Intimacy: A general orientation in Japanese religious values
By Thomas P. Kasulis
Philosophy East and West
vol 4, no. 4 (October 1990)
p. 433-449
(C) by the University Press of Hawaii.
p. 433
To achieve an insightful understanding
(Verstehen) of the morality of another culture is to
go beyond the mere accumulation of factual knowledge
(Verstand) . We can know all about Japan--its
population, history, geography, and managerial
style--and still not understand it. Understanding
goes beyond knowing; it includes feeling (Einfuhlung)
and imagination, the capacity to project ourselves
into the place of the Japanese, to imagine at least
for a fleeting moment what it is like to be Japanese.
In saying that we should try to understand the
Japanese, that we should imagine ourselves into their
place, we are not saying we have to agree with them,
endorse their behavior, or even like them. Contrary
to some of the claims made in the popular press
lately, to he a Japanologist is not necessarily to be
a Japan apologist. Like the people of any culture,
the Japanese are sometimes trustworthy and sometimes
deceitful, sometimes nationalistic and sometimes
humanitarian, sometimes rational and sometimes
emotional, sometimes predictable and sometimes
inconsistent. So as not to seem apologists, some
interpreters of Japan have chosen to lose themselves
in a morass of detached observations and statistical
esoterica. They fear to engage the empathic
imagination requisite to true understanding because
they mistakenly think that to do so is to lose
objectivity. To put oneself in the other's place,
they reason, is to give up the option of
disagreement.
Such a quest for detachment and objective
certainty is quixotic. Here metatheory and overly
self-conscious methodological considerations may
obstruct the efficacy of practice. It is not a
difficult intellectual exercise to construct a set of
ideal criteria for intercultural understanding that
could never be met. By such rationalization we could
"prove" that we can never insightfully understand the
ideas, values, and behavior of another culture. Yet,
in practice, we somehow manage. Despite our
animosities, mistrust, and aggressive tendencies, the
world has not suffered the consequences of a hostile
nuclear detonation in forty-five years. We may not
always like each other, but we have at least reached
the point where international misunderstandings have
not led to global disaster. Two of the most
significant American deeds in the Pacific War--the
victory at Midway and the assassination of Admiral
Yamamoto-were the result of American intelligence
agents' breaking Japanese secret codes, codes
specifically designed to be as unintelligible to
Americans as possible. So, whatever the theory of
intercultural untranslatability or unintelligibility
may be, the facts of human practice disprove the
theory.
In analyzing the dynamics of intercultural
understanding, it is useful to bear in mind parallels
from the interpersonal realm. When the football
defensive
-------------------------
Thomas P. Kasulis is a professor of Philosophy and
Religion at Northland College in Wisconsin.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The author wishes to thank the
National Endowment for the Humanities and the Joint
Committee on Japan Studies of the ACLS-SSRC for their
generous support of his research into intimacy as a
theme in Japanese philosophy and religion.
Philosophy East & West, volume 40, no. 4 (October
1990). (c) by University of Hawaii Press. All rights
reserved.
p. 434
captain decides on the defensive formation, he tries
to anticipate what the opposing quarterback will do.
He temporarily tries to think as his opponent thinks.
It is irrelevant whether the defensive captain likes
the quarterback or whether he agrees with his
reasoning: the defensive captain puts aside all such
considerations and simply uses his imagination,
intuition, and feeling to put himself temporarily
into his opponent's shoes. The same analysis holds
for the defense attorney who tries to anticipate what
line of argument the prosecution will follow in an
upcoming case. In short, to imagine oneself
empathically into the other person's place is the
basis of much of our interpersonal understanding.
Furthermore, as both Confucius and Jesus of Nazareth
pointed out in their respective versions of the
Golden Rule, it is also requisite to moral behavior.
But how can we really imagine ourselves into the
Japanese context? Again, what works on the
interpersonal level can be modified to work on the
intercultural level. When we meet people for the
first time, how do we come to know them, and
eventually come to understand them? In an
undergraduate short-story writing class, one of our
assignments as students was to do a character sketch
in 250 words. After a couple of days of frustration
in which we all swore it was impossible to make a
character come alive in one typewritten page, the
professor gave us a hint on how to go about it. "In
the first sentence or two, set up your character as a
stereotype and then use the rest of the page to
modify that image," he said. To our surprise, the
technique worked. The professor explained that such a
process mimics the way we actually learn about
people. As soon as we see people, hear their names,
learn their occupations, we set up stereotypes in our
mind. Then, as we talk with the people and get to
know them, we continually adjust our image until
eventually we reach a profound level of
understanding.
In this article we will try a similar approach in
trying to come to an insightful understanding of
Japanese morality. Of course, no culture is
monolithic: differences among individuals can always
dominate over cultural uniformity, but it is still
useful to try to think of a culture as a whole, as a
collective person. According to this line of thought,
Japan's personality is its cultural forms, its
biography is its history, its patterns are its
traditions, its goals are its values. When we talk
about a society's cultural form, history, tradition,
and values, we are brought into the heart of its
spiritual experience. Whether we choose to call this
the society's religion, philosophy, national
character, or world view does not concern us here.
