism, which I dene as theidea that Japan as such is a thing of absolute value. As representatives ofthis position I would like to single out Kawabata Yasunari, Motoori

Norinaga, and Mishima Yukio.

The Japanism of Kawabatas Aesthetic Optimism

Of the three representatives of pure Japanism, Kawabatas Japanism is theone I feel the strongest aversion to naming pure. But the fact is, hisbrand of aesthetic and optimistic Japanism and glorication of nature is soregularly lifted up as a model by optimistic Japanese intellectuals, that Ihave no choice but to bring it up for question. In his Nobel Prize speech,

Japan the Beautiful and Myself, Kawabata had the following to sayabout the uniqueness of the Japanese spirit:

Seeing the moon, I become the moon, and the moon seen by mebecomes me. I sink into nature and become one with nature. . . [the Zendisciple] enters a state of impassivity, with no thought and no conception.He loses the self and enters the realm of nothingness. This is not the noth-ingness or the emptiness of the West. It is rather the reverse, a universe ofthe spirit of an inexhaustible treasury, an emptiness in which everythingcommunicates freely with everything, transcending bounds, limitless.

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There are of course masters of Zen, and the disciple is brought toward

enlightenment by exchanging questions and answers with his master, andhe studies the scriptures. The disciple must, however, always be lord ofhis own thoughts, and must attain enlightenment through his ownefforts. And the emphasis is less upon reason and argument than upon intu-ition, immediate feeling. Enlightenment comes not from the teaching ofothers but through the eye awakened inwardly. Truth is in the discardingof words, it is independent of language.20

Glorifying the beauty of Japanese nature, and taking the uniqueness

of the Japanese spirit to be sinking into nature or becoming one with

nature is an ethos found in wartime Japan as well. For example, the

attempt to locate the uniqueness of the Japanese spirit in a unity or har-

mony with nature that contrasts with the Western conquest of nature

had earlier been laid out in the Kokutai no hongi:

Again, this harmony is also seen in the intimate relationship betweenman and nature. Our country is surrounded by the sea, excels in moun-tains, (is blessed with) limpid waters and with (happy) changes in thefour seasons, and has natural features not found in other countries. Thesebeautiful natural features were brought to birth by the heavenly deitiestogether with the (many) deities; and though they be things on whichone may set ones affection they are (certainly) not objects of fear. It ishere that our national trait to love nature is begotten and the harmonybetween man and nature is established. India, for instance, is overpow-ered by her natural features, and in the Occident one senses the subjuga-tion of nature by man, and there is not found a deep harmony betweenman and nature as in our country. On the contrary, our people are in con-stant harmony with nature.21

If we seek a Buddhist background to this ethos of harmony with

nature, there is no better place to begin than with the notion that moun-

tains, rivers, grasses, and trees all attain Buddhahood (so lauded by

Umehara), or the common understanding of the Tendai doctrine of orig-

inal enlightenment, which provides the undergirding and is assumed to

be the culmination of Mahayana Buddhist thought.22 This way of think-

ing has also been taken to be representative of Zen Buddhism, as can

be seen from Kawabatas use of such phrases as no thought and no con-

ception ([[o), direct intuition (?) or nonreliance on lan-

guage (#Ck). All of these ideas are based on the doctrines oftathgata-garbhaand original enlightenment and as such all can also be


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counted among the objects of the criticism of the doctrine oftathgata-

garbha. (In this connection, Kamalalas critique of Chinese Zen in theSamye debate that took place in eighth-century Tibet is still worthy ofattention.) To put it simply, if somewhat idiosyncratically, it all comesdown to whether or not being a rock, which in the true sense of the termhas no thought and no conception, is preferable to being a human.

The Japanism of Motoori Norinaga

Next I would like to turn to the Japanism of Motoori Norinaga, a thinkerwhothrough the graces of Hirata Atsutanehas had considerable inu-ence on later generations, and whose impact has extended to the politicalrealm as well. Let us consider here opposing estimations of Norinaga

offered by Kobayashi Hideo and Hakamaya Noriaki.Although Kobayashi himself took the posture of defending the valueof thought in his famous debate with Masamune Hakuch, in fact hedevalued it by praising Norinaga for having kept the real life of the rstoor apart from the thought of the second oor by removing the stair-

way between the two.23 Hakamaya countered by drawing attention toNorinagas praise of the Confucian scholar Dazai Shundai (who rejectedShinto) as a true Confucian, thus demonstrating that the true characterof Norinagas thought does not entail a separation of the intellectual lifefrom real life.24

