A country with a dream

In his book Return to Order, John Horvat II argues that what motivates human beings is a desire for the sublime.

“The sublime consists of those things of transcendent excellence that cause souls to be overawed by their magnificence,” he explains.  We don’t merely appreciate the beauty of the sublime, he says, but also “read” a spiritual meaning in it.

This brought to mind my tour of the Rococo architectural masterpieces of Europe during my atheist/New Age phase, which was motivated precisely by a desire for the sublime.  Indeed, Mr. Horvat cites the building of the cathedrals of Europe as an example of a civilization being moved to express, in the form of architecture, the magnificent spiritual order it perceived to exist.

A civilization can collectively pursue the sublime, Mr. Horvat explains, when it is united under a single dream, or a myth* that explains the origins and destiny of a people and gives them a goal towards which they can direct their labors.

And that made me think of my recent musings on the Kojiki.

I realized:  Japan still has a dream.  Vestigial though it may be, the Japanese are still culturally united in their purpose to serve the Emperor.

At least, I feel such a thing in Japan that I don’t feel in America.  Mr. Horvat describes it as the “metaphysical joy of being linked with an order of being that completes our own.”

So am I suggesting that the world should unite in the service of the Emperor of Japan after all?  No, of course not.  The Japanese themselves would be the first to point out that the West has its own dream, and that when we were true to that dream, it outshone anything else the world had ever seen.

Nowadays we embarrass the name of Christianity with our tepid commitment to its ideals.

It’s time to get back to our dream.

*Used in the broad sense of the term

The weight of words

Once upon a time my Japanese manager said to me, “Print me out yesterday’s newspaper article about [a prominent politician] and Japan.”

Lamely, I googled it.

Eventually, through sheer dumb luck or divine intervention, I found a newspaper article dated the previous day in which [a prominent politician] said something about Japan.  Triumphantly, I laid it on my manager’s desk.

“Wrong newspaper,” he said.

So ESP is important when you work in a Japanese office.  But that’s not why I’m telling this story.

The point is that a politician, during a campaign, said something negative about Japan.  Now in America, when a politician says something negative and possibly untrue during a campaign, you can bet that either 1) Nobody cares; or 2) Someone will retaliate with an insult.  What doesn’t happen in America is what happened next in this case.

“What she said about Japan isn’t true,” my manager said.  “We’re going to contact her to correct her mistake.”

It seemed to me a touchingly naive response.

But the Japanese are very touchy about their image–and about other people’s, too.  In Japan, people go to great lengths to avoid saying anything negative about someone else, even when that person isn’t in the room.  Even when that person is someone they’ve never met.  Even when that person has obviously done something really wrong.

There’s a lot of beating-around-the-bush and looking-on-the-bright-side when it comes to talking about other people in Japan.  It’s almost comical, until you realize that it’s actually really nice.

So I imagine American politics carry a lot of culture shock for the Japanese.

After I returned to the Catholic Church, I read the Catechism and learned words like “calumny” and “detraction” and how it’s of grave importance that we tread lightly around the reputations of others.

Oh, I thought, it’s like that thing they do in Japan.

Silencing my inner two-year-old

I once translated a child-rearing guide from Japanese into English.  It was an interesting project–not only because I had to figure out an appropriate way to translate baby-talk, but also because the down-to-earth, loving advice it gave was so thought-provoking.

One page of that child-rearing guide that’s stuck with me was the advice on how to handle a two-year-old’s tantrums.  Apparently two-year-olds in any country don’t like to be told what to do.  The guide talked about giving the child time to calm the voice in his heart crying, “IYA!” (“I DON’T WANT TO!”)

When I read that, I realized I totally have a voice in my heart that cries “IYA!”

As a matter of fact, I’ve encountered it a lot since returning to the Church.  I’ve learned that there is my will, and then there is God’s will, and no, they’re not the same thing.  As they say, He doesn’t grant all our requests in the same way that parents don’t grant their kids’ requests to eat chocolate every day for breakfast.  In the end, God’s will is what will make me happy, although that can be hard to accept in the moment.  The challenge is getting past the “IYA!”

I’m still working on that, but observing the obedience of the Japanese led to a major breakthrough for me.  The way they would rush to obey orders with a military-crisp “Understood!” must’ve made something click inside me.  Perhaps I realized the beauty–the romance, even–of obedience.  To be obedient is to pledge oneself wholly to something greater than oneself.  It is to become a knight.