The point is that in order to understand the
Japanese, to anticipate their behavior, we must know
the why's behind the what's, we must know the values
driving the culture. To get us into the context where
we can begin to understand the why's of Japanese
culture, we will resort to a heuristic. A heuristic
is a tool for interpretation, in this case the use of
an overgeneralization or a stereotype. that can help
us move imaginatively
p. 435
from our culture into Japanese culture. Eventually,
as we come to know Japan better, the heuristic will
undergo continuous modification; it will be merely a
barebones skeleton on which can be fleshed out the
Japanese personality. But it will be a starting
point, one on which we can build our understanding of
Japanese spirituality.
As a starting point, our heuristic must have two
virtues: (1) like a stereo type, it must be simple
enough to be readily grasped; (2) it must be familiar
enough that it is not foreign. After all, the
starting point is meant to help us overcome our sense
of foreignness, not add to it. The ideal would be an
analysis that begins with our own experience, one
that allows us to see something Japanese in
ourselves.
For the heuristic to work, therefore, we must
allow it to appeal to our imaginations as well as our
intellects. Hence, we will develop a series of images
reminiscent of everyday events. The reader, however,
must be willing to follow these images in the correct
way. They are not meant as points for philosophical
analysis, but rather as catalysts for imagination and
affect. The purpose of the heuristic exercise is to
develop a mood (Stimmung) that will allow us to
resonate with a value orientation important to
Japanese morality. Our purpose for now, however, is
not to compare or think about these images. We should
only Let them be suggestive of an aspect of our own
lives, however seldom analyzed.
Image I. Think of what it is like to be with your
spouse or a lifelong dear friend. Such a person is
someone to whom you feel you can say anything, but
you need say nothing in order to be understood. A
little pucker of the lip, a twitch in the eye, a
movement of the eyebrow, or a barely audible sigh
says it all.
Image II. Someone steals your wallet. Both the money
and the treasured family pictures -- negatives lost
long ago -- are gone. The money belonged to you; it
was your money. But the pictures belonged with you,
not to you. In taking the photos, the thief stole
part of your self, not merely something external like
the money over which you held title.
Image III. You see your daughter after she comes home
from school. You know something is wrong and
something is bothering her. You can't put your finger
on it, and you can't explain how you know, but you
know she will pick at her dinner and look at the
television tonight without really watching it. You
even know that when you ask her what's wrong, she'll
say "nothing's wrong."
Image IV. You've been working on a piano piece for
months, endlessly drilling the chord progressions,
getting the technique down perfectly. One day, quite
unexpectedly, the awareness of technique disappears.
You are playing the same notes as always, but it is
completely different. You feel you are not playing
the music, but, rather, the music is playing itself
through you.
p. 436
Image V. Michelangelo looks at the discarded block of
marble given to him. He wonders what to do with it.
Studying the marble, the image of David appears from
within it and the artist sets to work releasing the
image from its stone case.
Image VI. After traveling for some weeks, you return
home. You take a little stroll around the yard, go
into the house, and sit in your favorite chair; a
close friend drops by to ask about your trip. You
feel yourself relax as you let down your defenses and
give yourself up to the familiar. You feel you are
really home.
What do all these images share? In my
terminology, I say that they are all permeated with a
sense of intimacy. The word "intimacy" may at first
seem odd. It seems more like the name of a French
perfume or maybe a term in a sex manual rather than a
moral concept. In an important sense--and perhaps
this tells us something about our own culture--we
have robbed the word of some of its original power.
In Latin, intimus means either what is innermost or a
close friend. The verb intimaare means to make known.
Putting this together, we can say that the root
meaning of intimacy is something like to make known
(intimaare) to a close friend (intimo) what is
innermost (intima) . Thus, intimacy involves an
inseparability, a belonging together, a sharing. We
have many friends and advisers, but only a few
intimates. Many things are in relation, but only some
are intimately related. We know many things, but have
intimate knowledge of only a few. We express many
things, but only those in our inner circle understand
what we intimate.
As philosophers, we can research the
phenomenological structures of our experiences of
intimacy, attempting to clarify its meaning and its
implications for a variety of philosophical issues in
epistemology, philosophy of language, aesthetics,
ethics, and the philosophy of religion. Our purpose
here is primarily to investigate the significance of
intimacy for understanding Japanese morality,
however. For that investigation, we can limit our
analysis of intimacy to five broad considerations.
First, the objectivity of intimate knowledge is
personal, not public. In the modem West the tendency
(with a few notable exceptions such as the theories
of Michael Polanyi) has been to divide knowledge into
two types: subjective and personal versus objective
and public. Intimate knowledge suggests, however, the
possibility of objective, nonpublic knowledge. An
example will demeastrate our common acceptance of
this difference, however seldom we think about its
philosophical significance. In many Olympic events
such as diving and gymnastics, the judges do two
types of scoring: one for degree of difficulty and
one for style or form. The first score is objective
and public-- everyone in the stands can observe the
dive, verify how many somersaults were involved, and
determine the degree-of-difficulty score by referring
to a set of rules. If two judges disagree about the
difficulty of the performance,
p. 437
we could even play back a videotape and determine
which judge was correct. But what about the score for
style or form? No nonexpert can make that judgment,
no instant replay can verify the accuracy of the
score. Therefore, the judgment is nonpublic. Yet, the
judgment is not simply subjective -- the judges are
expected to agree within a small margin of error. It
is not like the aesthetic film criticism of Siskel
and Ebert, where we expect disagreement. In fact, if
the Olympic judges' disagreement on the style scores
is too great, we suspect political motives coloring
the judgment. That is, we accuse the judges of
dishonesty. Yet, there can only be dishonesty in
judgment where there is objectivity. Hence, we have a
case of objective, but personal, knowledge.
