Enduring Identities: The Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan

Chapter One: Opening Orientations

C H A P T E R O N E OPENING ORIENTATIONS What seems to Be, Is, To those to whom it seems to Be. . . . william blake, the book of milton 1 In 1970 scientists and administrators of Japan’s Space Development Agencywerereadytolaunchthecountry’sfirstsatellite.Undergreatpressure to succeed and thus further demonstrate to the world Japan’s continuing postwar recovery, they carried out their plans meticulously. Then they took one final precaution. Shortly before the launch, senior representatives of the agency visited Chichibu Shinto shrine located near Tokyo. Their goal: to petition its deity Myōken(the North Star) that their endeavormightsucceed.Whentherocketblastedoffandplacedasatellite in its intended orbit, these same individuals made a return trip to express their gratitude before moving on to other projects (Sakurai, Nishikawa, and Sonoda, 1990:14). By the end of the tumultuous 1960s, the Japanese people had much to be proud of in addition to their new space program. They had successfully staged the 1964 Olympic games in a rebuilt capital city, and they had the most advanced high-speed train system on the planet. Their economy was growing at a double digit rate as corporations like Sony, Datsun/Nissan, and Toyota became household words around the globe. Significantly, they had managed these accomplishments while dealing with labor protests at leading manufacturers and disruptive student demonstrations at most majoruniversities .Asotherdevelopedcountriestooknoticeoftheseachievements and with Japanese-produced consumer goods reaching markets worldwide, people wanted to know just how the Japanese had managed to do it only thirty years after one of the world’s most devastating wars had left their major cities in ruins. What made Japan’s society and culture so “unique” that the nation and its people could rise from the rubble in phoenixlike fashion? It is now apparent that many of the domestic explanations offered little save a diverse range of theories together called “nihonron” or “nihonjinron ”—theorizing about contemporary “Japaneseness.” Beginning in the early 1970s, publishing houses fed what seemed an insatiable public appetite for information on how the Japanese people (or their culture, language , or history) had turned out as they did (see Yoshino 1992). What appeared to Western (and, to be fair, many Japanese) observers as contradictions in the drive toward a rational industrialized society on a par with those in the West—the fact of rocket scientists petitioning a Shinto deity or a democracy that still retained an emperor—worked as a kind of reverse orientalism. Part analysis and part homily, explanations about success as well as contradictions were attributed to Japan’s fabled groupism, homogeneity,community-as-familybonds,theprevalenceofspiritsinmaterial objects, and so on. The more totalizing the theory, the better it sold. While targeting domestic audiences, the content of nihonjinron publications not only shaped popular discourse but also had an impact on governmental policymakers and trade negotiators. Seeking to deflect critical analysis of key power relations within state and corporate bureaucracies , spokesmen deftly combined ahistorical and cultural reifications with Western misconceptions and stereotypes about Asia and Japan. Aided also by a number of U.S. and European academics, called “the Chrysanthemum Club” (Patrick Smith 1997) for their emphasis on innate Japanese virtues that stress harmony, peaceful coexistence with nature, and mystical religious sensibilities, Japan’s success appeared to be the “sanitary consequence of altogether agreeable [social] arrangements” (ibid.:18). As for those rocket scientists visiting the Shinto shrine, nihonjinron writersmighthaveansweredthat ,unliketheirWesterncounterparts,Japanese rocket scientists see no opposition between their physics and computations , and the spirits of powerful deities (kami) that animate life, influence physical phenomenon, and enhance creativity. After all, this perspective is part of Japan’s cultural heritage, and besides, what does it hurt? The trend of quick-and-profitable theorizing about what constitutes Japaneseness has abated, as has the Japanese economic “miracle” that engendered and sustained it, but the concern with cultural identity remains an integral part of social discourse. If anything, the Japanese today are 2 ENDURING IDENTITIES searching for answers and directions like never before. The passing of an emperor, the prolonged economic recession, the Gulf War, delinquency and violence in Japan’s lauded educational system, a series of corruption scandals among politicians, terrorism within Japan, rising unemployment —the list could go on. In each case, fundamental assumptions about the order and stability of social life in Japan have been shaken and dislodged . And if socially related turmoil wasn’t enough, the Kobe earthquake in 1995 (in which over five...