The Way of the Gods - Part I

It's fortuitous that Kevin wrote about love rules in Japan vis-a-vis Valentine's Day, because I attended a wedding over the weekend that I have been meaning to write about all week.  This wedding was one of if not the most profound cultural experience I have had in Japan.  I will try in vain to convey some of this profundity in the words that follow.  This post is the first of a meandering and exhaustive three-part series on the event.

Kevin used the word "neo-tradition" at the beginning of his post.  Perhaps because I am familiar with the pejorative usage of the terms "neo-liberal" and "neo-conservative", I immediately perceive the destructive power of the term "neo-tradition".  In the metaphorical parlor rooms of the blogosphere that I haunt, the term "postmodern conservative" is used to denote the conscious choice to revive lost tradition - the rational judgment that blind adherence to tradition is essentially superior to the cerebral uncertainties of fractured modernity's all-consuming void of purposelessness.  

I for one see such a dichotomy as false; tradition is necessarily a yoke - whether benevolent or malevolent - and it is for this reason that neo-traditions will ultimately be nothing but baseless human attempts at coercion.  I wrote in the comments to Kevin's post:

..."neo-tradition" embodies all the scorn I think hiding behind the word "tradition" to force unfounded and absurd obligation on other people really, really deserves...I have no problem with "neo-traditions" that everyone agrees on observing; nor do I have much of a problem with restrictive "paleo-traditions". It's obligatory neo-traditions that must be destroyed. These are like nationwide hazing.

For all the goofy neo-tradition one encounters in Japan (Don't think the U.S. is exempt from widely-observed neo-tradition.), paleo-tradition still abounds.  It is trying to understand some of this paleo-tradition and to filter it from vulgar neo-tradition that gives purpose to the expatriate intellectual mission.  For me, the most interesting, most difficult to understand, darkest (in a good way), and most quintessentially Japanese tradition is Shinto.

Shinto torii at the summit of Mt. ZaōDepending on one's definition of the word "religion", Shinto may or may not qualify.  Shinto is best described as an aggregate of received practices; it is not necessarily a belief system.  Shinto is the indigenous cultural system of Japan, and was likely practiced in some form when Jomon peoples were first cultivating chestnuts.  In the Shinto cosmos, kami (essences) exist in all things, and humans and other animals become kami after they die.  Shrines, unusual natural elements, and other designated places are interfaces to the world of the kami; shrines, artifacts, and amulets act as conduits to the spirit realm.  Shinto has been described as an optimistic system: people are good, and evil is caused by only evil kami.  Protection from evil requires diligent adherence to correct ritual, the logistics of which have been handed down as cultural treasure through the generations.  These rituals connect modern Japan to its prehistoric past, to the vague darkness which pervaded all existence before the intellectual upheaval which accompanied the light of letters that came from the continent.

(Anyone who has considerable experience with Japanese pop cultural elements - such as films like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away or role-playing games like Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, the Secret of Mana, and the Legend of Zelda - will recognize essential thematic elements as rooted in Shinto.  It is possible that many American members of the Information Generation are unwittingly more familiar with Shinto than they are with any other national system.)

An articulated form of "Shinto" exists only because of a dialectical relationship with Buddhism, which was introduced to Japan shortly after agriculture and letters.  The first written explications of Shinto ritual and mythology date from the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki of the seventh and eight centuries.  Buddhism - unlike Shinto, which evolved spontaneously - was already heavily systematized upon reception in Japan, and the various provinces of spiritual life needed to be divided between the new, fashionable religion of the Sinophilic nobility and the old ways.  Rites of life such as summer festivals, marriages, and births are now usually done in Shinto style, while matters of death and conscience are left to Buddhism.

Emperor MeijiThroughout most of Japanese history, Shinto was decentralized and prone to folk permutation.  During the Edo Period (1603 - 1868), Buddhism was favored by the upper nobility, with disparate and distinct forms of Shinto relegated to the politically neutered Imperial household and common people respectively.  

The Tokugawa Shogunate, the clan of nobles which held power throughout the Edo Period, prescribed tight social controls and minimal interaction with other civilizations.  As the Shogunate collapsed in the mid-nineteenth century, Shinto was standardized, systematized, and politicized by the new Meiji Emperor and his allies as a means to power.  From 1868 to 1912, Emperor Meiji combined the rapid importation of Western industrial technologies with a new form of Shinto Nationalism to restore the imperial throne to real political leadership.  This culminated in the slogan "wakon yosei" ("Western techniques, Japanese spirit"): an explicit reference to Shinto.  (This is also the socio-polical context for that crappy movie The Last Samurai.)  

Eventually, Shinto was made official state religion with the Japanese Emperor as a living god at its head; and Shinto priests became state bureaucrats in service of the Emperor.  Only under a unifying Shinto aegis, it was believed, could Japan modernize quickly and efficiently enough to avoid being taken by Western colonial powers.

In 1912, when Emperor Meiji died, Meiji Jingu was built for his and Empress Shoken's kami.  When the shrine was finished in 1920, it was designated as being of first order of importance to the Empire of Japan, a category in which it remained until 1946 when it was destroyed by allied fire bombing.  Meiji Jingu was rebuilt shortly after the war and remains an island of nature in the middle of busy Harajuku.  Today, the complex comprises about 175 acres of forest with approximately 120,000 trees.  The various buildings are massive, cutting, natural forms of brown and green with bright red and gold features inside.  The torii at Meji Jingu are not vermillion, but earth-toned, and gigantic like the cedars that surround them.    

It was at Meiji Jingu last Sunday that I participated in as traditional a wedding as Japanese weddings can get: the bride grew up at her father's Buddhist temple; she is my wife's good friend and a Shinto Professor at a prominent Tokyo university.  The groom was a Shinto priest from a family of Shinto priests spread throughout Meiji and Yasukuni Shrines.  He normally worked at Meiji Jingu, so he would be getting married at his place of business; the presiding clergy were nothing less than his co-workers.