Obviously, an emphasis on this form of knowledge
coincides in Japan with the emphasis on the
master-apprentice relationship not only in the arts,
but even in managerial training.
Second, the phenomenon of intimacy is experienced
as an internal, rather than external, relationship.
An external relationship assumes that each relatent
exists independently on its own and that the
relatents enter into a relationship. If the
relationship is dissolved, the relatents remain
intrinsically unchanged, returning to their
independent selves. Western law, for example, tends
to look at marriage in this way. The law is designed
to formalize or dissolve the bond relating two
independent persons, each one having individual
rights, privileges, and duties. An internal
relationship, on the other hand, is more like the
overlapping of two circles. Part of circle A is part
of circle B and vice versa. If B were to disappear
completely, A would lose part of itself. An internal
relationship is part of what things are, not just a
bond they have entered into. In our society, for
example, we often think of love as an internal
relation. In a loving relationship, when there is
separation or death, the partner feels the loss of
part of himself or herself, not just that he or she
has been disconnected from an external tie. The
differences between the contractual and the intimate
form of relationship are relevant to how Japanese
society maintains so many Gemeinschaft
characteristics internally while more commonly
adopting Gesellschaft characteristics in its dealings
with other societies.
Third, intimate knowledge has an affective as
well as an intellectual dimension. Modern Western
philosophies have generally focused on the
intellectual form of knowing (episteme) over
practical wisdom (phronesis) . Consequently, our
epistemologies tend to distinguish sharply between
thought and feeling. If we consider how we know that
today is Wednesday, that 1 + 1 = 2, or that the grass
is green, for example, there is certainly no place
for emotion in these judgments. Yet, what about the
way we know another person? Or the way the
craftsperson knows the feel of the tools and the
wood? Or the way the teacher knows what example will
help the student most? In such cases, feelings,
intuitions, gut reactions, and hunches are important.
The modern West has tended to make knowledge into a
black-and-
p. 438
white affair: I could never claim to know my
children, if by "know" I mean the perfect and
complete knowledge I have that 1 + 1 = 2. But
certainly, I do know them in some respects and know
them in more than the simply factual way that they
might be known by a sociologist or a psychiatrist. I
can readily imagine what they feel and what they will
do with an insight beyond what an objective,
external, intellectual knowledge could yield.
Following the assumptions of our modern Western
epistemological theories, we can uncover, and
historically have already uncovered, a plethora of
"problematic claims" to knowledge such as my knowing
another person to be in pain, my knowing my own
psychological and internal physiological states, or
my knowing that I need to accelerate immediately if I
am to negotiate the turn I am currently making on my
bicycle. In practice, however, we continue to have
medical personnel, we try to understand our feelings,
and we persist in risking our personal safety by
trusting our knowledge of bicycling. There seems to
be a gap between our epistemological theories and our
everyday practices: what is problematic for theory
seems to be the working assumption for practice. It
is at least conceivable that in a different culture,
a society might develop its theory and practice
without that paradox. Japanese society is noted for
the sensing of consensus, for learning through
imaginative imitation of the master, and for leaving
unsaid what is most important. There the affectively
charged forms of knowing might be considered less
problematic than in the modern Western
epistemological tradition.
Fourth, intimate experience has a somatic aspect
complementing the mental or psychological. This point
is a corollary to the previous one. It is hard to
imagine a disembodied affect or feeling. We could not
have a gut feeling if we had no guts. Furthermore, as
we have seen, the Olympic gymnastics judges acquired
their intimate knowledge of the sport through their
praxis, the psychophysical enactment of training,
performing, coaching, and judging. They incorporated
their knowledge, literally bringing it into their
bodies, through the repeated practices of gymnastics
activities, initially under the guidance of a master,
until they themselves became masters. Here again we
see the connection to the Aristotelian notion of
practical, as opposed to theoretical, wisdom. We may
note how unlike a computer is this function of
practical wisdom. A computer needs no master to
mimic, needs no exercises to repeat, needs no habits
to form. It is pure intellectuality. As such it is
also impersonal and disembodied.
In connection with this discussion of the somatic
aspects of intimacy, we should also reflect on the
relation of physical style to personhood. How do we
come to know another person initially? Contrary to
the idiom, there is no meeting of the minds. We meet
not minds but people -- flesh-and-blood, thinking and
feeling human beings. We meet an incarnate person,
even if that person is only perceivable as a voice on
the phone or as a style of writing. We
p. 439
come to know people through the way they walk, talk,
dress, or smile. Style is the intimation of what we
are. Getting to know someone is getting to the point
where we can read these intimations.
In Japan, the tea ceremony or the Noh drama is
stylized into a sequence of soft gestures suggestive
of profundity; Zen Buddhist enlightenment is enacted
through the meditative activities of the monastery;
differentiation in bowing behavior intimates a
complex structure of respect, deference, and duty.
All these behaviors fit under the general category of
kata(a), the somatic enactment of fixed patterns or
forms connected to intellectual, psychological, and
affective states.
