The Spirit of Japan by Ronald Kotzsch (EWJ 1979, article 3)
On the surface Japan today is a modern, technological, urbanized society. It is a world of television, automobiles, fast food, giant corporations, smog, polyester suits, and disco. Yet below the surface, and often not very far below, are the vestiges of a very different culture. These can be seen daily in every aspect of life, in social relations, business, religious life, art, and patterns of speech. A few examples:
Six o'clock on a spring morning. In front of the Kyoto Central Station six men are standing in a circle singing. They are all dressed in white shirts, black ties, black pants, and shiny black shoes. One of them reads a pledge in which they affirtii their intention to serve their customers, their company, the city of Kyoto, Japan, and the world. They are taxi drivers beginning their work day as usual.
A student of mine, a physician studying English, invites me to Iiis home for dinner. It is a pleasant flawless evening. His wife, an attractive, refined woman remains completely in the background, appearing only to serve the meal and remove the dishes. When the physician refers to her, the words translate roughly as "my loutish wife" or "the old bag."
In the majority of Japanese homes there are two small religious shrines. One is a Shinto shrine. One is Buddhist. Every day the members of the family pray before each of the shrines and make offerings of rice, tea, and salt. They see no contradiction in following two religions. Most Japanese are inarried by a Shinto priest and buried by a Buddhist one.
A famous Japanese race horse breaks its leg and must be destroyed. The horse receives a elaborate funeral, attended by thousands of mourners.
In the cyclonic mess of Kyoto traffic, two cars scrape bumpers. Both drivers leap out. Each bows, apologizitig profusely for his carelessness.
In the autumn a wild mushroom. called matsutake appears in the grocery stores. They are perhaps three or four inches long and are usually presented in individual boxes with foil wrapping. They cost forty or fifty dollars each. Business is brisk.
Spring is the time of union management negotiations in Japan. Three weeks beforehand the union announces that there will be a strike on such and such a Monday from seven to eight in the morning. It apologizes to the public for the inconvenience. The strike begins and ends promptly.
About ten years ago the novelist Mishima Yukio was campaigning
against the current of materialism and individualism in the nation. He tried to rally army officer trainees to his cause. When they did not respond he committed suicide by seppuku or belly splitting, disemboweling himself- with a short sword and then being decapitated by an associate.
A friend of mine has decided to get married. I ask her what her fiance is
like. She says that he is "all right," but that she doesn't know too much about him. She was introduced to the young man through a go-between or marriage broker commissioned by her parents. She has seen him about five times. Her parents approve of the match very much, so she will marry. About half of the marriages in Japan today are arranged through the agency of a go-between.
One could give countless examples. A Westerner living in Japan constantly encounters behavior patterns, customs and incidents that seem strangely out of keeping with modern life. Japan is a "palimpsest", a parchment whose original writing has been erased and written over. But it is an imperfect one. The older mysterious words continue to be visible through the glitter and clarity of the new. And they reveal the ineradicable truth that the Japanese have experienced, and still do experience themselves and the world much differently than westerners do.
The contact between Japan and the West includes two periods, The first began with the arrival in 1564 of St. Francis Xavier, a Portugese Jesuit missionary. It continued until 1638, when the central government, feeling threatened by the importation of Christianity and firearms, prohibited all contact with the outside world. The second began with the forcible opening of Japan by Admiral Perry in 1853. Continuing through the present day it has been a time of rapid and successful modernization. In both periods most of the foreigners in Japan went to teach rather than to learn. They were missionaries, military advisers, engineers, scientists, medical men. Some found the Japanese and their culture beautiful and fascinating; others found Japan unappealing and inconsequential; few made any attempt to plumb the depths of the Japanese "soul", to comprehend how the people thought and felt, how they viewed themselves and their world. On the other hand, the Japanese were not able to make themselves intelligible to the West. Consequently Japan has long been the prototype of the "inscrutable Orient."
It was not until several decades after the onset of modernization that Western-trained Japanese intellectuals tried to interpret their native culture to the Western mind. In 1906 Okakura Kakuzo wrote the Book of Tea, a presentation of the philosophy and practice of the Japanese tea ceremony. In the same year, Nitobe lnazo published Bushido, the Soul of Japan, explainitig the life and views of the samurai or warrior class. Some years later Sugimoto Etsuko wrote a book called Daughter of the Samurai. It tells of her life growing up in a samurai household in the early days of the modern period when the old ways were still followed. Also, Dr. Suzuki Daisetz devoted a lifetime ot' scholarship to making Zen Buddhism and its role in Japanese culture comprehensible to the Western mind. All these books have contributed greatly to our understanding of the Japanese.
Sakurazawa Jyoichi, known in the West as Georges Ohsawa, was also committed to helping Westerners understand the Japanese mind. He felt that the greatest danger of the twentieth centliry lay in the mutual misunderstanding of East and West. An ardent student and proponent of' traditional Japanese culture, Ohsawa went to France in 1929 with the aim of introducing the essence of Japanese culture to the West.
In 1931 he published two books with this purpose in mind: Le Principle Unique de la Philosophie et Science d'Extreme Orient (presenting the cosniology of yin and yang in modern terms) and Le Livre du Fleurs (on the traditional art of flower-arranging). Over the next thirty-five years, until his death in 1966, he published a number of other books in Western languages, seeking to explain Japan to Westerners.
Ohsawa also sought to present the true face of western culture to his fellow Japanese. He wrote many books in Japanese about Western life and translated into Japanese works which'he felt marked important developments in Europe and North America. These include The Collapse of Western Medicine (1931) and New Directions in Western Medicine (1937), both by the French pioneer in wholistic medicine, Dr. Aranji; Dr. Alexis Carrel's Man the Unknown (1937); and Yale professor F.S.C. Northrop's volume The Meeting of East and West (1949). Ohsawa saw himself as a kind of intellectual bridge between the East and the West, and his dream was of a unified and peaceful world culture.
Ohsawa based his explanation of the "soul of Japan"-on a presentation
of a Japanese cosmology. He maintained that in order to understand how Japanese think and feel, how they view themselves as individuals, how they view their society and the world of nature, we must first understand their view of the universe, its nature and origin and the laws by which it operates. Ohsawa recognized that for the Japanese this "cosmology" is virtually inborn. It is an implicit, assumed basis of life. For the purpose of conveying this to the Western mind, however, Ohsawa formulated what he called "The Unique Principle," or "The Order of the Universe." This, he claimed, was nothing but a moden version of the cosmology dominant in the Orient since the time of the Chinese sage-kings five thousand years ago. Ohsawa relied mainly on the Tao Te Ching (The Book of the Way and Its Power) by Lao Tzu and the I Ching (Book of Changes) for his basic vocabulary and concepts.
Everything begins with the existence of an infinite, eternal Oneness, named variously as Mu (nothingness), Taikyoku (great principle), Tao (the way) and Tien (heaven). It is the endlessly expanding absolute of the universe, beyond time and space. This Oneness divides into two opposite, antagonistic, but complementary forces, Yin (expansion) and Yang (contraction). From the interaction of these two principles arise all the phenomena of the relative world, the world of space and time. As Lao Tzu said:
The One becomes Two
The two become Three
And the Three become the Many.
According to Ohsawa's interpretation, the universe can be divided into seven levels. The first two levels are that of the Absolute and the principles of Yin and Yang, The five below these are the world of energetic vibrations, the world of subatomic particles, the world of chemical elements or minerals, -the world of vegetable life, and the world of animal and human life. Each level is derived from the level before it and in turn produces the succeeding level. They are not to be pictured, however, as separate, contentric circles. Rather, they form an immense, contrarting spiral which begins on the external orbit with the Absolute and terminates in human beings at the central focus. A continuous current of interaction passes betwcen these two end points, traversing all the levels.
Some of these levels are invisible, such as that of the vibrational world. The next world, that of subatomic particles, forms the transitional boundary between the visiblc and the invisible. The lower three levels--mineral, vegetal, and animal--constitute the material or visible Realm. Here phenomena exist in space and time and have mass. They can be touched, weighed, and measured. While this visible world may seem to be immense, it is relatively only a geometric point within the vastness of Infinity.
Ohsawa claimed that if we understand this view of the universe we can understand the habits of mind and the behavior of the Japanese. For example, consider the characteristics or ideal traits of the Japanese personality:
A. GRATITUDE: Human beings are the final product of an immense spiral of creation. Our life is a gift of the universe, and each moment we continue to receive energy and nourishment from the universe. Above all, we must have a sense of gratitude toward nature and the cosmos. One seldom sees a Japanese today, even in the bustle of city life, eat or drink anything without first saying ihe word itadakimasu. This means literally "I humbly receive." According to Ohsawa, this custom has grown out of a deep awareness that our life and vitality derive from the larger world.
On the human and social level, human beings are the product of their family, schools, social group, nation, and humanity as a whole. Creation and nourishment always move on the spiral of' creation from the larger orbit to the smaller orbit, from the inclusive to the particular. In the West we emphasize the individual and his or her rights. In Japan the emphasis is on the individual's sense of gratitude and respect towards those persons and groups which made his or her existence and development possible. Even today teachers receive a degree of respect almost disconcerting to the Wcstemer. There are almost no old age homes in Japan. For someone to sue his parents for failing to raise him correctly, as did a young man in Colorado recently, is somethirq scarcely conceivable to the Japanese mind.