According to Hakamaya, not only did Norinaga oppose the idea oforiginal enlightenment, but he was one of those rare thinkers able to

see deeply into the importance of language. On both counts, Hakamayaasserts, he is comparable to Dgen.25 I nd this correct as far as originalenlightenment goes, but must say I was surprised by what I found whenI actually dived into Norinagas work. What he had to say about the wayof the gods and the emperor system not only shows no intellectual beliefin the importance of language, it also sinks to the level of mere naturalismand pragmatism. Consider the following passage expressing his worshipof the idea of the natural, the of-it-selfness (onozukara) to which no

wisdom (sakashira) need be added, and its concomitant rejection, if notoutright denigration, of language:26

Since our honourable country is called Kamunagara Yasukuni, the divineland ruled in peace, we do well to recall what is written in the NihonShokiin the chapter Naniwa no nagarano mikado concerning the termkamunagara. It is said that in following the way of the kami, he [the

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emperor] himself becomes the way of the kami. To follow the way of the

kami means that his way of ruling this world is to rule it the way it hasbeen done since the age of the kami, without the addition of any humanwisdom. In this way, by calmly ruling the world as it had been ruled sincethe age of the gods, the way of the kami functions naturally and of itself,making it unnecessary to seek anything outside of it. It has itself becomethe way of the gods. And so when we speak of our current deity [theemperor] or the Great Land of Eight Islands, it means that the reignof the emperors down through the ages has become the reign of thegods. This is also the sense in which the word kamunagarais used inpoetry like the Manysh. And in fact this is what the people of Chinameant when they called our country the land of the gods. In ancienttimes, no one even spoke in terms of a way.Our country was then simplythe country where everything conforms to the gods and nothing wasexpressed in language.27

But it was the following passage that sealed my view on the matter once

and for all:

As we all were born of the spirit of the gods (musubi no kami no mitamachPuf), we know by nature all that needs to be done in life andso do it. By virtue of the spirit of the gods, then, what is to be done isknown to all things that live in the world, including birds and insects,each in its own way, and so it is done. Among living things, humanbeings were born superior, and in accord with that superioritythey knowwhatever they should know and do what they are supposed to do, so why is

there any need to force them beyond that?If human beings were not able to

know or act without being taught, then they would be inferior to eventhe birds and insects. Goodness, righteousness, ritual propriety, humility,lial piety, brotherhood, loyalty, trustworthiness, and the like are allthings that human beings are supposed to do. As long as these are thethings that they are supposed to do, they will know it by nature and will do

it well even without relying on such teachings. The Way of the Sages wasfashioned with the aim of forcing order on a country that was difcult torule. This went beyond the limits of what human beings should be, sothat the things that were forced on them and strictly taught are not theTrue Way.28

Here, Norinaga is saying that there is no need to force human beings

to do more than what comes naturally, because by nature they are already

disposed to do what needs to be done. Since [human beings] naturallydo as much as they ought, why do we have to force them to do more?


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On reading these lines, the image of the crucix of the Japanese Kiri-

shitanmartyrs came to mind, and I thought to myself, How foolish itwould seem to Norinaga that one should die for ones beliefs! As is always

the case with a naturalist, he was too much the optimist and pragmatist

to imagine him putting his life on the lineeven for the way of the

kami that he extols in Naobinomitama.

I am not sure, in the end, whether it makes sense or not to think of

ideals or ideas as realizable in actuality. But insofar as those ideals are

pragmatic and given to compromise, surely they no longer qualify as

ideals. Insofar as Norinaga looked down on the intellectual life, he

tended towards naturalism, a tendency that, through Atsutane, was to

become more pronounced as time went on.

The Pure Japanism of Mishima Yukio

Finally, I would turn to Mishima Yukio, whose death is already more than

fteen years behind us and to whom I feel I should pay my respects as a

truly pure Japanistby which I mean idealistically and intellectually pure.

Mishimas intense intellectual commitment to Japanism is apparent in the

level of consistency he achieved between what he thought and what he

did. For him, Japan was an absolute value, so much so that he could not

conceive of his own existence without Japan or of Japan without the

emperor, the logical consequence of which was that without the emperor

he himself did not exist.

Set against the backdrop of Kobayashi Hideos pragmatic Japanism,Mishimas purity shines all the more brightly. Once in 1970 when elding

questions in a meeting with students, Kobayashi was asked about the

emperor. He began his response by rst making it clear that he was not

making political statements, and only then went on to laud the emperors

virtues.29 This sort of guarded commitment is the polar opposite of what

we see in Mishima, particularly in his nal years. Even before people he

did not know, Mishima would begin his talks with the shout, Long live

the emperor! There is more involved here than simply a difference

between an ethos for life and an ethos for death. It is a matter of a

fundamental difference in the purity of convictions.

Mishima had the following to say in a debate with the young revolu-tionaries of the Students Movement at Tokyo University in May of 1969:

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Its okay if things dont work out. I am Japanese. I was born Japanese

and I will die Japanese, and that is all right with me. I have no desirewhatsoever to remove these limits.