Finally, the fifth characteristic of intimate
knowledge is that its ground is not generally
self-conscious, reflective, or self-illuminating,
Again, this runs counter to many modern Western
philosophical tendencies. Following the Cartesian
model, we Western philosophers typically regard
self-consciousness as illumination, as enlightenment.
Self-consciousness brings insight into ourselves, our
values, our behavior. We submit our actions to the
illumination of self-criticism in light of
principles, ethical codes, and commandments. We trust
in the process of bringing our assumptions to light
and testing them in a detached manner.
Yet, if we go back to our previous point about
the parent's knowing that a child is troubled, what
explicit, self-conscious grounds does the parent have
for making that judgment? Sometimes we want to say we
don't know exactly how we know something about
someone, but we just know. How do we know how to ride
a bicycle? How do we know that a toddler is about to
fall? How do we know when to press a friend on a
certain point and when to back off? If we cannot have
a clear and distinct understanding of the process
grounding that knowledge, we should not simply assume
that it is inferior to the knowledge of, say, what
time it is. There are different kinds of knowledge as
well as different degrees of knowledge. The practical
wisdom developing from years of exposure to a person
or to a particular process cannot be explicitly laid
out in terms of principles and data. If we want to
learn about Zen Buddhism or even Japanese management,
we must realize that the knowledge they exemplify
does not come through the application of dogmas or
principles. They derive rather from the
unself-conscious assimilation of a way of living and
acting.
We have, of course, only given the broadest
outline of a phenomenology of intimacy, but this
sketch is enough for our present purposes. In regard
to Japanese morality, we can say that the Japanese
axiological orientation has traditionally placed a
primary emphasis on preserving and enhancing
intimacy. This is, of course, too broad a claim to
substantiate here. Our interest, however, is to use
the notion of intimacy as a heuristic to place us
within a framework for achieving some degree of
Verstehen of Japanese morality. To show how this
heuristic might be applied, we will, in the remainder
of this
p. 440
essay, comment on the Japanese religious traditions
of Buddhism and Shinto, showing how their axiological
perspectives might be understood within the context
of preserving and enhancing intimacy. To anyone with
previous knowledge of Japanese religious thought,
much of what will follow might seem introductory and
superficial. Yet, it is precisely at the introductory
level that a heuristic should be most beneficial.
Hence, for such readers, the point should be to
evaluate how the notion of intimacy sheds new light
on already familiar material.
Before discussing the religious moralities of
Shinto and Buddhism, we should understand why
Confucianism is not being considered in this context.
Although Confucian ideals have been important
throughout Japanese recorded history in political
theory and social hierarchies, it has seldom
functioned in Japan as a religious tradition of any
significance. The veneration of Confucius himself,
the idea that the emperor rules by his own virtue
(te(b) ) rather than through simple hereditary
lineage, and the spiritual nuances of the mandate of
heaven (t'ien ming(c)) typify religious aspects of
Confucian praxis in China that did not carry over
into the mainstream of the Japanese tradition
throughout most of its history. In short, although
Confucianism is clearly a central aspect of the
Japanese philosophical tradition, it does not play a
similarly central role in Japan's religious
tradition. Since the purpose of this article is to
explore how intimacy is a useful heuristic theme in
understanding Japanese religious morality, therefore,
Confucianism is not our concern here.
Shinto(d) is the offshoot of the indigenous
religion in Japan, the manaistic, animistic, magical
religion that existed before the impact of Chinese
high culture and of which we find traces in
archaeological artifacts, ancient myths, and early
poetic works. Shinto is an ethnic rather than a
universal religion, so it does not proselytize or
seek converts. it is as tied to the Japanese sense of
ethnicity as Judaism is to Jews and Hinduism to
Indians. Being Shinto means to many Japanese nothing
more and nothing less than being Japanese. Hence,
according to the 1986 statistics of the Japan Agency
for Cultural Affairs, 93 percent of the population
consider themselves adherents of Shinto. The fact
that 74 percent of the Japanese also identify
themselves as Buddhists is evidence of both Shinto's
national universality and its openness to coexisting
with other religious forms.
In regard to intimacy, Shinto's values can be
expressed in terms of (1) the primacy of feeling and
intuition over logical explanation, (2) the
inseparability of humanity and nature, and (3)
ethnocentrism. Let us briefly consider each.
In comparison with Buddhism, Shinto does not have
a complex creedal or doctrinal system. It is more a
set of attitudes and customs. The primary religious
focal point in Shinto is kami(e), often misconstrued
in English as "gods." A kami may be a god -- for
example, the Sun Goddess Amaterasu is a kami, but a
kami can also be an extraordinary natural object such
as a special tree,
p. 441
rock, or mountain. A person may be a kami, most
notably the emperor, but also a great warrior or
artistic master of some sort, especially after death.
Even a human-made article, a special sword, for
example, may be a kami. Thus, the word is
perhaps.best translated simply as "sacred presence."
To a degree, Shinto does have an accepted set of
myths, the stories of the gods in the Kojiki(f) and
the Nihonshoki(g) justifying the centrality of the
imperial family, for example, but Shinto generally
function as a folk religion: each locality has its
special kami, distinctive festivals, and sacred
objects. Shinto is more a set of feelings about
purification, renewal, regionalism, and communal
spirit than it is any kind of philosophical or
doctrinal system.