B. IDENTITY WITH THE GROUP: Individuals are a product of their family, village, and social group. They find their identity primarily as mcmbers of a group, not as individuals. Our own meaning and importance and life are derived from the associations of which we form a part. Thus Japanese names are always given with the family identity. Japanese almost always travel in groups.
C. SELF-SACRIFICE: One sense of gratitude and identificatioi with the group finds natural expression in the ideal of self-sacrifice. It is the group, not the individual, whose welfare is of ultimate importance. The sacrifice of one's own interests for the sake of others is expected and normal An extreme example of this is provided by the kamikaze pilots who volunteered to fly their bomb-laden aircraft into American warships in the latter stage of World War 11. It is to be seen also to day in the workers who work for little or no pay if their companies are in dire straits, or in the young woman who marries a man she may not especially love, but whose status will benefit her family.
D. HUMILITY: A sense of one insignificance and behavior which expresses this are dominant ideals in the Japanese character. Within the ocean of Infinity the visible world is but a speck. Within that, humanity is a speck, within that, the individual is a speck. The individual person is a geometric point within a point within a point. Moreover, our creation and existence are entirely the result of energies outside ourselves. We should be deeply aware of our place in the universe and act accordingly.
Upon entering a room one always takes the position of least importance until encouraged strenuously and repeatedly by the host to take a place nearer the head of the table. In presenting even the most lavish gift to someone it is customary to apologize for it as "niggardly trifle hardly worth wrapping." A woman, after serving a luxurious ten-course meal will express regret for the tasteless collection of "leftovers" she has presented. It is considered in poor taste to use or overuse tt first person pronoun in conversation When one does so, it is well to use humble form of "I" roughly translatable as "this inferior thing." Also, it is gauche to even, mention one's own accomplishments or those of one's family.
Towards the end of my stay in Japan I was at dinner with a number of Japanese and one other American. He was married to a Japanese woman and spoke at some length of his wife,. her intelligence, and her excellence as a cook. The Japanese present, including the young woman herself, sat stiffly through the monologue with slightly pained expressions. Even to my dull ears it seemed out of order. It is much more usual to speak of one's "clumsy bag" of a wife and one's "swinish son. "
According to Ohsawa, the traditional Japanese attitude toward nature is readily comprehensible in terms of the Unique Principle. All phenomena, including hur~anity, derive from the Absolute Oneness. They are formed of the same life force and function according to the same laws of change. Thus humans do not stand apart from ' or above nature. We are only a part of it and not even a particulariv major part. Our role is not to dominate, subjugate and exploit nature, but to live in harmony with it. Through this our health and happiness are realized.
Also, from this point of view, all of nature, even what we Westerners normally think of as inanimate, becomes alive, conscious, and even endowed with personality. Trees, rock, mountains, waterfalls are as fully manifestations of the Infinite as we are. Thus nearly every fair-sized mountain in Japan is topped by a small shrine honoring the spirit of the mountain. A beautiful waterfall, a striking rock, or a magnificent, ancient tree will be similarly marked. Here even the businessman or the scientist will stop for a moment, clap hands and bow in reverence to the kami or god. In old Japan, when woodsmen chopped down a tree, they first prayed, asking forgiveness of the indwelling spirit.
One is of course on rather shaky ground if one speaks too rapturously these days of the. Japanese desire to live in harmony with nature or or their sensitivity to its beauty and spiritual quality. Almost every corner of this small and lovely land has been plundered and disfigured in the pursuit of industrial growth and modern convenience. In spite of this modern behavior, however, the Japanese still reveal a deep love of nature. They will spend a small fortune to obtain a uniquely shaped or colored stone for their home garden and will travel great distances for a brief look at a famous landscape.
Ohsawa also interprets the world of Japanese art in terms of Yin and Yang. Humanity is the most yang or condensed form of life at the inner terminus of the spiral of creation. Our destiny, the aim of our life, is to return to the absolute Yin, to the One, to lnfinity. Art is one of the means by which we can fulfill this destiny.
For example, a Japanese sumi-e or black ink painting does not attempt to depict the material world in all its detail. Rather it will express a scene with only a few cursive strokes, leaving the rest of the space empty. Its real aim is to represent the Absolute, the Void that lies behind the constantly changing face of the visible world and, through that, to elevate the consciousness of the viewer from the finite to the Infinite. A flower arrangement, done according to da-do, the Tao of Flowers, is not a bouquet or an attempt at interior decoration. It is instead a configuration of living forms, carefully arranged to show the harmony behind the world of nature, to point to the One.
Similarly, the purpose of a haiku poem is not to show the fleeting and egocentric emotions of the poet. It portrays the moment in space and time where one may glimpse the realm beyond space and time. For example:
eating a persimmon
in the temple yard
I hear
the ringing of the great bell.
The author of this poem (which is inscribed in a stone at the spot in the temple in Nara where it was composed) was the great poet-priest Basho.
The training in these arts and the discipline needed to perfect them must also be understood in terms of our human destiny. Each of the aesthetic disciplines, as well as the martial arts (judo, kendo-the Way of the Sword, aikido, kyudo-the Way of the Bow), medicine (ido), and the various crafts and arts of Japanese culture is considered to be a spiritual Path. Each is practiced according to the laws of Yin and Yang, the order of the Universe. The ultimate aim is not to acquire- a certain skill, but to transcend the world of time, space and change, to be absorbed into the Infinite. The person who studies judo does not do so in order to learn how to defeat an opponent in a match or to ward off attackers. One seeks to master the laws of Yin and Yang, to realize them in the movement of body and mind and to be in perfect harmony with the rhythm or creation.
In this context the teachers of these paths are actually spiritual masters. They are not merchants of knowledge to whom one goes 'in order- to obtain useful or marketable skills. Rather they are religioug teachers to whom one entrusts one's spiritual destiny. Once a commitment is made it is not lightly broken. Because many Westerners who go to Japan to study are not aware of this assumption, sad misunderstandings often occur. For instance, they may study judo for a while and then decide to study aikido instead, or they may study with one teacher and then decide to try another one. Such things are unthinkable to a Japanese.
Ohsawa maintained that the key to understanding the "Japanese spirit" lies with our perception of the universe as a unified, dynamic whole. All of creation is a manifestation of the Absolute, produced by the interaction of Yin and Yang according to definite laws of change. Humanity is the fast product of his immense process. We form an infinitesimally, small part of the Absolute, but also have the unique destiny and privilege of returning to its Source. If we can understand this way of looking at the world, we can appreciate the importance of gratitude, self-sacrifice, and humility in the Japanese character, as well as their attitudes towards nature, art, and education.
Around 1930 in Paris Olhsawa became familiar with the work of Professor Lucien Levy-Bruhl. Levy-Bruhl was one of' the pioneers of the study of' so-called primitive peoples. Using the observations of' explorers and missionaries he wrote a number of acclaimed hooks on the culture of the primitives. In 1922 he published Le Mentalite Primitive, attempting to describe the mentality and the world view of preliterate people. When Ohsawa read this hook two things occurred to him. One was that the mentality of the primitives was basically the same as that of the ancient and traditional Japanese. The other was that it was impossible for a Western intellectual like Levy-Bruhl to really comprehend this world view. The domain of the Western scientific mind was the material world. The tools it used to study this world were observation measurement, analysis, and conceptualization. The world of the primitive was the invisible world of the spirit. It could never be grasped by science. When Ohsawa personally met Levy-Bruhl, he promised him that he would write a book, as a primitive man himself, explaining the primitive mind.
In his books published in French in 1931 Ohsawa briefly touched on the subject. However, it was not until he wrote Le Livre du Judo in 1952 that he completely fulfilled his promise, although in 1943 he did write a long, detailed study in Japanese called The Japanese Spirit and the Primitive Spirit. Using Levy-Bruhl's book as a reference, Ohsawa discusses the various characteristics of the primitive mind and their parallels in Japanese thought. The occasion for this book was the conquest by the Japanese army of land in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific where many primitive peoples lived. Ohsawa was afraid that the Japanese would treat these people as inferiors, just as the West had done. He argued that they should be treated as equals and as brethren who shared the essential world view of the Japanese. They had been waiting patiently, Ohsawa claimed, for the Imperial armies to release them from the grip of Western colonialism and materialism.
In this book, as yet untranslated, Ohsawa examines the various aspects of the primitive mind as they are presented by Levy-Bruhl. He tries to show that they derived from the same basic view of the universe as a unified, vital organism, with humanity as a minor, dependent part of it. Thus the attitude of gratitude and humility is clear in all aspects of primitive life. When "primitives" kill an animal for food they beg its forgiveness and offer it thanks for its self-sacrifice. The sense of individuality is scarcely developed. A primitive shown a photograph of his tribe will be able to identify everyone in it but himself. Individuals almost completely identify themselves with their tribal group. Describing a battle that occurred ten generations ago they will say, for example, "I defeated my enemy" here.
For the primitive, nature is a nourishing mother and all creatures and objects share the same essence as humanity. In walking through a forest, primitive people feel that they are among brothers and sisters rather than among trees. For some it is as unthinkable to crush or break a rock as to unnecessarily slay an animal.
