The Spirit of Japan by Ronald Kotzsch (EWJ 1979, article 3)

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