Our second point is that Shinto emphasizes
closeness to nature. As we have already pointed out,
natural objects can be kami. It is important to bear
in mind that the object itself is a kami; the kami is
not a spirit lurking invisibly in the tree or
mountain. When pilgrims reach the summit of Mt. Fuji
they will find the torii(h) gate marking off the
sacred presence. There is no shrine, no building, not
even a sign. The pilgrim knows that the mountain
itself is a kami. And it is a kami not for what
historically happened there (as would be the case for
Mt. Sinai, Mecca, or Jerusalem, for example), but
just because Mt. Fuji itself commands our respect and
awe.
Finally, we must mention the ethnocentrism of
Shinto. Through Shinto ritual, the Japanese celebrate
their common bond. Japan is not a polity, a political
bond established among individuals for their mutual
benefit. Rather, Japan is more like a tribe, a
family, a house. When Shinto first became formalized
in the eighth century, it was connected to the
imperial household as a way of bonding the various
clans together into a single entity in the face of
the threat of invasion from Korea and China.
Generally, though, the political nature of Shinto has
not been central in Japanese history. Most of the
time the military ruled and the emperor served as no
more than a ritualistic reminder of ethnic identity.
In fact, historically speaking, when Shinto has
been attributed a distinct system of precise beliefs,
it has been more for political and nationalistic
purposes quite disconnected from the local folk
religion. For example, in the late eighteenth century
the National Studies School (kokugaku(i) )
philologically deciphered the Kojiki, the
long-neglected eighth-century text associated with
proto-Shinto. Malcontents used the movement to
reassert the political and religious centrality of
the emperor. Using the reinstatement of the authority
of the emperor as their rallying point, they
eventually succeeded in replacing the Tokugawa
shogunate in the mid-nineteenth century. A few
decades later the fascists used the same theme to
establish their own authority, and they carefully
crafted an interpretation of Shinto tradition and
ethnicity that led to jingoistic fervor. This came to
be called "state Shinto," as opposed to "shrine
Shinto."
In short, precisely because Shinto has such a
loosely structured set of doc-
p. 442
trines, precisely because it appeals mainly to the
heart and not to the mind, and precisely because it
stresses the intimacy of the Japanese people with
themselves and with their land, it is susceptible to
distortion by political forces who can manipulate it
for their ends. If a particular group can
successfully identify their cause with Shinto, what
Japanese can resist? To deny Shinto is, for most
Japanese, to deny their Japaneseness.
In leaving the topic of Shinto, it may be useful
to offer yet another vignette, one taken from
everyday life in Japan. It is an activity that occurs
millions of times every day and is representative of
what must be the most common spiritual act in Japan.
Few Japanese would think of it as "religious" but
would, if queried, admit its association with Shinto.
The activity is the visit to a neighborhood Shinto
shrine.
Let's perch ourselves on a small hilltop in Ueno
Park in Tokyo. We are no more than a couple of
hundred yards from Ueno Train Station, a commuter
center through which literally millions of Japanese
pass every day on their way to work or on their way
home. Below us is a small rectangular piece of land,
perhaps seventy-five by twenty-five yards in size,
covered with gravel. At one end is a small Shinto
shrine, a simple hut of maybe twelve square feet,
unpainted, and containing no images or icons of any
sort. From our observation perch, we watch the
Japanese businessmen in gray suits hurrying to work.
We focus on one running through the park. Reaching
the shrine area which stands between him and the
station, he stops and then goes over to the
spring-fed water trough to rinse his mouth and wash
his hands. Purified, he slowly walks up to the
shrine, holds his hands together prayerfully, bows,
claps, and pauses for perhaps ten seconds. He then
claps again, turns solemnly from the shrine to the
edge of the sacred area, and runs like the devil to
the train station.
Western commentators are often perplexed by this
almost primitive act of unreflective piety. Often the
Japanese does not know or even care which kami is
recognized by the shrine. In the period of silence
between the claps, typically nothing is said or even
thought. There is usually no formal prayer of any
sort. When questioned about the meaning of the
ritual, the Japanese may often offer only the most
vague of answers; it is not simply an act of
thanks-giving, petition, or even purification. The
Japanese simply recognizes the kami, feels the
presence, and goes on with the day's business.
What, then, is this most common Shinto ritual all
about? It is simply a recognition of, and fomal
participation in, the presence of kami. For that
brief moment of silence, the Japanese businessman has
opened himself to that presence and become intimate
with it. To ask the Japanese why he visits the shrine
is an odd question. It is as if we asked people why
they visit their intimate friends. Is it to thank
them for something, to ask for something, to get
something off one's chest? These may well be part of
the purpose of the visit, but just as likely the
visit stems from the urge to share a moment
p. 443
together. "I was in the neighborhood and just felt
like dropping by for a little while." In that moment
in front of the shrine, the Japanese is making an
intimation, an affirmation of the intimate circles to
which he belongs: the natural world, the sacred
space, the kami, his fellow Japanese.
Our purpose here is not to analyze Shinto, an
extraordinarily complex and varied religious
tradition, but rather to see how the heuristic of
intimacy helps us achieve a Verstehen of Shinto moral
values. Shinto is, to use the terminology of Rudolf
Otto's Idea of the Holy, a religion of the numinous.