The primitive is also deeply aware of a spiritual realm. This realm is separate and distinct from the material world, but it is constantly affecting events within the visible world. In fact the primitive believes that the true cause of events is in the invisible world. The material causes are only apparent causes, not the real ones. The seeming cause of pregnancy and the birth of a child, for example, is intercourse between a man and woman. The real cause, however, is the choice of the soul of the child to be born of those parents at that time and place. All accidents, sickness, and deaths have a hidden cause. If a man is killed by a falling tree, there is an immediate investigation to find the real cause. Someone harbors a grudge against him, a witch has put a curse on him, or perhaps a tabu has been violated.
The importance of this spiritual world can be seen also in the primitives' attitude towards dreams and in their treatment of the dead. They believe that in dreams we participate directly in the hidden spiritual world. Dreams are seen as omens that foretell happenings in the material world. Events in the dream world are considered as real as events in the material world. If a man dreams that his neighbor has come and stolen his pig, he is entitled to go the next day to demand reparation. When people die they are not lost to the community; they remain active, important members but in another form. Offerings are regularly made so that ancestors' souls may be nourished, and ancestors are consulted on important issues. It is believed that the dead constantly affect the course of events in the visible world.
Ohsawa pointed out that this deep concern with the spiritual world is also an important aspect of Japanese culture. What has been labelled by Westerners as "ancestor worship" in Japan actually comes from the view that the dead continue to exist, and must be nourished, respected, and consulted by the living. In traditional Japan, sicknesses were often believed to be the result of possession by evil spirits. Even in Japan today there are flourishing religious groups which maintain this belief and practice rites of exorcism. Once in Japan, when leaving to go for a walk at dusk through the woods, I was warned by a friend, half seriously, "Be careful, don't be bewitched by a fox!" In everyday conversation, if someone asks you how you are feeling, the standard reply is "Ji, o-kago same de.", Ji means "fine". 0-kago-same de literally means something like, "thanks to the honorable shade." Although I used this countless times in Japan, I never really understood the meaning behind it. According to Ohsawa, the "shade" referred to the dark, mysterious spirit world. In other words, if we are feeling well it's thanks to the invisible world which surrounds and sustains us.
Thus Ohsawa presented the primitive mentality to his fellow Japanese and made a convincing case for its basic similarity to the spirit of traditional Japan. Part of his aim was to gain sympathy for the primitives who had become a part of the Japanese Empire. Part also was to remind the modern Japanese of the nature of the ancient and true Yamato-damashii, the soul of Japan.
>From his earliest writings in Japanese (The Physiology of the Japanese Spirit-1927 and the Macrobiotic Lectures-1929) Ohsawa argued that Japan had lost its true spirit. Modernization had brought Western science, education, philosophy, and art. The old ways had been discarded. Individualism, materialism, hedonism had supplanted the communal ethic and the spiritual values of the nation. While not invaded, Japan had been spiritually colonized by tier own urge to Westernize. Ohsawa compared the nation to a humble crow who pulls out its own feathers and tries to put on the fallen plumage of a peacock. It is a pitiful and self-destructive effort. He urged that the traditional ways be reexamined and used again. He urged Japan to rediscover her true soul.
The area of life that Ohsawa felt to be crucial was that of diet and nutrition. He maintained that the physical, psychological, and even spiritual characteristics of a people were largely a product of their daily food. For hundreds of years the Japanese lived close to the land and the fruits of the land: grains, vegetables, fish, and local fruit. This diet was the basis of the physical and mental life of the nation. >From it came the Oarticular view of the world, the habits of mind, the behavior which could be called "the Japangse spirit." With the importation of 'Western science and culture came new ideas about diet and nutrition. Japanese eating habits began to change to include foods never before used or used only in very small quantity: red meat, eggs, dairy foods, tropical fruits, refined sugar, etc,
Ohsawa maintained that this change in eating habits was responsible for the physical and spiritual degeneration of Japan. It had become, he said, the sickest nation in the world, with the highest tuberculosis and in ' fant mortality rates. Also, the people were losing their sense of gratilude and humility, their willingness to sacrifice for the greater gqod,- and their sense of kinship with the world of nature. The spiritual purpose of life had been forgotten. The traditional arts had been replaced by the latest Western fadi, and the discipline of the ancient martial arts by training in the methods of mass murder. For Ohsawa, the modern Japanese were "imitation" Japanese. Eating the food of the West, they had begun to think and feel like Westerners and had forsaken their true identity.
The way for the Japanese to regain their soul was to return to the traditional diet, produced by and in harmony with the natural environment. Likewise, the best way for a Westerner to achieve a true understanding of the primitive spirit was to follow this same diet and way of life. Intellectual analysis could give only a lifeless and theoretical appreciation. Ohsawa tells the story of a Frenchman who had given up his career as a banker to study at the Buddhist monastic center on Mount Koya. Despite long periods of intense study he was frustrated. The heart of Buddhism remained closed to him. Ohsawa questioned him and learned that each Sunday he had left the mountain, taken a train to the city, and dined richly on Western foods in a modern hotel in Osaka. Ohsawa tells the man to go back and live strictly on the simple vegetarian fare of the monks. Then he would understand the essence of Japanese Buddhism.
While in Japan I occasionally visited an American friend who lived deep in the mountains. We had both been eating mainly grains and vegetables for about ten years. Each morning we ran through the mountains and stopped for a dip in an icy pool. It was a beautiful spot, with walls of thick green trees reflected in the clear water. Each time before we went into the water we stopped and clapped our hands two or three times. That is the traditional Shinto way of summoning and reverencing the spirits. I don't think it was an affectation. We did it naturally and without self-consciousness. The spirits were there. We could feel them and we wished to thank them for the beauty of the moment and the place. "
Thank you, very much.
Be well, be your best, and be blessed!
Bruce Paine
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Why Right Brain/Left Brain? by Sherman Goldman
WHY RIGHT BRAIN/LEFT BRAIN?
Dr. Tsunoda's approach to the Japanese mentality has such a wide range of applications because it starts from a basic physical principle that rules the way all human beings think: the left and right hemispheres of our brain control two different and complementary types of thought.. When we appreciate the beauty of a landscape, form an image that synthesizes a whole area in one insight, or listen to music, for example, the right side of our brain is functioning. On the other hand, if we are calculating our budget, forming a logical argument, or checking off details, the left side of our brain is at work. In other words, we seem to have not one but two brains, and they sort out all our mental activity into two opposite and polarized categories.
It's amazing enough to discover that all our thinking is assigned to one of two counterbalanced areas, but to be told that these mental areas belong to two parts of our body is a fundamental shock. The theory is so powerful, not only because it shows the basic complementary of all thinking so neatly but also because it firmly closes the split between mind and body.
Such a basic discovery has many applications, but it rests on a theorem that remains unexplained. Why does the right side of our brain perform the nonlogical functions, while the left side takes care of verbal activities? The principle of yin and yang offers a clue to this question.
That principle involves looking at all phenomena in terms of their context. Thus we must see how the fight and left sides of the body as a whole function, in order to understand the work of the fight and left brains. Further, we must know how the right and left sides of the body acquired their characteristics from the larger forces in the environment that gave the body its right/left structure,
The complementarity of right brain and left brain thinking is an expression of the complementarity that runs through all of nature and can be grasped in terms of yin and yang. Yin stands for expansive, outward-moving, relaxing, centrifugal tendencies; yang stands for the contracting, inward-moving, focusing, centripetal forces. In terms of our vertical posture on the surface of the earth, for example, down is yang (in toward the center of the globe), and up is yin. In scientific categories, gravity is an example of a yang force, and the growth of plants upward is an example of a yin counter tendency. Precipitation is the yang half of a cycle that is completed by the yin phase of evaporation from bodies of water. Structure and function in nature represent the complementary union of these two antagonistic, paired forces.
The head and torso are complementary structures of the body, as the yin and yang parts of one living organism. The brain is a soft, convoluted organ that occupies the major upper segment of our head, and the intestines are a soft, convoluted organ that occupies the major lower portion of our torso. the intestines coil clockwise, moving down the left side and up the right; thus, on our left side, yang predominates, and on the right side, yin. This configuration is formed during the uterine stage of development as the embryo grows within its mother, subject to the clockwise force field of planetary rotation.
If the intestines are -not optimally developed at birth, because of inappropriate factors in the mother's diet during pregnancy, the infant will tend to lie on its stomach rather than on its back, in an automatic effort to stimulate the development of that organ. Since right and left-handedness develop tinder the influence of the earth's clockwise force field at this postnatal stage, the minority of individuals who are left-handed owe their uniqueness to the prone rather than supine position they took during this stage of development. Regardless of whether we're right-handed or lefthanded, however, when we reach the stage of standing upright, the prenatally set direction of tendencies clockwise for the internal organs means that yin forces moving upward from the earth are stronger on the right side, and yang tendencies prevail on the left side.
This pattern of forces can be tested with a simple physical experiment, using any small, feffomagnetic object, such as steel nailclippers attached to a thread. Suspended a couple of inches over alternate hands, it will rotate clockwise above the right palm and counterclockwise above the left. The direction of yin, ascending tendencies is clockwise, as in the pattern of leaves on a stem, the growth of vines on trees, etc. The direction of yang, downward force fields is counterclockwise, as cyclonic weather patterns visible from satellite photographs, whirlpools of water, etc.