At any rate, I remember clearly when, after returning from Japan for the first time at the age of 25, my mother asked me to put away the dishes.  I was surprised at myself to find that the voice that cries “IYA!” was silent.

 

Thank you, Your Majesty

When I think of the boundless mercy of the emperor,
I feel I should give all of myself.
His mercy is deeper than the sea and higher than the mountains.
How sad, I cannot repay my debt to him.

This is an excerpt from a poem enclosed in a letter to General MacArthur during the Occupation, as quoted in the book Dear General MacArthur:  Letters from the Japanese during the American Occupation by Sodei Rinjiro.  It was one of many letters from the Japanese people pleading for the Emperor not to be tried as a war criminal.  Some even wrote letters in blood, offering their lives in exchange for the emperor’s immunity.

The intense devotion of wartime Japanese to their Emperor–who was worshiped as a god–is well-known.  What struck me about the letters, though, was what sort of god the Emperor was supposed to be.  The Japanese seem to characterize the Emperor precisely as God as he is known to Christians.  “His mercy is deeper than the sea and higher than the mountains”?  The author could easily have been quoting a Psalm.

I find it interesting that the Japanese have a sense of gratitude to a benevolent father figure.  But of course, they aren’t just thankful to the Emperor.  I once had a heck of a time trying to teach an elementary school English class on the topic of “Thanksgiving.”  The kids were thankful TO their houses, not FOR them–that’s pantheism for you.

Still, that may bring them closer to the Christian spirit than someone who doesn’t feel grateful at all, who thinks the world is “out to get them,” or at the very least owes them something, as we so often see in America these days.

The Japanese have reminded me that we can’t be too grateful for the simple blessings of each day.  There is a sense of contentedness with what Providence has bestowed, even perhaps a pride in having just the things that were specially meant for oneself, instead of grasping for more.

Moreover, the Japanese take real delight in the smallest things.  Recently I had the honor of attending a talk by Gil Garcetti about his new book of photographs, Japan:  A Reverence for Beauty.  My favorite was a photograph he took of an elderly woman with a radiant smile holding a leaf.  He recounted how he had spotted this woman strolling along a path, bending down to pick up a leaf and hold it up to the sun to admire its beauty.

Where else other than Japan, he argued, could you observe someone take such delight in something so ordinary?  In fact, I have been inspired by more than one elderly Japanese woman just like the one Mr. Garcetti described, who seem to find such bliss in the things that the rest of us take for granted.

I think the experience of living among people with this sense of gratitude is one of the real treasures I brought home with me from Japan.

 

 

The Pope’s prayer for Asia

One of Pope Francis’ prayer intentions for the month of February was “That opportunities may increase for dialogue and encounter between the Christian faith and the peoples of Asia.”  Interestingly, I had a very illuminating conversation along those lines this month.

“Japanese people don’t really have a religion,” a Japanese coworker said to me.  “We believe there is a kami* in everything–a kami in the wall, a kami in the floor.  That’s why we treat everything with respect.  And the greatest kami of all is the Emperor.  He rules over all the other kami.”

“Why wouldn’t you call that a religion?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

It actually took me over six years to meet a Japanese person who could (or would) give such a lucid account of Japan’s traditional pagan beliefs.  When I reflected on what he’d said, and looked a few things up, suddenly a lot of things occurred to me all at once.

I think the Japanese take these beliefs way more seriously than they let on.  I’ve already written about how they handle inanimate objects with kid gloves.  I’ve seen how official Japanese government documents are still dated with the year of the reign of the current Emperor, not the Christian date.  But then I started reading about Japanese mythology.

I was surprised by how beautiful I found it.  (I could never for the life of me get into Greek mythology.)  And I realized the Japanese probably find it beautiful, too.  It seems every nook and cranny of the little Japanese archipelago has a meaning woven into this quaint and quirky story of their ancestors, who were also gods.  The sacred objects mentioned are still housed in important shrines.  It seems to give meaning to Japan.

I also suspect the Japanese believe they are a “chosen people,” since it is their emperor who is the supreme kami (and descended from the gods in the myths).  Perhaps they see the virtues they possess and consider these a mark of their chosen status.

We do know that uniting the world under the Japanese Emperor was an important rationale for Japan’s participation in World War II.  And after all, why not?  Christians had fulfilled their charge to bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth.  Maybe Japan had such a mission, as well.

When I consider how achingly innocent the Japanese can be, it doesn’t seem far-fetched at all that they would sincerely believe such a thing.  We know their dedication to their Emperor is, or was, such that they would die of dehydration rather than take a drink from a canteen around their waist, if they thought that he had so ordered (this WWII story can be found in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.  Incidentally, I wonder if the reason the Japanese seem to have a religious scrupulosity about their jobs is because they consider their bosses to be links in a chain to the Emperor.)