Shinto recognizes this numinous dimension without the
need to formulate it doctrinally or theologically.
For Shinto the numinous is known intimately, not
discursively. Its content is affectively connected to
nature, the kami, the imperial family, and ethnic
identity. Hence, its goal is not formulated in terms
of ethical principles or even of a Confucian-like
list of virtues. Rather, its goal has come to be
encapsulated in the simple term "purity of heart"
(magokoro(j)).
Let us now turn to our discussion of Japanese
Buddhism, noting how its historical development
preserved and enhanced the ideal of intimacy in a way
complementary to the evolution of the native
spirituality and subsequent Shinto tradition. For the
purpose of putting our heuristic to further use, we
can briefly consider three major Japanese Buddhist
traditions: Shingon(k), Shin(l), and Zen.
Shingon represents the first major phase of the
emergence of Japanese Buddhism and we can frame our
discussion by considering the myths and doctrines
associated with its founder, Kuukai(m) or Kobo
Daishi(n) (774-835) . Artifacts throughout Japan
attest to Kuukai's miraculous powers: he carved
wooden buddha images that would not burn; he
inscribed sacred characters on stone using only his
fingernails, and so on. Most striking of all,
however, is the mythos associated with his body
entombed on Mount Koya in the famous complex he
established there, a complex that is more popular
than ever as a site of pilgrimage. Believers say
Kuukai did not die in the ordinary sense of the word.
Rather he came to be seated in a permanent state of
meditation such that he merged with the Buddha
hosshin(o) (Sanskrit: dharmakaaya) itself, the
highest level of reality in which the entire cosmos
is identified with the Buddha. It is said that
Kuukai's fingernails and hair are still growing.
Our first reaction may be to consider Mount Koya
a quaint example of the archaic and superstitious.
Here we have the makings of a mystic nature cult:
darkened rooms filled with musty incense, moss
covering the thatched roofs and ancient gravestones,
the rumbling incantations of mantras. Koya might be
seen as the final fortress of folk religion in a
society of technologists and business tycoons; it is
where Japanese pilgrims can temporarily divest
themselves of modernity's cloak and once again
imagine life among the naked magic of rocks, trees,
and streams. From this perspective, Kuukai is a
Japanese Merlin and Mount Koya a museum for the
Druidic relics of Japan's ancient past.
p. 444
But there is another side to the story. Merlin
wrote no books, and if he had, they would undoubtedly
have been no more than collections of spells and
charms. Rather than recipes of incantations, rituals,
and magical formulae, Kuukai's treatises more
resemble the systematic philosophical scope of, say,
the Summae of Thomas Aquinas. His magnum opus, The
Ten Mind-sets (Juujuushinron(p)), is probably the most
comprehensive treatment of Buddhist thought written
in Japan before the modern era. Shaman he may have
been, but Kuukai was also an intellectual giant in
the development of the emergent Japanese culture. He
founded Japan's first public school open to all
children. He was one of the finest calligraphers of
his era. He wrote in Chinese a treatise on Chinese
poetry that was apparently as well-regarded in China
as it was in Japan. A reservoir he designed in his
native province is still used for irrigation today.
In short, Kuukai's rational capacities were as much a
factor in his charisma as his thaumaturgy.
In a sense, Kuukai was both a Merlin and a Thomas
Aquinas. His genius was in his ability to integrate
the magical and the philosophical, the mystical and
the discursive. Kuukai developed ideas he learned in
his study of Chinese esoteric Buddhism and proceeded
to create a comprehensive metaphysical system that
was able (1) to explain the relation between
religious practice and the wonder-working power of
ritual; (2) to incorporate all the previous schools
of Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist philosophy into a
single hierarchical system; and (3) to show how the
indigenous notion of kami could be integrated into
his Buddhist system.
His philosophy was one of kyo(q) or resonance
that operated on three levels. On the macrocosmic
level of ordinary experience, we have the objects of
the senses, but these objects are just the surface
manifestation of a microcosmic field of energy and
vibration. What seems to our senses to be solid is,
in fact, a vast system of resonance. Where does this
resonance come from? If we move back far enough to
the cosmic level, we see that the pattern in all the
resonance is really the being of the cosmic Buddha,
the hosshin, called Dainichi Nyorai. The entire
universe is just the Buddha Dainichi, and it is that
Buddha's own physical and spiritual activity which is
the resonance that, on our sensory level, appears as
the world. Through ritual--for example, the chanting
of darani(r) or mantras -- therefore, the Shingon
Buddhist can contact this deeper resonance,
experience the world as Dainichi Buddha, and
sometimes even subtly affect the world of the senses
through the power of the ritual.
The crucial issue in the development of Japanese
Buddhism during the Heian period was this emphasis on
the idea that the formless, absolute Buddha expresses
itself through all the phenomena of this world
(hosshin seppo(s)). Kuukai helped established this
principle so firmly that it can be considered a
fundamental orientation within Japanese Buddhism in
general. It is also a foundational principle of
Japanese aesthetics: each thing in the world directly
manifests the highest sacred reality. The Buddha is
understood to be literally
p. 445
everywhere, and every phenomenon is, in itself, the
full expression of spirituality. So the key for the
artist, whether painter, sculptor, poet, Noh actor,
or even martial artist, is to express through one's
action the holiness of the everyday.