A more intuitive, less technical confirmation of the upward and downward tendencies of our right and left sides is noticeable in our general preference for using the right hand to throw and the left to catch. If asked to raise a window that's stuck, most people will use their right hand for pushing up and the left as support. The same yin and yang tendencies that rule the right and left sides of our bodies as a whole are also responsible for the complementary functioning of our right and left brain hemispheres.
Holistic types of thinking, controlled by the right brain, are directed outward toward the periphery that encompasses a subject and gives it form; analytic thought, handled by the left brain, focuses inward on the parts located within a surrounding whole. Thus, enjoying the artistic integrity of a painting requires an expansive kind of freely floating attention that is quite different from the concentration involved in mathematical calculations. Metaphors used to describe-- mental events betray a parahel sense for yin and yang, as image arose in his mind" or "the writer plucked words from the air." However the most obvious evidence for the yin nature of the right side of our brains and the yang nature of the left side appeus in the way people tilt their heads when using the right or left brain.
When working on some artistic task, like visualizing the monthly issue of EWJ as a whole, or coming up with an attractive cover, people in the office will think with the right side of the head tilted over the center of the neck in an automatic effort to maximize the vertical flow of energy through that hemisphere. When engaged in detailed work, like measuring article lengths or proofreading, they will tilt their heads the other way to focus energy through the left hemisphere.
The most practical, immediate application for this understanding of yin and yang running through the body is in medicine, and next month EWJ will b~gin a series of articles explaining that subject in terms of these complementary tendencies. A survey of yin and yang, features on the face will serve as an introduction here to that series. Every individual represents the union of two complementary ancestors, a male and a female, and those paired factors appear on the left and right sides of the face. The constitutional heritage from the father appears on the left side and that from the mother on the right, according to the relatively yin and yang tendencies of women and men. This pattern can be checked with the same kind of simple pendulum used for testing the force fields of the right and left hands.
Held over the head of a person sitting quietly, the pendulum will rotate counterclockwise in the case of a man and clockwise for a woman. In order to resolve the skepticism that this experiment seems to evoke, one can note the complementary direction of hair growth patterns in men and women. The hair on top of women's heads spirals out clockwise from a central origin located slightly behind the top of the skull; on men it spirals inward and counterclockwise. In order to avoid possible misinter-pretation of these facts, one should keep in mind that yin and yang are relative, not absolute terms. They always appear in combination, and nothing is absolutely yin or yang. Men represent a merging of the two in which yang factors outweigh the yin, and vice versa. Obviously, if the right side of the body, for example, represented nothing but yin it would have floated up into the sky while the left side plunmieted into the ground. The only chiracteristic being discussed here is the father's heritage appearing more on the left side of the face and the mother's on the right.
Looking in a mirror one can see that the two sides of the face are not exactly equal; one side tends to be tighter than the other. With an imaginary line drawn down the middle of the features, the side with firmer features is not as wide as the other. On the smaller side the eye -appears to take up less room; that side is more actively involved in smiling or gritting the teeth; the tip of the nose bends slightly toward the tighter side. If the right side of the face is the firmer one, the mother was constitutionally stronger than the father, and vice-versa.
If both parents are not alive, one can check this method of facial examination by confirming the fact that the parent with the weaker constitution died first. If both parents are alive, the one with less serious health problems is the stronger by basic constitution and tends to be the dominant partner in the marriage. After checking one's own facial diagnosis against one's family history, one can study the faces of friends and ask them about their parents for further validation.
The lives of people whose mothers were much stronger than their fathers are in striking contrast to those whose parental background was the opposite. The cultural implications, as in the tendency for noted painters to have had unusually dynamic fathers and for a surprising number of great writers to have had extremely strong mothers, return one to the Tsunoda theory.
The most important accomplishment of that theory may be its having so clearly established the importance of language in setting the character of a culture. A danger of the theory is in its liability to be misinterpreted, so that one side of brain functioning is considered I 'good" to the exclusion of the other. In practice, of course, no truly creative thought can be either purely right brain or left brain, nonverbal or linguistic. A formative idea is the union of a clear image with an appropriate phrase.
As Steve Earle's article on the Tsunoda theory points out, certain peculiarly peaceful aspects of Japanese culture may be traceable to the structure of their language. If we are to create one peaceful world, we must rediscover the ancient language of humanity that spoke as naturally as the snow falling from heaven and the wind rising in the trees. -S.G.
Dr. Tsunoda's approach to the Japanese mentality has such a wide range of applications because it starts from a basic physical principle that rules the way all human beings think: the left and right hemispheres of our brain control two different and complementary types of thought.. When we appreciate the beauty of a landscape, form an image that synthesizes a whole area in one insight, or listen to music, for example, the right side of our brain is functioning. On the other hand, if we are calculating our budget, forming a logical argument, or checking off details, the left side of our brain is at work. In other words, we seem to have not one but two brains, and they sort out all our mental activity into two opposite and polarized categories.
It's amazing enough to discover that all our thinking is assigned to one of two counterbalanced areas, but to be told that these mental areas belong to two parts of our body is a fundamental shock. The theory is so powerful, not only because it shows the basic complementary of all thinking so neatly but also because it firmly closes the split between mind and body.
Such a basic discovery has many applications, but it rests on a theorem that remains unexplained. Why does the right side of our brain perform the nonlogical functions, while the left side takes care of verbal activities? The principle of yin and yang offers a clue to this question.
That principle involves looking at all phenomena in terms of their context. Thus we must see how the fight and left sides of the body as a whole function, in order to understand the work of the fight and left brains. Further, we must know how the right and left sides of the body acquired their characteristics from the larger forces in the environment that gave the body its right/left structure,
The complementarity of right brain and left brain thinking is an expression of the complementarity that runs through all of nature and can be grasped in terms of yin and yang. Yin stands for expansive, outward-moving, relaxing, centrifugal tendencies; yang stands for the contracting, inward-moving, focusing, centripetal forces. In terms of our vertical posture on the surface of the earth, for example, down is yang (in toward the center of the globe), and up is yin. In scientific categories, gravity is an example of a yang force, and the growth of plants upward is an example of a yin counter tendency. Precipitation is the yang half of a cycle that is completed by the yin phase of evaporation from bodies of water. Structure and function in nature represent the complementary union of these two antagonistic, paired forces.
The head and torso are complementary structures of the body, as the yin and yang parts of one living organism. The brain is a soft, convoluted organ that occupies the major upper segment of our head, and the intestines are a soft, convoluted organ that occupies the major lower portion of our torso. the intestines coil clockwise, moving down the left side and up the right; thus, on our left side, yang predominates, and on the right side, yin. This configuration is formed during the uterine stage of development as the embryo grows within its mother, subject to the clockwise force field of planetary rotation.
If the intestines are -not optimally developed at birth, because of inappropriate factors in the mother's diet during pregnancy, the infant will tend to lie on its stomach rather than on its back, in an automatic effort to stimulate the development of that organ. Since right and left-handedness develop tinder the influence of the earth's clockwise force field at this postnatal stage, the minority of individuals who are left-handed owe their uniqueness to the prone rather than supine position they took during this stage of development. Regardless of whether we're right-handed or lefthanded, however, when we reach the stage of standing upright, the prenatally set direction of tendencies clockwise for the internal organs means that yin forces moving upward from the earth are stronger on the right side, and yang tendencies prevail on the left side.
This pattern of forces can be tested with a simple physical experiment, using any small, feffomagnetic object, such as steel nailclippers attached to a thread. Suspended a couple of inches over alternate hands, it will rotate clockwise above the right palm and counterclockwise above the left. The direction of yin, ascending tendencies is clockwise, as in the pattern of leaves on a stem, the growth of vines on trees, etc. The direction of yang, downward force fields is counterclockwise, as cyclonic weather patterns visible from satellite photographs, whirlpools of water, etc.
A more intuitive, less technical confirmation of the upward and downward tendencies of our right and left sides is noticeable in our general preference for using the right hand to throw and the left to catch. If asked to raise a window that's stuck, most people will use their right hand for pushing up and the left as support. The same yin and yang tendencies that rule the right and left sides of our bodies as a whole are also responsible for the complementary functioning of our right and left brain hemispheres.
Holistic types of thinking, controlled by the right brain, are directed outward toward the periphery that encompasses a subject and gives it form; analytic thought, handled by the left brain, focuses inward on the parts located within a surrounding whole. Thus, enjoying the artistic integrity of a painting requires an expansive kind of freely floating attention that is quite different from the concentration involved in mathematical calculations. Metaphors used to describe-- mental events betray a parahel sense for yin and yang, as image arose in his mind" or "the writer plucked words from the air." However the most obvious evidence for the yin nature of the right side of our brains and the yang nature of the left side appeus in the way people tilt their heads when using the right or left brain.
When working on some artistic task, like visualizing the monthly issue of EWJ as a whole, or coming up with an attractive cover, people in the office will think with the right side of the head tilted over the center of the neck in an automatic effort to maximize the vertical flow of energy through that hemisphere. When engaged in detailed work, like measuring article lengths or proofreading, they will tilt their heads the other way to focus energy through the left hemisphere.
