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The wrong cure for
Japan's moral malaise
By
Umehara Takeshi
(Republished with
permission from Japan Focus)
Some
people argue that Japan's Fundamental Law of
Education, adopted under the US occupation and
operational from 1947, should be revised because
it does not spell out respect for Japanese
tradition, and after that the constitution, too,
should be revised.
It is unclear how these
individuals perceive tradition, but it seems that
they see the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890)
as something rooted in Japanese tradition, and
believe that the Japanese will become fine, moral
people if moral education rooted in the spirit of
this rescript is implemented. But is it really the
case that the rescript is rooted in Japanese
tradition?
Presenting the Meiji
constitution (1889)
The rescript spells out
various virtues, the cardinal one expressed in the
words "Should emergency arise, offer yourselves
courageously to the state, and thus guard and
maintain the prosperity of our imperial throne
coeval with heaven and earth." In other words, in
time of war, defend the country by giving your
life for it.
To me, as one of the last of
the wartime generation, during the Pacific War
that was called the "Greater East Asian War", the
words "die for the emperor" seemed to resound
throughout heaven and earth. In conformity with
these words, many of my friends fought bravely and
died in a war that was recklessly started and
which no effort was made to stop, even when defeat
was staring us in the face. It was my fortune to
survive, but from the bottom of my heart I hated
it for driving some 3 million Japanese to such
meaningless death.
After the war, the
reason I switched from specializing in Western
philosophy to Japanese religion and culture was
because I felt it impossible to produce an
original philosophy while ignoring Japanese
culture and thought, and also because I became
keenly aware of the magnificence of Japanese
culture, despite my hatred for the Japan that had
caused this war. What later became known as
"Umehara Japanology" was born of this combination
of love and hate.
I take the view that the
Imperial Rescript on Education stemmed from the
early Meiji policies of "Get rid of the Buddhas"
(Haibutsu-Kishaku) and "Separate the Kami
(Japanese deities) from the Buddhas"(Shinbutsu
Bunri). From the time of Prince Shotoku
(574-622), Buddhism was Japan's official religion,
but it soon merged with Shinto, the religion of
the Japanese people from Jomon (neolithic) times.
The merger of Shinto and Buddhism, started by
Gyoki (668-749) and Saicho (767-822), and
perfected with Kukai's (774-835) esoteric Buddhism
(Shingon-Mikkyo), lasted as Japan's tradition
until the end of the Edo period (circa mid-17th
century).
However, as the Meiji government
fell under the ideological sway of narrow-minded
"National Learning" (Kokugaku) scholars,
they set about implementing policies designed to
separate the Kami and the Buddha and to demolish
Buddhism. In the end, they killed off not only the
Buddha but the Kami too, and in the space created
by the absence of both Buddha and Kami they set
the emperor as the new divinity. This process may
be described as the creation of "New Shinto" (or
state Shinto). This New Shinto contributed to
making Japan a power comparable to Western states,
by internally consolidating the political control
of the Satsuma-Choshu-led government that replaced
the Tokugawa shogunate and by externally focusing
the power of the whole nation under the emperor.
The philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro
(1889-1960) set out in his war-time book, The
Philosophy and Tradition of the Philosophy of
Revering the Emperor, to prove that the
ideology of seeing the emperor as a god was a
Japanese tradition, but he was not successful. The
idea of the emperor as a deity can be seen in the
Kojiki and Manyoshu (8th century) and in texts
such as the Jinno Shotoki (14th century), but it
was not until after the middle of the Edo period
that such ideas became popular and they were then
utilized in the 19th-century process of
overthrowing the Tokugawa shogunate.
Under
such religion, Japan developed as a modern state,
became a great power, plunged into the "15-year
war" and met the miserable fate of defeat. English
philosopher Bertrand Russell raised the question
of how Japan, where no one was allowed to question
the divinity of the head of state, could have
become a modern state.
After the war,
under the orders of General Douglas MacArthur, New
Shinto was rejected and an edict declaring the
humanity of the Showa emperor (Hirohito) was
issued. It seems bizarre that, in the 20th century
where scientific thinking dominated the world, the
emperor should have had to issue an edict
declaring himself human. I met the Showa emperor
several times and could not help seeing him as a
genial old man who loved the study of biology. How
painful it must have been for such a person to
play the role of a god. Yukio Mishima totally
rejected the announcement of the emperor's
humanity and wrote in his novel Voices of the
Heroic Spirits (Eireitachi no koe) that
the emperor should have insisted on his divinity.
I believe, however, that the real modern Japan
started from this declaration of the emperor's
humanity.
The fact of the present emperor
alluding to Takano-no-Niikasa, the mother of
Emperor Kanmu and the descendant of King Bunei of
Paekche, by saying that he "feels an affinity for
Korea" and telling the zealous promoters of the
movement to raise the Hinomaru (national
flag) and sing the Kimigayo (anthem) that
"it is best for them not to be imposed by force" -
something that even a liberal academic could not
easily say - leads me to think that the members of
the imperial family are very liberal, and probably
are themselves inclined to oppose the kind of
emperor system spelled out in the Imperial
Rescript on Education.
Let me repeat. The
Imperial Rescript on Education is not something
rooted in Japanese tradition. Is it not rather the
case that revival of the rescript would allow
politicians who have neither knowledge nor virtue,
and who have no love whatever for traditional
culture but care only for their self-interest, to
make the people do their will by representing it
as the order of the emperor? It seems to me that
the only way to make the Japanese people truly
moral is to have them come to a deep understanding
of the Japanese tradition of reverence for both
Kami and Buddha.
Umehara
Takeshi, long the director of the
International Research Center for Japanese Culture
(Nichibunken) in Kyoto, is the author of numerous
works on Japanese and Asian philosophy, archeology
and history.
(This article appeared in
the Asahi Shimbun May 17. It was translated for
Japan Focus by Yusei Ota and Gavan McCormack.
Yusei Ota is a student and Gavan McCormack a
visiting professor at International Christian
University in Tokyo. Gavan McCormack is also a
coordinator of Japan Focus.
(Republished
with permission from Japan Focus) |
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