I cannot take away from myself the fact that I have Japanese national-ity. I am convinced that this is my destiny.30

I cannot read these words without being moved, so much am I struck bythe earnestness with which Mishima faced an audience, most of it twenty

years his junior and more, and expressed his real feelings candidly. I ndthis a most eloquent, even beautiful, expression of Japanism.

What made Mishima so fanatic about Japan? This is a question thathas pestered me since I began to read his works a few weeks ago. The ini-tial stimulus came from the remarks of a friend that among Japanese

writers only Akutagawa Rynosuke and Mishima Yukio were able toprove the existence of the external world.31 The words rather took meaback. Taking external world in the sense of the bhyrthathat themind-only school of Buddhist philosophy rejected, I understood theremark to mean that most of the time we are so immersed in the world ofself-identity within our own mind that there is no way for us to reach thepure or absolute other of external objects. But Mishima Yukio, throughaction (`), was able to break out of the literary world of self-identity(|s). In any case, I was driven to seek in Mishimas works an answerto the roots of his extreme Japanism, and was particularly struck by phraseslike cultural continuity and temporal continuity in his essay InDefense of Culture.32

On the surface, the idea of cultural continuity seems to provide thekey to Mishimas Japanism, but at the same time it looks to be the sameas the self-identity that I would have expected him to reject. Iftathgata-garbhathought is a philosophy of identity, then the theory ofmind-only is a philosophy of self-identity.33 Unlike mere identity, self-identity somehow brings temporality into the picture; that is, it suggeststhe possibility of a self-enclosed past. Nowadays it is the fashion amongJapanists to wave the ag of the racial identity of the Japanese people,34

but Mishima was less attracted to this kind of optimistic identity thanto the pessimism of continuity. Indeed, he would even use the ordi-nary word time to refer to this idea of temporal continuity, as we seein the following:

The base of a people, the mentality of the Japanese, has persistedthis isthe problem of time that I have been talking about. The Japanese who


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have learned to give shape to space are the new Japanese like all of you.

But the country is still full of Japanese who live within time. These are theJapanese who cannot nd a way to make sense of space.35

The unity of meaning between the time of the above passage andthe self-enclosed time of the mind-only school is well attested in his nal

work, the Sea of Fertilitytetralogy. The beginning and end of the workread like a Yogacara sermon on mind-only, and there are portions thatcan even be called technical explanations of the theory of the storehouseconsciousness (layavijna), all of which indicate just how deeply

Mishima was involved with Yogacara thought. Mishima rightly called thiswork a tale of dreams and reincarnations, for surely nothing is moresuited to Yogacara idealism than dreams and transmigration.

The question I began with, however, had to do with how Mishimaviewed the existence of the external world of objects. In the end, I cameto the conclusion that Mishima must have had a total aversion to the

Yogacara world of self-identity. His distaste for transmigration wasstronger than most, and he was always preoccupied with breaking out ofthe mind-only world of the writer:

Everything abominationdebauchery, death, madness, pestilence,destruction. How was it that such things could so entice the heart andallure the soul outward. Why did souls have to exit, discarding easy,dark, and quiet dwellings? Why was it that the human heart rejected tran-quil inertness?

That was what happened in history and with individuals. If men did

not do thus, it was because they surely felt that they could not touch thewholeness of the universe. Inebriated, disheveled, tearing their clothes,and exposing their genitals, blood dripping from the raw esh in theirmouthsby such actions, they must have felt they could scratch the sur-face of that wholeness.36

Mishima nally tore himself away from the world of mind-onlythrough the act of suicide, but I hardly think this was intended to conrmthe existence of the external world. Indeed, if it demonstrated anything, it

was the non-existenceof the external world, in the sense that the only

thing he could envision outside of the realm of his own mind was death.This is why he can be thought of as a consummate Yogacarin. ForMishima the external object, that is, the pure other, was always death,

and the encounter with that pure other was the fundamental force dri-ving his thought.

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Mishima Yukio demonstrated with his own lifeor rather, with the

ending of his own lifethat pure Japanism is necessarily a philosophy ofdeath. The truth of that proposition (which I nd to be true without

exception) is in no way contradicted by the fact that the underlying moti-

vation of his thought was not pure Japanism at all but rather a philosophy

of death. In other words, because he understood the truth of that statement,

he made himself into a pure Japanist in order to bring himself to death:

This temper, further distilled and puried, formed Isaos world, one

Honda had not shared with him in his younger days, one he had

observed only as an outsider. Noting how Isaos youthful Japanese mind,

struggling in absolute isolation, had destroyed itself, Honda could not

but realize that what had permitted him to live the way he had was thestrength of Western thought, imported from the outside. Unfertilized

thinking[about uniqueness] brings death.37

If one wished to live, one must not cling to purity, as Isao had done.