The most practical, immediate application for this understanding of yin and yang running through the body is in medicine, and next month EWJ will b~gin a series of articles explaining that subject in terms of these complementary tendencies. A survey of yin and yang, features on the face will serve as an introduction here to that series. Every individual represents the union of two complementary ancestors, a male and a female, and those paired factors appear on the left and right sides of the face. The constitutional heritage from the father appears on the left side and that from the mother on the right, according to the relatively yin and yang tendencies of women and men. This pattern can be checked with the same kind of simple pendulum used for testing the force fields of the right and left hands.
Held over the head of a person sitting quietly, the pendulum will rotate counterclockwise in the case of a man and clockwise for a woman. In order to resolve the skepticism that this experiment seems to evoke, one can note the complementary direction of hair growth patterns in men and women. The hair on top of women's heads spirals out clockwise from a central origin located slightly behind the top of the skull; on men it spirals inward and counterclockwise. In order to avoid possible misinter-pretation of these facts, one should keep in mind that yin and yang are relative, not absolute terms. They always appear in combination, and nothing is absolutely yin or yang. Men represent a merging of the two in which yang factors outweigh the yin, and vice versa. Obviously, if the right side of the body, for example, represented nothing but yin it would have floated up into the sky while the left side plunmieted into the ground. The only chiracteristic being discussed here is the father's heritage appearing more on the left side of the face and the mother's on the right.
Looking in a mirror one can see that the two sides of the face are not exactly equal; one side tends to be tighter than the other. With an imaginary line drawn down the middle of the features, the side with firmer features is not as wide as the other. On the smaller side the eye -appears to take up less room; that side is more actively involved in smiling or gritting the teeth; the tip of the nose bends slightly toward the tighter side. If the right side of the face is the firmer one, the mother was constitutionally stronger than the father, and vice-versa.
If both parents are not alive, one can check this method of facial examination by confirming the fact that the parent with the weaker constitution died first. If both parents are alive, the one with less serious health problems is the stronger by basic constitution and tends to be the dominant partner in the marriage. After checking one's own facial diagnosis against one's family history, one can study the faces of friends and ask them about their parents for further validation.
The lives of people whose mothers were much stronger than their fathers are in striking contrast to those whose parental background was the opposite. The cultural implications, as in the tendency for noted painters to have had unusually dynamic fathers and for a surprising number of great writers to have had extremely strong mothers, return one to the Tsunoda theory.
The most important accomplishment of that theory may be its having so clearly established the importance of language in setting the character of a culture. A danger of the theory is in its liability to be misinterpreted, so that one side of brain functioning is considered I 'good" to the exclusion of the other. In practice, of course, no truly creative thought can be either purely right brain or left brain, nonverbal or linguistic. A formative idea is the union of a clear image with an appropriate phrase.
As Steve Earle's article on the Tsunoda theory points out, certain peculiarly peaceful aspects of Japanese culture may be traceable to the structure of their language. If we are to create one peaceful world, we must rediscover the ancient language of humanity that spoke as naturally as the snow falling from heaven and the wind rising in the trees. -S.G.
Monday, May 26, 2008
What is so different about the Japanese? What makes them so amiable and friendly, yet at times so downright irrational and so hard to understand?
Questions regarding Japanese mentality have been perplexing people since the first visit of the Chinese recorded in the Chronicles of Wei or the initial mission of Saint Francis Xavier. Hundreds of writers-from I.afcadio Hearn to Ruth Benedict, Edwin Reischauer, Daisetz Suzuki and Georges Ohsawa have written thousands of books trying to explain the seeming enigmas of the Japanese mind.
Even the Japanese themselves insist that they are different, and a veritable Mt. Fuji of literature in Japanese examines the uniqueness of Japan and Japanese ctilttire from every conceivable angle, yet the paradox still remains.
Why so amazingly, diligent and hard-working yet so fond of cultural pastimes such as the tea ceremony and zazen that place great emphasis on sitting quietly for long periods of time? Why so culturally and aesthetically in tune with nature, yet so shockingly disrespectful and abusive toward the natural environment where capital and industry are involved? Why so generally sincere and honest, yet so treacherously difficult to do business with? Why so spiritually, aspiring yet so carried away with fun and rice wine? And why, with all that is so exquisitely simple and refined in traditional culture, is modern Japan so entranced with the most gaudy Western trappings?
These and the many other curious attitudes and idiosyncracies which have been commonly acknowledged by foreign and Japanese observers seem to defy any single explanation. They can not be blamed upon racial characteristics, for example, as the people called Japanese are the result of long intermingling between various racial groups from both north and south.
Could the underlying cause be dietary habits or other environmental factors? The Japanese Diet and environment are not that from those of other Asian countries. Nor does the factor of Japan's being an isolated island country provide a sufficient explanation, because no other island
peoples possess the paradoxical traits of the Japanese.
In fact, for all of their isolation, almost every one of their major cultural institutions was imported. Almost everything that is "traditional" about Japanese culture-from kimonos to rock gardens to Buddhist temples to the martial arts-came originally from China, and of course the modern visage is taken from the West. The enigma is precisely that the same characteristic attitudes and mentality have persisted through such enormous cultural transition and change.
In the autumn of 1978 Dr. Tsunoda Tadanobu of Tokyo Medical Dental College offered 'an entirely new approach to these questions in a book entitled The Japanese Brain (Tokyo: Daishukan Shoten). As yet to be translated into English, The Japanese Brain and the "Tsunoda Theory" have created a minor sensation in Japanese intellectual circles.
Dr. Tsunoda is a specialist on hearing and speech disorders. His interest in the problems that follow cerebral strokes had led him into research on relative functions of the brain's right and left hemispheres where he first noticed some startling inconsistencies between conventional theory and the responses of his Japanese subjects.
It is now a well recognized fact that the left hemisphere of the brain in almost all human beings is dominant in verbal and logical thought processes. A stroke in the left hemisphere almost invariable results in total disruption or loss of those abilities. Dr. Tsunoda was searching for ways to develop verbal capabilities in the right hemisphere in order to avoid or overcome such otherwise permanent disabilities, when he stumbled upon his discoveries about the uniqueness of the Japanese brain functions.
He had begun his experiments by running tests on normal subjects in order to understand the function of right and left hemispheres in sound perception. As expected, mechanical sounds and musical sounds were all received in the right, nonverbal hemisphere. However, one day he happened to play a tape of his own voice pronouncing the simple sound "ah" and to his complete surprise he noticed that it registered in the left verbal hemispheres of his subjects. Further checking showed that even when the vocal "ah" Sound was harmonically very similar to the "ah" sound played on a violin, the vocal "ah" registered in the left hemisphere, while the violin sound registered invariably in the right.
When some Western scientists visited Tokyo for a research symposium, Dr. Tsunoda checked his testing methods and results against theirs. Everything was in line with what they had proved in their own countries except for the "ah" sound from the human voice being registered in the left hemisphere of Japanese subjects instead of the right hemisphere, where conventional theory said it should go.
Dr. Tsunoda then began experimenting with a wide assortment of non Japanese subjects among Tokyo's resident foreign population. They included North Americans, South Americans, Europeans from almost every European language group, Africans, Middle Easterners, Indians, Australians, New Zealanders, Philippinos, Chinese, and Koreans. He began experimenting with a wider varietv of sounds than before. He found that in all cases the vowel sounds were registered as verbal (in the left hemisphere) for his Japanese subjects and as nonverbal (in the right hemisphere) for everyone else-including the Koreans and the Chinese.
The human brain remains one of the most puzzling parts of our anatomy, especially with regard to its capacity for higher thought processes. For all of its success when applied to the material world, science has made very little progress toward any precise measurement of thought itself.
All that had been determined with a fair amount of precision so far is the mapping of which parts of the brain control which functions.
Most of the instinctive, emotional, and subconscious thought processes oc cur in the allocortex, which is located closest to the brain stem and is the earliest in evolutionary development. The outermost neocortex, where more advanced thought processes occur, accounts for 90 percent of the total cortex area in a human being. The gradual evolutionary extension, of the human forehead matches the development of the frontal and prefrontal lcobes, where most of the rationally creative thought processes take place.
Physical functions of the two sides of the body are generally controlled by the opposite hemispheres of the brain; thus, the right hand is controlled by the left hemisphere, and the left hand by the right hemisphere. Right-handedness in about nine out of ten people mirrors dominance of the cerebral left hemisphere, while the cerebral right hemisphere is dominant in hand functions of the remaining one-out-of-ten left handers.
The higher thinking processese.g., rationality and creativity-are closely related, to the cognition of verbal language. So much of our thinking, including memory and the self-awareness that is consciousness itself, is either measured in or is a direct function of language, that to take words away from us is to take away. most of what is human-as Dr. Tsunoda knew all too well from his experience with victims of apoplexy in the left, verbal hemisphere.
Because verbal processes are primarily a function of the left hemisphere, and nonverbal processes (such as appreciating music) are functions of the right hemisphere, the left half of the brain is often called the major or dominant hemisphere and the right half is called the minor or nondominant hemisphere.
According to contemporary theory, all nonverbal sounds--be they sounds of the human voice other than words like "ah", "eh", "ee", "oh", and "oo"), tones of musical instruments, sounds of nature, or mechanical sounds are registered in the minor, nondominant, right half of the brain. That's why Dr. Tsunoda was amazed when the vocal sound of "ah" registered verbally with his Japanese subjects-i.e., in their left instead of right hemisphere.