And then, having poured their hearts and souls and very lives into fulfilling what they perceived to be their mission in World War II, they suffered a crushing defeat.  Their country lay in ruins, but perhaps more than that, everything they thought they knew about themselves now seemed like a broken promise.  Did they now have to give up the beautiful stories that had sustained their civilization for thousands of years?  What would the meaning of Japan be?

And maybe that’s why they still haven’t gotten over the war.  Maybe that’s why they seem embarrassed and reticent when asked about their religion.  Not because they think it’s all superstition, but because they are still hoping against hope that, somehow, it’s not.

My heart aches with them, and I sincerely wonder with them how these things can be reconciled.

*Usually translated “spirit” or “god”; neither one is quite right here.

Dignity and humility

There is a famous saying that goes, “Humility doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself; it means thinking of yourself less.”  I had an interesting illustration of this after my first week of work in a Japanese office.

It was Friday, we’d had a busy afternoon, but now it was over and we were just waiting for the boss to leave.  Because nobody leaves before the boss leaves.  An hour and a half later, I was tired and hungry.  We’d been at work late the night before, too, and we weren’t getting paid overtime for either day.  My mind wandered to scenarios in which the boss might actually realize, at this time of night, that he desperately needed my assistance, along with that of all my other coworkers.  I didn’t come up with much.

Finally, with apologies, the boss left.  I quickly took care of a couple last things, and then grabbed my coat without daring to ask if anyone needed anything else.  At this point, I really didn’t want to know.

That was when a coworker turned to me and said, with that typical Japanese childlike sincerity, “So, you survived your first week of work!”

I was surprised at his kind words, and replied, “Yes, thanks to your help!”

Even our manager, a busy man who was always dashing out of the office and had a perpetual pile of notes about missed calls on his desk, put his hand over the receiver to wish me a good weekend.

I couldn’t help but think, Wow, this whole time I was thinking about myself . . . and my coworkers were thinking about me.

So there it is:  humility.  Thinking of yourself less (and thinking of others more).  Something I need to work on.

Now I could argue that an office full of people twiddling away their time waiting for the boss to leave is an affront to human dignity.  It places a fanciful notion of solidarity above the concrete, here-and-now good of actual human beings who need to eat and vacuum their carpets and spend time with their kids.  It would seem to be an example of “thinking less of yourself,” even if it is culturally enforced.

So it’s an interesting dynamic in Japan.

Folding a kimono

Today, as I was packing for a move, I pulled a large, flat box out from under my bed.  As soon as I lifted the lid, it was as if another world wafted out.

The textured black fabric with purple chrysanthemums and cherry blossoms was familiar enough.  I think it was the meticulous way the kimono was folded that took me back.

I recalled the second-story practice room in my Japanese dance teacher’s house.  We sat on the hardwood floor; one wall was occupied by a huge rectangular mirror.

My teacher was a tiny woman who had been learning traditional Japanese dance since she was 3 and was now a grandmother.  Her mastery of the art would easily have merited her being the center of attention but she was very down-to-earth and seemed to naturally focus on other people.

That day she spread out my new kimono on the immaculate floor and demonstrated the proper way to fold it.  First smooth out all the wrinkles and pull on the seams so that it lies perfectly flat and rectangular.  Then fold it in half lengthwise–this required both hands and the whole body to execute as precisely as folding a giant piece of origami.  Smooth out the wrinkles again.  Then fold the first sleeve back, making sure that it bends just at the crease.  Fold the skirt up, carefully turn the neat bundle over, fold the other sleeve over.  It was a work of art.

Seeing my kimono folded just so in the box reminded me of the reverence with which my teacher treated the garment.  There was no pretension in it–the folding seemed to be an act of gratitude for owning this fine article of clothing.

Today, when I opened the box, the memory of that novel sensation of gratitude and humility stopped me in my tracks and made me wonder.

It was in the Japanese countryside that I first perceived the puffy layers of pride and ingratitude that cover my own heart.  The people I met seemed to have a clear view all the way to the bedrock.

Caterpillar virtues

I picked up an interesting book at a library book sale the other day:  An Introduction to Catholic Ethics by Longtin and Peach.  Among other things, this book compares secular and religious ethical systems.  One of the most interesting parts, to me, was the treatment of the question, “Can’t one be a good person without religion?”