From the standpoint of Japanese Buddhism, the
human predicament, the turmoil of deluded life, is
that we are no longer aware of this intimate unity of
all things. We humans have fallen into seeing
ourselves as separate from each other, from the
world, and from the Buddha itself. In such a state,
we cannot be aware of ourselves as expressions of the
Buddha-principle. The solution, then, is for human
beings to reestablish the intimate connection with
all things. Each of the various forms of Japanese
Buddhism has its own theories and practices for
carrying out this project. The esoteric forms of
Buddhism, such as Shingon and Tendai, emphasize
participating directly in the sacred aspect of the
world. Since the entire world is the expression of
the Buddha-principle, the human being must
participate in various rituals--chanting, hand
gestures, visualization techniques--that attune one
to the Buddha's activity. This version of Buddhism
is, in essence, sacramental. The ritual is not a
means to Buddhahood, nor is it a reminder of the
Buddha's presence; rather, the performance of the
ritual is itself the Buddha's activity.
The two other Buddhist traditions we will
consider are products of the Kamakura period, the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Kamakura period
was a time of military competition, the dissolution
of the power of the aristocracy, the rise of the
samurai shoguns, the extravagant taxation levied
against the peasant farmers, the decay of cities
racked with famine and pestilence. In this context,
the issue was no longer the metaphysical harmony of
the universe, but rather, what Buddhism could mean
for me personally. The focus of Buddhism would shift
from the metaphysical questions of what reality is to
the existential questions of what I am and how I can
achieve peace of mind.
In the Pure Land forms of Buddhism as established
in the Kamakura period by people like Honen(t),
Ippen(u), and Shinran(v), this led to the calling
into question of the Heian period's view of practice
and ritual as the road to spiritual development. The
Pure Land Buddhist reformers maintained that any
attempt to perform a religious practice consciously
is itself a way of separating oneself from the
reality of Buddha. These forms of Pure Land Buddhism
(and they became the dominant form of Japanese
Buddhism) believe the only way to reestablish
intimacy with the world is by completely
relinquishing even the slightest sense of self. One
must surrender completely to the grace of Amida
Buddha, one of the devotional, heavenly forms of the
Buddha known only through spiritual vision. if one
can do so, one will be assured rebirth in Amida's
Pure Land, a heavenly state wherein the
circumstances, unlike those of this world, are
favorable for personal spiritual development and the
achievement of enlightenment. Even this act of faith
is itself under-
p. 446
stood to be only a manifestation of the Buddha's
activity. If this faith occurs, however, the person
is transformed and becomes part of the natural,
spontaneous expression of the Buddha-principle.
One important modification in this tradition was
articulated most clearly by Shinran (1173-1263), the
founder of the Shin Buddhist Pure Land sect. Shinran
personalized the Pure Land message even further,
making the Pure Land not an otherworldly heaven to
which one goes after death, but rather the infusion
of a sacred power into the individual in this world.
Yet, according to Shinran, we are so permeated with a
sense of ego and sin that the pure, trusting faith in
Amida necessary to this rebirth is always just at the
horizon of possibility. It is as if it is always
there just beyond our grasp, but to grasp at it only
pushes it farther away. We must thoroughly recognize
our own inadequacy, and only through a pure act of
self-surrender to Amida's saving grace can we ever
attain that which is always just beyond us.
Let us turn now to the other most influential
form of Kamakura Buddhism--Zen. In this tradition, the
intimacy is achieved not through ritual participation
nor through faith, but rather through the
straightforward acceptance of reality as it actually
presents itself without conceptual filtering. Through
disciplined meditation practice, one is supposed to
quiet the thinking processes that tend to arrange our
experience according to what we want to see, hear,
taste, smell, and feel. Because of our desires,
favored ways of thinking, presuppositions, and
prejudices, we ordinarily distort what is actually
present. in the state of enlightenment, however, one
sees directly what-is, as-it-is.
In a sense, Zen personalized Kuukai's vision by
limiting it to this world as it appears. It preserved
the idea that everyday reality itself is sacred, but
it differs from Shingon in that its approach is to
find that sacred quality in the everyday as the
everyday. There is no moving between the cosmic,
microcosmic, and macrocosmic levels. The sacred
reality is encountered directly right here and now as
the right here and now. Unlike the Pure Land sects,
however, Zen affirms the absolute necessity of saving
oneself, of disciplining oneself through the practice
of Zen meditation or zazen(w). In fact, the most
philosophically articulate of all Zen masters, the
founder of the Japanese Soto(x) tradition, Dogen(y)
(1200-1223), argued that the practice of zazen was
not the means to enlightenment but was the practice
of enlightenment itself. Why? Because in the state of
zazen, one breaks through all conceptualized
distortions of reality and simply allows what-is to
be what-is. The intimate belonging with things just
as they are is the foundation of the Zen way of life.
The lasting impact of the Pure Land and Zen
traditions on Japanese values can be described in
terms of their competing visions of personal
fulfillment. For Shinran, self-fulfillment is
realized through trust and dependence on a power
beyond the self, what is commonly called tariki(z),
other power. Self--fulfillment evolves out of the
recognition of individual limitation and personal
p. 447
corruption. This value orientation has had a lasting
effect on the self-effacing,
working-in-the-service-of-others psychology so marked
in the Japanese. In its negative, distorted form it
can nourish a sense of the powerlessness of the
individual.