In subsequent testing Tsunoda discovered that the four other principal vowel sounds (i, u, e, and o) also registered with his Japanese subjects as if they were words instead of just sounds.
Was there some kind of anatomical or physiological difference in the makeup of the Japanese brain? It seemed impossible.
Dr. Tsunoda further discovered that these responses were characteristic of anyone born or brought up in the Japanese language environment. He was surprised to find that despite all of the racial, cultural, and even linguistic similarities between the Japanese and their closest neighbors, the Koreans, all first generation Koreans responded the same way as Europeans, whereas Korean children brought up in Japan responded like Japanese children. Furthermore, European children brought up in Japan also responded like Japanese children. Even stranger, all second and third generation Japanese brought up abroad lost this singular characteristic ability in direct proportion to their lack of exposure to the mother tongue. By the third generation these racial Japanese usually showed exactly the same brain functions as the people of the society into which they were born.
Evidently this peculiar mechanism of hearing was neither racial nor hereditary: rather, it was a direct result of some special factor in the language environment.
Only a brief look at the phonetic construction of the Japanese language is necessary in order to identify this special characteristic. Japanese is constructed from fifty simple sounds shown in the accompanying chart.
(An additional twenty-five variations of these sounds, Plus the single sound "n", are also used; however, for the sake of simplicity these will not be considered here.) Although the Japanese language has gone through considerable transformation-this the language used in such traditional arts as the noh plays and kabuki is no longer understandable to modern ears-it is an outstanding fact that these fifty basic sounds have remained the same since earliest time.
In Japanese the vowel sounds, a, i, u, e, and o are called "mother sounds," and are considered the mother or originative elements of spoken sound, as their position in the right-hand column indicates. Coupled with nine other consonant "parents" k, t, s, n, h, m, y, r, and w, they form forty-five "child sounds" to complete the basic fifty syllables.
Note that the consonant parent is always sounded first and the final emphasis of the syllable is always the vowel component; thus, the consonant beginning always turns into a vowel ending.
The importance of vowel sounds in Japanese is further demonstrated by the peculiar fact that Japanese is the only language known where all of the vowel sounds also function as meaningful words in themselves. There are occasional examples of single vowel sounds possessing limited meaning in other languages-such as the indefinite article "a" in English-however the multiple possible meanings of each of the five vowels in Japanese is unprecedented. The single sound of "i", for example, has meanings as various as "stomach", "consciousness", and "difference". Furthermore, each of the vowel sounds can be written with between ten and fifty different ideograms, each with a different meaning.
Dr. Tsunoda mentions another key aspect of vowel importance in his book. Take an English text-the text of this paragraph for example-and strike out all of the vowels. Y wli fnd tht y cn rd th txt wth cmprt~ly Ittl dffclty. The same holds true for texts in any of the European languages if observed by a native speaker. In fact, Hebrew is normally written without any vowel sounds at all; merely by seeing the written consonants the reader of Hebrew normally supplies the appropriate vowels from the context. On the contrary, a transliteration of Japanese into the Roman alphabet without the use of vowels is usually undecipherable-or capable of being deciphered into several different texts of completely different meaning.
The crucial factor in the language environment responsible for the strange phenomenon observed by Dr. Tsunoda is this particular emphasis upon vowel sounds in Japanese.
In all of Dr. Tsunoda's subjects, music was invariably registered in the nonverbal, right hemisphere. Where language was included with music, however, as in the case of songs, the response shifted immediately to the verbal half. in general, wherever sounds of speech were present in any mixture, the center of hearing switched imniediately to the verbal left.
Dr. Tsunoda has theorized that a switch mechanism is located somewhere within the human hearing mechanism that distinguishes between verbal and non-verbal sounds. This switch registers either right or left, depending upon what kind of sound is being received. According to Dr. Tsunoda's findings however, word sounds are always dominant, no matter what background they are received against.
Dr. Tsunoda also noticed that the consumption of stimulants, including coffee and tea, sedatives, alcohol, smelling agents such as annnonia, and tobacco, had a detrimental influence upon the function of this switch mechanism. He discovered that after smoking even one cigarette, the switch mechanism of the subject was impaired for one hour or longer.
The switch mechanism in a relaxed state apparently remains open to both the right and left hemispheres. In this open state humans exhibit what is called divergent thinking, or imaginative, uncontrolled, and especially receptive thought processes. The opposite kind of convergent thinking, or rational and logical thought processes working toward a particular end, take!
The switch mechanism is directed toward the left or verbal hemisphere. What Dr. Tsunoda noticed with regard to tobacco and the other agents listed above was that after finishing with a verbal process the switch mechanism did not move back to its relaxed and open state. In other words, the mind stayed fixed in a state of convergent thought rather than relaxing.
The divergent or imaginative state is the source of fresh ideas and new mental perspectives. By inducing a state of stress, alterants such as tobacco, coffee, and alcohol interfere with our capacity for creative thought. In view of the large quantities in which these items are now being consumed, both in Japan and elsewhere, it is startling to consider the influence they may be having on human creative capability in the world today.
The peculiar response of Dr. Tsunoda's Japanese subjects to single, vowel sounds out of context with ordinary language seemed to be an idiosyncrasy of the Japanese language environment with very little further philosophic importance. Then, one autumn evening about a year after his original discovery, Dr. Tsunoda sat with his window open trying to compose a written statement about his findings. The sound of a Japanese cricket heard through the open window distracted him so completely that he sat listening for a couple of hours without accomplishing anything. Tsunoda's scientific mind went to work on this phenomenon. There were technical difficulties involved with getting the cricket sound on tape in a pure enough form for his clinical tests, and there was also the ridicule and criticism of his contemporaries over the apparent mearinglessness of such a test. Yet the cricket question intrigued him so much that he followed through until he was able to obtain results. The cricket sound, like the sound of "ah", was registered verbally with his Japanese subjects!
Then proceeded a whole new series of tests and a whole barage of new discoveries. Tsunoda experimented with the sounds of other insects, the sounds of birds, dogs, cats, cows, pigs, horses, and lions. He also included nonverbal sounds of the human voice, such as laughter, crying, sounds of anger, baby sounds and snoring. Sure enough, all of these registered verbally with his Japanese subjects while they registered nonverbally with all of his foreign subjects. what's more, sounds of nonanimate nature-the sound of waves, wind, rain -all registered verbally! It seemed that his Japanese subjects were putting the whole gamut of sounds from nature in the left sides of their brains.
Perhaps the most baffling and astounding discovery was that, whereas it had been assumed that music was unconditionally a function of the right hemisphere, the sounds of the traditional Japanese musical instruments, such as the shakuhachi, the koto, and the samisen, were all heard verbally by his Japanese subjects. Needless to say they were heard nonverbally by his European and other non-Japanese subjects.
The cultural implications of Tsunoda's findings were enormous. Right and left cognition in the Japanese brain seemed to be divided according to a different set of criteria from that used by foreign subjects.
DOMINANT HEMISPHERE .................NON-DOMINANT HEMISPHERE
(Left brain) .............................(Right brain)
Language.............................Music
Consonant sounds.....Sounds made by musical instruments
Computation.......................... Mechanical sounds
.................................................Vowel Sounds
.................................................Human sounds: ......................................laughing, moaning, crying
..............................snoring, humming, throat sounds
JAPANESE
DOMINANT HEMISPHERE ..............NON-DOMINANT HEMISPHERE
(Left brain)......................(Right brain)
Language ................................Music
Consonant sounds...........Sounds made by
...........................................musical instruments
............................................(other than Japanese)
Vowel sounds .........................Mechanical sounds
Sounds of Japanese
musical instruments
Insect sounds
Animal Sounds
Computation
The affinity of Japanese culture with nature seemed to be directly linked with these mental processes specifically, sounds of nature were being heard verbally, just as though nature were talking-hence, the traditional concept of hundreds of thousands of "kami" or, spirits that existed in each and every natural phenomenon, and hence the special fascination for nonverbal processes such as zazen (zen meditation) and tea ceremony. The development of nonverbal processes was both a form of relaxation and a necessity in order to maintain individual mental and spiritual equilibrium between the right brain and the overburdened left brain.
Dr. Tsunoda developed the concept of what he calls "vowel-oriented culture" and "consonant-oriented culture." Vowel-oriented culture (i.e., Japanese culture) is based on the perception of vowel sounds. Tsunoda speculates that the sounds of nature resemble these pure vowel sounds. They sound like meaningful Japanese words, but not of course like meaningful words for speakers of other languages, which are all consonant -oriented. Consequently, phenomena are not divided between verbal and nonverbal for the Japanese as they are with other cultures. Instead, argues Tsunoda, the Japanese divide phenomena into living and nonliving in a special way. Living includes the human voice as well as the sounds of nature; what is left over-nontraditional music and most meciianical sounds-are all nonliving and go to the right or nondominant hemisphere.