The book explained that even without religion, a person can develop virtues such as the Cardinal Virtues.  These are the earthly, human virtues that people can “figure out” by the power of reason.  As an example, I’ve written about the many wonderful virtues I witnessed in Japan in the Virtues section of this blog.

However, there’s also another category of virtues.  These are the Theological Virtues:  faith, hope, and charity.  These virtues cannot be deduced by the power of reason–they have to be revealed by God.

I can testify that, during my atheist phase, I was miles away from faith, hope and charity.  I was one of those bleak, the-universe-is-going-to-collapse-in-on-itself-someday kind of atheists.  (I wonder if there are different kinds of atheists the way there are different kinds of drunks.  Maybe it has something to do with temperament.  But I digress.)

The book points out that some people are content with the earthly virtues, like a caterpillar might be once it had figured out the rules by which one could live a good caterpillar life.  In order to transform into a butterfly, though, the caterpillar has to do something completely different (i.e., develop the Theological Virtues), and that’s where religion comes in.

This explanation helped me to put together some of the puzzle pieces of my journey from atheism to Catholicism via Japan.  Several writers have pointed to Japan as an ideal pagan society.  It’s a place where one can experience life in a society organized around the earthly virtues–and also feel the longing for something more.

 

Merry Christmas!

In The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton proposes that pre-Christian Europe had more in common with Asia than with post-Christian Europe.  Or in other words, the greatest divide between cultures is the divide between pagan and Christian.  It’s a divide that sometimes hides under the labels “East and West” (think about it).

I’ve written about how living in Japan allowed me to experience a non-Christian society firsthand, and how it was more different than I could’ve imagined, or could even describe now.  Even when I called myself an atheist, I still sensed that there was something missing in Japan–some sense of the grand and romantic–although I couldn’t say what.

To be honest, I think the Japanese feel it, too.  It’s why they’ve appropriated the trappings of Christmas, hold mock-Christian-style weddings, and have a national obsession with the Baroque.  This, I think, is the popular feeling.  Historically, the official stance of Japan has been to reject Christianity but otherwise accept (at times grudgingly) Westernization.  But to accept Western culture, which is radically founded on Christianity, inevitably means accepting some Christian influence.

Still, the difference between Japan and the West is palpable.  When Chesterton speaks of that spark of something magical that pagan societies found in nature and celebrated, I can only think of the colorful festivals I attended in Japan celebrating the season of fireflies or the emergence of new leaves in the spring.

It is having experienced this difference that I can sympathize so deeply with Chesterton’s description of humanity’s longing for something beautiful just beyond our grasp that was fulfilled with the birth of our Savior on Christmas.

Japan’s ‘Christian century’ failed to blossom | The Japan Times

Recently The Japan Times ran an article on the topic of Japan’s failure to convert to Christianity.

“What are the Christian themes?” the article begins.  “Love.  Forgiveness.  Meekness.  Turn the other cheek.  The kingdom of heaven.”  It goes on to summarize some of the historical topics you can find on this blog:  St. Francis Xavier’s appreciation of the Japanese; the Keicho Mission; the Hidden Christians.

The article then proposes that the reason for Japan’s rejection of Christianity can be found in Endo Shusaku’s fictionalized account of the Keicho Mission, The Samurai.  Endo’s view of Catholicism, as suggested by the excerpts from the novel printed in the article, sound for all the world as if he had put down the Gospel in disgust after the Crucifixion and never read so far as the Resurrection.  He seems to think that not only do the Japanese not believe in the supernatural, but are incapable of believing in it.  Furthermore, he seems to suggest that Rome might share this view and have given up on Japan as hopeless.  I’ve written about my encounters with a similar attitude in Japan, that of “We can’t know that.”

According to Endo, where the Christians and Japanese differ is that Christianity proposes eternity as the solution to evanescence (talk about reductionism!), whereas the Japanese simply celebrate evanescence.  And the article ends there, suggesting that the Japanese decided they have no need for their twisted Gospel-minus-Resurrection view of Christianity, because they “already have cherry blossoms.”

“Love, forgiveness, turning the other cheek–one scans the native tradition in vain for examples,” says the article of Japan.  Well, hmm.  You don’t suppose there’s more to Christianity than cherry blossoms after all?

You can read the full Japan Times article here:

Christmas approaches. Christian or not, the mind turns to Christian themes. What are the Christian themes? Love. Forgiveness. Meekness. Turn the other chee

Source: Japan’s ‘Christian century’ failed to blossom | The Japan Times