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December 16, 2009

The earth is polytheistic? !

There goes “Jingle Bells” in town. I know this does not hold true with everyone, but I suppose the religious concept of shrine is out of mind from most of Japanese people. Nevertheless, when the temple bells ring on New Year’s Eve, the majority of people in this country are moved in their minds. Buddhist temples play main characters of the night in the place of the cross. And then comes New Year’s Day. All shrines are prosperously crowded with people. At New Year’s visit to shrines, people earnestly offer their prayers to the legendary heroes in the Kojiki (A Record of Ancient Matters). Thus, alternative mood from Christianity to Buddhism and to Shintoism goes quite natural and smooth without any emotional conflict or trouble.

This is a mysterious wonder hardly understandable for Europeans. Sometimes it incurs their criticism as “unprincipled” rather than just “wonder”. Observing a series of events from the end of a year to New Year’s days such as kadomatsu (a New Year’s decoration made of bamboo and pine branches) and nanakusagayu (rice porridge with seven herbs) followed by all other Japanese traditional festivities throughout four seasons including even celebration of Halloween that is something other than Japanese, Europeans may be curiously tempted to look into the minds of Japanese. Even among us Japanese, some may attribute this kind of behavior to “lack of religious mind” with a sense of self-mocking.

I have a different kind of sensitivity, though; this could be attributed to inborn flexibility or toughness of people living on this archipelago. As you may know it quite well, the import of Buddhism probably in sixth century caused a conflict with a concept of “multitudinous gods” then prevailing. The conflict was actually seen in a political struggle between Soga and Mononobe clans. Innovation movement occurred to Buddhism in thirteenth century, after which Buddhism and Shintoism have been eventually getting along together. Even today they have their own religious principles, but they don’t carry any significant difference to most of Japanese. The arrival of Christianity in sixteenth century induced various history-making problems in this country, typical of which are suppression of Christianity and clandestine Christians. In contemporary Japan, however, Christianity seems to be generously and peacefully accepted among people.

I wonder what is the significant meaning of religion as a social function for the people living on this archipelago. There must have been done a great deal of studies in this subject matter, and so there may be no room for a layman like me. In spite of knowing this myself, I would like to say just a word; people on this insular country have been digesting anything coming from abroad cleverly into their daily lives: Chinese characters, foreign concepts, traditional customs and every other thing connected with their clothing, eating and living. Just picking up history of letters for instance, ancestors were absorbing original characters from abroad to have created their own language system over hundreds of years, whose historical process deserves to be said impressively moving. Let me call this dynamic people as “WA” (“harmony” or classic way of saying Japanese people). We may now call ourselves “Japanese” as an ethnic identity; and with this inherent nature in mind, we may safely say that our “religious mind” is quite rare today in the entire world; but our “religious mind” contains many crude defects not perfectly accomplished like language system, and yet it appears to me as one type of “WA” (harmony) as related to religion, although I may be outrageously criticized by faithful believers for saying this.

The other day the sixth grade boy of an elementary school said an interesting thing, “Isn’t Japan polytheistic? I heard Iran, Iraq and European countries are all monotheistic; but if aliens look at earth, I wonder if they think the earth is a polytheistic planet.”

He has a point. I realized at this moment that new generation is born now, who feels this planet from a global point of view beyond our scale of imagination. Knowing such children are growing in this island country makes me quite pleased as well as deeply moved. We must nurture with great care such sensitivity of the boy along with “heart of WA” intrinsic to Japanese.

I welcome your opinions on this column to the following E-mail address.
matogawa@planetary.or.jp

(Translated by The Planetary Society of Japan)