Why the special status of Japanese music and musical instruments? Traditional Japanese music is acknowledged to be based upon patterns of speech, a fact which might explain why it is so hard to appreciate for non-Japanese listeners. The instruments are uncannily human sounding, and all lack the refined and sophisticated sound engineer-ing of Western instruments. The slipstream of air in the shakuhachi that reverberates like the rustling wind of a bamboo forest is a desirable effect, retained purposely, whereas it was refined out of the Western recorder and oboe a long time ago. Dr. Tsunoda makes the interesting observation that where Western instruments have been considerably changed and improved upon over the centuries (the modern piano, recognition, it remains for the most part unappreciated and misunderstood by non-Japanese. Today, when we must decide between total destruction or the beginning of one peaceful world, shouldn't Japan have something pertinent and significant to offer from her unique perspective? More than electronic equipment, shouldn't the Japanese develop and make known to the rest of the world their strong power of synthesis and capacity for creating harmony in self and surroundings? This seems to be what Georges Ohsawa, one of the individuals most responsible for introducing Japanese culture to the West was proposing in his expression of what he called "the Unique Principle," of yin and yang. [See this month's "Spirit" column--ed. ]
The brightest prospect for fundamental solutions to world-wide problems may be cultural exchange and mutual understanding between East and West. The unique vantage point of the Japanese brain on the oneness of humanity and nature could contribute substantially to the appreciation of the natural order that pervades the universe. Dr. Tsunoda's work opens up a whole new horizon for further study. Undoubtedly the greatest challenge to the human mind is that of understanding itself.
Questions regarding Japanese mentality have been perplexing people since the first visit of the Chinese recorded in the Chronicles of Wei or the initial mission of Saint Francis Xavier. Hundreds of writers-from I.afcadio Hearn to Ruth Benedict, Edwin Reischauer, Daisetz Suzuki and Georges Ohsawa have written thousands of books trying to explain the seeming enigmas of the Japanese mind.
Even the Japanese themselves insist that they are different, and a veritable Mt. Fuji of literature in Japanese examines the uniqueness of Japan and Japanese ctilttire from every conceivable angle, yet the paradox still remains.
Why so amazingly, diligent and hard-working yet so fond of cultural pastimes such as the tea ceremony and zazen that place great emphasis on sitting quietly for long periods of time? Why so culturally and aesthetically in tune with nature, yet so shockingly disrespectful and abusive toward the natural environment where capital and industry are involved? Why so generally sincere and honest, yet so treacherously difficult to do business with? Why so spiritually, aspiring yet so carried away with fun and rice wine? And why, with all that is so exquisitely simple and refined in traditional culture, is modern Japan so entranced with the most gaudy Western trappings?
These and the many other curious attitudes and idiosyncracies which have been commonly acknowledged by foreign and Japanese observers seem to defy any single explanation. They can not be blamed upon racial characteristics, for example, as the people called Japanese are the result of long intermingling between various racial groups from both north and south.
Could the underlying cause be dietary habits or other environmental factors? The Japanese Diet and environment are not that from those of other Asian countries. Nor does the factor of Japan's being an isolated island country provide a sufficient explanation, because no other island
peoples possess the paradoxical traits of the Japanese.
In fact, for all of their isolation, almost every one of their major cultural institutions was imported. Almost everything that is "traditional" about Japanese culture-from kimonos to rock gardens to Buddhist temples to the martial arts-came originally from China, and of course the modern visage is taken from the West. The enigma is precisely that the same characteristic attitudes and mentality have persisted through such enormous cultural transition and change.
In the autumn of 1978 Dr. Tsunoda Tadanobu of Tokyo Medical Dental College offered 'an entirely new approach to these questions in a book entitled The Japanese Brain (Tokyo: Daishukan Shoten). As yet to be translated into English, The Japanese Brain and the "Tsunoda Theory" have created a minor sensation in Japanese intellectual circles.
Dr. Tsunoda is a specialist on hearing and speech disorders. His interest in the problems that follow cerebral strokes had led him into research on relative functions of the brain's right and left hemispheres where he first noticed some startling inconsistencies between conventional theory and the responses of his Japanese subjects.
It is now a well recognized fact that the left hemisphere of the brain in almost all human beings is dominant in verbal and logical thought processes. A stroke in the left hemisphere almost invariable results in total disruption or loss of those abilities. Dr. Tsunoda was searching for ways to develop verbal capabilities in the right hemisphere in order to avoid or overcome such otherwise permanent disabilities, when he stumbled upon his discoveries about the uniqueness of the Japanese brain functions.
He had begun his experiments by running tests on normal subjects in order to understand the function of right and left hemispheres in sound perception. As expected, mechanical sounds and musical sounds were all received in the right, nonverbal hemisphere. However, one day he happened to play a tape of his own voice pronouncing the simple sound "ah" and to his complete surprise he noticed that it registered in the left verbal hemispheres of his subjects. Further checking showed that even when the vocal "ah" Sound was harmonically very similar to the "ah" sound played on a violin, the vocal "ah" registered in the left hemisphere, while the violin sound registered invariably in the right.
When some Western scientists visited Tokyo for a research symposium, Dr. Tsunoda checked his testing methods and results against theirs. Everything was in line with what they had proved in their own countries except for the "ah" sound from the human voice being registered in the left hemisphere of Japanese subjects instead of the right hemisphere, where conventional theory said it should go.
Dr. Tsunoda then began experimenting with a wide assortment of non Japanese subjects among Tokyo's resident foreign population. They included North Americans, South Americans, Europeans from almost every European language group, Africans, Middle Easterners, Indians, Australians, New Zealanders, Philippinos, Chinese, and Koreans. He began experimenting with a wider varietv of sounds than before. He found that in all cases the vowel sounds were registered as verbal (in the left hemisphere) for his Japanese subjects and as nonverbal (in the right hemisphere) for everyone else-including the Koreans and the Chinese.
The human brain remains one of the most puzzling parts of our anatomy, especially with regard to its capacity for higher thought processes. For all of its success when applied to the material world, science has made very little progress toward any precise measurement of thought itself.
All that had been determined with a fair amount of precision so far is the mapping of which parts of the brain control which functions.
Most of the instinctive, emotional, and subconscious thought processes oc cur in the allocortex, which is located closest to the brain stem and is the earliest in evolutionary development. The outermost neocortex, where more advanced thought processes occur, accounts for 90 percent of the total cortex area in a human being. The gradual evolutionary extension, of the human forehead matches the development of the frontal and prefrontal lcobes, where most of the rationally creative thought processes take place.
Physical functions of the two sides of the body are generally controlled by the opposite hemispheres of the brain; thus, the right hand is controlled by the left hemisphere, and the left hand by the right hemisphere. Right-handedness in about nine out of ten people mirrors dominance of the cerebral left hemisphere, while the cerebral right hemisphere is dominant in hand functions of the remaining one-out-of-ten left handers.
The higher thinking processese.g., rationality and creativity-are closely related, to the cognition of verbal language. So much of our thinking, including memory and the self-awareness that is consciousness itself, is either measured in or is a direct function of language, that to take words away from us is to take away. most of what is human-as Dr. Tsunoda knew all too well from his experience with victims of apoplexy in the left, verbal hemisphere.
Because verbal processes are primarily a function of the left hemisphere, and nonverbal processes (such as appreciating music) are functions of the right hemisphere, the left half of the brain is often called the major or dominant hemisphere and the right half is called the minor or nondominant hemisphere.
According to contemporary theory, all nonverbal sounds--be they sounds of the human voice other than words like "ah", "eh", "ee", "oh", and "oo"), tones of musical instruments, sounds of nature, or mechanical sounds are registered in the minor, nondominant, right half of the brain. That's why Dr. Tsunoda was amazed when the vocal sound of "ah" registered verbally with his Japanese subjects-i.e., in their left instead of right hemisphere.
In subsequent testing Tsunoda discovered that the four other principal vowel sounds (i, u, e, and o) also registered with his Japanese subjects as if they were words instead of just sounds.
Was there some kind of anatomical or physiological difference in the makeup of the Japanese brain? It seemed impossible.
Dr. Tsunoda further discovered that these responses were characteristic of anyone born or brought up in the Japanese language environment. He was surprised to find that despite all of the racial, cultural, and even linguistic similarities between the Japanese and their closest neighbors, the Koreans, all first generation Koreans responded the same way as Europeans, whereas Korean children brought up in Japan responded like Japanese children. Furthermore, European children brought up in Japan also responded like Japanese children. Even stranger, all second and third generation Japanese brought up abroad lost this singular characteristic ability in direct proportion to their lack of exposure to the mother tongue. By the third generation these racial Japanese usually showed exactly the same brain functions as the people of the society into which they were born.
Evidently this peculiar mechanism of hearing was neither racial nor hereditary: rather, it was a direct result of some special factor in the language environment.
Only a brief look at the phonetic construction of the Japanese language is necessary in order to identify this special characteristic. Japanese is constructed from fifty simple sounds shown in the accompanying chart.
THE FIFTY-SOUND SYLLABARY OF THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE
(The chart reads in vertical columns from right to left)- CHILD SOUNDS ---------MOTHER SOUNDS
- wa ra ya ma ha na sa ta ka---------- a
- wi ri yi mi hi ni si ti ki--------------i
- wu ru yu mu hu nu su tu ku----------u
- we re ye me he ne se te ke-----------e
- wo ro yo mo ho no so to ko-----------o
(An additional twenty-five variations of these sounds, Plus the single sound "n", are also used; however, for the sake of simplicity these will not be considered here.) Although the Japanese language has gone through considerable transformation-this the language used in such traditional arts as the noh plays and kabuki is no longer understandable to modern ears-it is an outstanding fact that these fifty basic sounds have remained the same since earliest time.