The Zen vision of personal fulfillment is
typically characterized as the opposite of the Pure
Land view. Zen emphasizes not other power, but own
power (jiriki(aa)). Dogen makes self-discipline an
end in itself. This leads to the psychology of
quality control: you do your job right, not because
it will have utilitarian benefits, but because the
concentration and discipline needed to do the job
right is a spiritual end in itself. It is not the
perfection of the product that is important. What is
important is the perfection of the person's
concentration and discipline, which makes the product
perfect.
Like the Pure Land principle of self-surrender --
indeed, like the highest religious principles of all
traditions in all countries--the ideal was
susceptible to a secularized distortion. How
something is done can so dominate the evaluation that
the value of the thing done escapes moral
discernment. This particular distortion of Zen
drifted over into the popular samurai code, for
instance, wherein the issue of killing was
subordinated to the aesthetic beauty of how it was
done. If properly wielded in the right state of mind,
the samurai sword was unpolluted by the violence
around it. The unfortunate consequence of this was
that the samurai often did not think of the morality
of the violence itself.
This discussion of the Pure Land and Zen views of
self-fulfillment leads us to our final point: the
difficulties of cross-cultural understanding. It is
never easy to understand another culture. As we study
Japan, we must be willing to suspend temporarily our
own cherished cultural assumptions. We have tried to
imagine ourself into a context where intimacy is the
defining characteristic of human being. For the
Japanese, we are not primarily homo sapiens, human
being as defined by wisdom or rationality. Nor are we
primarily homo faber, human being as defined by our
building builders or creators. Nor are we primarily
homo ludens, human being as defined by our ability to
play. Rather, we are homo intimans, human being as
defined by our capacity to intimate our intimacies.
To the Japanese way of thinking, we are most human
when we form bonds of belonging with nature, with
each other, with our nation. We are most ourselves
when we have built such a rapport that we need not
speak in order to express ourselves. We are most
ourselves when we suspend contrivance and let things
be themselves, even helping the rock to be a rock by
placing it where it belongs in a garden. We are most
ourselves not when we know the world, but when we
feel at home in it.
In conclusion, if we consider the religious ideas
of self, bringing in all the Shinto affects and
Confucian notions of hierarchy as well as the
Buddhist theories, we have something like the
following. What does it mean to be self-fulfilled to
the Japanese? It means going beyond an egoistic sense
of inde-
p. 448
pendence to a recognition of the interdependent and
dependent side of human existence. It means taking a
sense of spiritual satisfaction in following a
self-imposed ideal of discipline. It means resonating
to the vibrations of nature, seeing yourself and the
natural as belonging with each other, without nature
belonging to humankind or humankind belonging to
nature. It means having a common set of social
patterns, hierarchical in nature, which binds us
together as an organized society. And it means having
a sense of belonging with a particular people, bound
by blood, ritual, and familial affection.
If we stand back and look at this picture of
human being, comparing it with the ideals that modern
Western philosophy has held most dear, we start to
fathom the depths of the problem of our understanding
Japanese morality. We find in the Japanese account no
marked emphasis on any of the following: the
individual (soul) as the primary unit of spiritual,
moral, and political meaning; the notion of a set of
universal principles applying to all humankind as the
ideal of behavior; the idea of a legalistic,
contractual relationship among persons or between a
people and their God; the idea of a divine plan
worked out in natural and human history to which we
feel responsible; or the hierarchy of rationality as
what sets off the human from other animals.
This radical difference in values underscores the
difficulty of our achieving a Verstehen of Japanese
morality. The morality of a culture necessarily
reflects that culture's philosophical anthropology,
its understanding of human existence. If the
philosophical ideas of humanness in Japan are as
different from our modern Western notions as our
brief study suggests, we must bridge an enormous gap
before we can begin to understand the dynamics of
Japanese morality. This essay offers the experience
of intimacy as a heuristic for reorienting our own
thinking so that we can at least glimpse the world
through the eyes of Japanese values.
Intimacy is not a distinctively Japanese
experience. If it were, we could never hope to
understand the Japanese. No, as the Japanese
themselves point out, the need and desire for
intimacy is a common characteristic of all humanity.
The difference between Japan and the modern West lies
in how commonly we express that particular
commonality as an essential characteristic of our
value systems: religious, moral, and aesthetic. The
difference between Japanese morality and our own
Western morality is a matter of emphasis, a matter of
axiological priorities. Because we can imaginatively
change our priorities, we can achieve some Verstehen
of Japanese morality. Through that act of the
intercultural imagination, we come to understand
better not only the Japanese, but also ourselves.
This is what makes the study of Japanese philosophy a
rewarding form of philosophizing in its own right.
p. 449
a 型 o 法身
b 德 p 十住心論
c 天命 q 響
d 神道 r 陀羅尼
e 神 s 法身說法
f 古事記 t 法然
g 日本書紀 u 一遍
h 鳥居 v 親鸞
i 國學 w 坐禪
j 真心 x 曹洞禪
k 真言 y 道元
l 真 z 他力
m 空海 aa 自力
n 弘法大師