One must not cut oneself off from all channels of retreat; one must not

reject everything.

Nothing had ever forced Honda to probe the question of an unadul-

terated[pure]Japanmore deeply than had Isaos death. Was there any

way to live honestly with Japan other than by rejecting everything, than

by rejecting present-day Japan and the Japanese people? Was there no

other way of living than this most difcult one, in which ultimately one

murdered and then committed suicide? Everyone was afraid to say, but

had not Isao given proof by his acts?38

Mishima saw that in order to be really pure, one had to let go of life

(an idea that should please Kobayashi Hideo). This impression is corrob-

orated by the fact that Mishimas Japanism was more intense in his later

life than during the war years, although already in wartime he had

become fascinated with the philosophy of death.

In any case, the rare coincidence of thought and action we see in

Mishima Yukio produced a Japanism of the highest purity, a purity whose

end demonstrates more clearly than any mere argument can that pure

Japanism is a philosophy of death. As a Buddhist, I stand opposed to any

and all philosophies of death, and must therefore renounce pure Japanismin its entirety.


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OPPOSITION TO JAPANISM

In conclusion, I should like briey to clarify my own position concerning

Japan. Somehow I cannot sympathize with the position of no-Japanism

([), a rather odd phrase that I take to mean the notion that

Japan does not actually exist or that there is no entity that actually corre-

sponds to the word Japan. Montesquieu is reported to have said that,

I am of necessity a human being, but it is by accident that I happen to be

a Frenchman.39 I nd this ippant in comparison with Mishimas asser-

tion that being Japanese was his destiny, or with what Uchimura Kanz

wrote in his diary on 11 August 1921: I have a desire to someday cease

being a Christian and become a pure Japanese. Such words have a reli-

gious ring to them.40

I nd myself in sympathy with the following passage from the writ-ings of Hori Tatsuo, which seems to me the perfect response to the ques-

tion of Buddhism and the Kami:

Perhaps it is because of all of the ancient remainsthe temples or oldpagodasin this area known from of old as Ikaruga no sato, but the sur-roundings have the air of something out of time immemorial. Overthere, centered on Yumedono, was where Umayado no miko [PrinceShtoku] lived, whose sincere contemplation, perhaps unwittingly and

without his ever realizing it, deeply inspired everything around him. Andso, as the surrounding mountains and forests were at an ever-increasingpace awakened from their primeval slumber, the numberless small kamithat dwelled thereinwere driven out, and the hearts of the villagers who

had gazed morning and night on those mountains and those forestsgradually calmed down and they were led to drink deeply of thejoy of life.

It would probably take two or three years of study, but I should like towrite a story telling of the mournful parting of those numberless kami asthey set forth on their journey of exile to faraway lands as the new reli-gion of Buddhism was transmitted to Japan and gradually came toreplace them. I would choose a young nobleman for the main characterand would have him feel profound sympathy for the banished kami; buteven in his longing, he would be awakened to the new faith. Would thatnot make a ne tale?41

Mishima was envious of Hori Tatsuos ability to write such exquisite

prose effortlessly, but he was not particularly arrested by this passage or its

message. Horis words are a farewell, overowing with love and devotionfor Japan, spoken from the viewpoint of the new religion. In it he makes

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a contrast between Buddhism as a philosophy of life and pure Japanism as

a philosophy of death. The notion that the ancient Japanese view of lifewas optimistic and only turned pessimistic with the introduction ofBuddhism is nonsense propagated by people who know not the rst thingabout the meaning of religion. In fact, the ancient Japanese had noground for any kind of hope. Their lives were spent in the frightened butstoic anticipation of death and the journey to the dreaded land of dark-ness (yomi no kuni). Their rst hope for life, the rst conviction of resur-rection in the next world, came through the encounter with Buddhism.

As for my personal relationship with Japan, I can only say that I con-sider love of Japan to be a form of self-love. I experience Japan as anextension of my own mind and body; just as I love my own body, so do Ilove Japan. Self-love, narcissism, is sweet and enticing, easy to fall into

and hard to climb out of. Love, on the other hand, is rooted not in theself but in the other. If it is directed to the self, it is not love but mere self-attachment.

The Buddhist teaching of no-self leads to the two conclusions:

1. One should detest oneself.

2. One should love only the absolute other (God or Buddha).

As a Buddhist who follows the doctrine of no-self, I must never get to thepoint of loving Japan as an extension of my own physical self. Although Ibelieve that I ought not love myself, the fact is that I most certainly do;and even though I believe that I ought not love Japan, I nd I cannotavoid it. Still, the teaching of the Buddha is absolute, which leaves me noother choice than to conclude:A Buddhist must not love Japan.

[Translated by Jamie Hubbard]


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matsumoto shirõ - buddhism and the kami: against japanism - p. 356

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