In Japanese the vowel sounds, a, i, u, e, and o are called "mother sounds," and are considered the mother or originative elements of spoken sound, as their position in the right-hand column indicates. Coupled with nine other consonant "parents" k, t, s, n, h, m, y, r, and w, they form forty-five "child sounds" to complete the basic fifty syllables.
Note that the consonant parent is always sounded first and the final emphasis of the syllable is always the vowel component; thus, the consonant beginning always turns into a vowel ending.
The importance of vowel sounds in Japanese is further demonstrated by the peculiar fact that Japanese is the only language known where all of the vowel sounds also function as meaningful words in themselves. There are occasional examples of single vowel sounds possessing limited meaning in other languages-such as the indefinite article "a" in English-however the multiple possible meanings of each of the five vowels in Japanese is unprecedented. The single sound of "i", for example, has meanings as various as "stomach", "consciousness", and "difference". Furthermore, each of the vowel sounds can be written with between ten and fifty different ideograms, each with a different meaning.
Dr. Tsunoda mentions another key aspect of vowel importance in his book. Take an English text-the text of this paragraph for example-and strike out all of the vowels. Y wli fnd tht y cn rd th txt wth cmprt~ly Ittl dffclty. The same holds true for texts in any of the European languages if observed by a native speaker. In fact, Hebrew is normally written without any vowel sounds at all; merely by seeing the written consonants the reader of Hebrew normally supplies the appropriate vowels from the context. On the contrary, a transliteration of Japanese into the Roman alphabet without the use of vowels is usually undecipherable-or capable of being deciphered into several different texts of completely different meaning.
The crucial factor in the language environment responsible for the strange phenomenon observed by Dr. Tsunoda is this particular emphasis upon vowel sounds in Japanese.
In all of Dr. Tsunoda's subjects, music was invariably registered in the nonverbal, right hemisphere. Where language was included with music, however, as in the case of songs, the response shifted immediately to the verbal half. in general, wherever sounds of speech were present in any mixture, the center of hearing switched imniediately to the verbal left.
Dr. Tsunoda has theorized that a switch mechanism is located somewhere within the human hearing mechanism that distinguishes between verbal and non-verbal sounds. This switch registers either right or left, depending upon what kind of sound is being received. According to Dr. Tsunoda's findings however, word sounds are always dominant, no matter what background they are received against.
Dr. Tsunoda also noticed that the consumption of stimulants, including coffee and tea, sedatives, alcohol, smelling agents such as annnonia, and tobacco, had a detrimental influence upon the function of this switch mechanism. He discovered that after smoking even one cigarette, the switch mechanism of the subject was impaired for one hour or longer.
The switch mechanism in a relaxed state apparently remains open to both the right and left hemispheres. In this open state humans exhibit what is called divergent thinking, or imaginative, uncontrolled, and especially receptive thought processes. The opposite kind of convergent thinking, or rational and logical thought processes working toward a particular end, take!
The switch mechanism is directed toward the left or verbal hemisphere. What Dr. Tsunoda noticed with regard to tobacco and the other agents listed above was that after finishing with a verbal process the switch mechanism did not move back to its relaxed and open state. In other words, the mind stayed fixed in a state of convergent thought rather than relaxing.
The divergent or imaginative state is the source of fresh ideas and new mental perspectives. By inducing a state of stress, alterants such as tobacco, coffee, and alcohol interfere with our capacity for creative thought. In view of the large quantities in which these items are now being consumed, both in Japan and elsewhere, it is startling to consider the influence they may be having on human creative capability in the world today.
The peculiar response of Dr. Tsunoda's Japanese subjects to single, vowel sounds out of context with ordinary language seemed to be an idiosyncrasy of the Japanese language environment with very little further philosophic importance. Then, one autumn evening about a year after his original discovery, Dr. Tsunoda sat with his window open trying to compose a written statement about his findings. The sound of a Japanese cricket heard through the open window distracted him so completely that he sat listening for a couple of hours without accomplishing anything. Tsunoda's scientific mind went to work on this phenomenon. There were technical difficulties involved with getting the cricket sound on tape in a pure enough form for his clinical tests, and there was also the ridicule and criticism of his contemporaries over the apparent mearinglessness of such a test. Yet the cricket question intrigued him so much that he followed through until he was able to obtain results. The cricket sound, like the sound of "ah", was registered verbally with his Japanese subjects!
Then proceeded a whole new series of tests and a whole barage of new discoveries. Tsunoda experimented with the sounds of other insects, the sounds of birds, dogs, cats, cows, pigs, horses, and lions. He also included nonverbal sounds of the human voice, such as laughter, crying, sounds of anger, baby sounds and snoring. Sure enough, all of these registered verbally with his Japanese subjects while they registered nonverbally with all of his foreign subjects. what's more, sounds of nonanimate nature-the sound of waves, wind, rain -all registered verbally! It seemed that his Japanese subjects were putting the whole gamut of sounds from nature in the left sides of their brains.
Perhaps the most baffling and astounding discovery was that, whereas it had been assumed that music was unconditionally a function of the right hemisphere, the sounds of the traditional Japanese musical instruments, such as the shakuhachi, the koto, and the samisen, were all heard verbally by his Japanese subjects. Needless to say they were heard nonverbally by his European and other non-Japanese subjects.
The cultural implications of Tsunoda's findings were enormous. Right and left cognition in the Japanese brain seemed to be divided according to a different set of criteria from that used by foreign subjects.
DIFFERING FUNCTIONS OF THE
EUROPEAN AND JAPANESE BRAIN
EUROPEAN
EUROPEAN AND JAPANESE BRAIN
EUROPEAN
DOMINANT HEMISPHERE .................NON-DOMINANT HEMISPHERE
(Left brain) .............................(Right brain)
Language.............................Music
Consonant sounds.....Sounds made by musical instruments
Computation.......................... Mechanical sounds
.................................................Vowel Sounds
.................................................Human sounds: ......................................laughing, moaning, crying
..............................snoring, humming, throat sounds
JAPANESE
DOMINANT HEMISPHERE ..............NON-DOMINANT HEMISPHERE
(Left brain)......................(Right brain)
Language ................................Music
Consonant sounds...........Sounds made by
...........................................musical instruments
............................................(other than Japanese)
Vowel sounds .........................Mechanical sounds
Sounds of Japanese
musical instruments
Insect sounds
Animal Sounds
Computation
The affinity of Japanese culture with nature seemed to be directly linked with these mental processes specifically, sounds of nature were being heard verbally, just as though nature were talking-hence, the traditional concept of hundreds of thousands of "kami" or, spirits that existed in each and every natural phenomenon, and hence the special fascination for nonverbal processes such as zazen (zen meditation) and tea ceremony. The development of nonverbal processes was both a form of relaxation and a necessity in order to maintain individual mental and spiritual equilibrium between the right brain and the overburdened left brain.
Dr. Tsunoda developed the concept of what he calls "vowel-oriented culture" and "consonant-oriented culture." Vowel-oriented culture (i.e., Japanese culture) is based on the perception of vowel sounds. Tsunoda speculates that the sounds of nature resemble these pure vowel sounds. They sound like meaningful Japanese words, but not of course like meaningful words for speakers of other languages, which are all consonant -oriented. Consequently, phenomena are not divided between verbal and nonverbal for the Japanese as they are with other cultures. Instead, argues Tsunoda, the Japanese divide phenomena into living and nonliving in a special way. Living includes the human voice as well as the sounds of nature; what is left over-nontraditional music and most meciianical sounds-are all nonliving and go to the right or nondominant hemisphere.
Why the special status of Japanese music and musical instruments? Traditional Japanese music is acknowledged to be based upon patterns of speech, a fact which might explain why it is so hard to appreciate for non-Japanese listeners. The instruments are uncannily human sounding, and all lack the refined and sophisticated sound engineer-ing of Western instruments. The slipstream of air in the shakuhachi that reverberates like the rustling wind of a bamboo forest is a desirable effect, retained purposely, whereas it was refined out of the Western recorder and oboe a long time ago. Dr. Tsunoda makes the interesting observation that where Western instruments have been considerably changed and improved upon over the centuries (the modern piano, recognition, it remains for the most part unappreciated and misunderstood by non-Japanese. Today, when we must decide between total destruction or the beginning of one peaceful world, shouldn't Japan have something pertinent and significant to offer from her unique perspective? More than electronic equipment, shouldn't the Japanese develop and make known to the rest of the world their strong power of synthesis and capacity for creating harmony in self and surroundings? This seems to be what Georges Ohsawa, one of the individuals most responsible for introducing Japanese culture to the West was proposing in his expression of what he called "the Unique Principle," of yin and yang. [See this month's "Spirit" column--ed. ]
The brightest prospect for fundamental solutions to world-wide problems may be cultural exchange and mutual understanding between East and West. The unique vantage point of the Japanese brain on the oneness of humanity and nature could contribute substantially to the appreciation of the natural order that pervades the universe. Dr. Tsunoda's work opens up a whole new horizon for further study. Undoubtedly the greatest challenge to the human mind is that of understanding itself.
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