MATSUMOTO SHIR

Buddhism and the Kami

Against Japanism

M ATSUMOTO Shir

HE AIM OF THIS SHORT essay is a critique of Japanism (nihonshugi ). Let me begin by noting that the approach I take stands directly opposed to those who insist on objective and value-free scholarship. My standpoint is subjective and value-laden throughout. In Science as a Profession,1 Max Weber argued for freedom from values (Wertfreiheit), held up as the ideal an objective approach that eliminates subjective value judgments, an ideal in which technical scholarship is restricted to its own specialization and refrains from excursus into other elds. This runs directly counter to my own ideal of scholarship, which is fundamentally subjective and thus forever informed by values. Weber must be given credit, however, for having touched on the heart of the matter. As his title makes clear, he felt it necessary to insist on value-free objectivity in order to distinguish scholarship from other professions and to establish it as an independent discipline. The problem is that his denition is tantamount to insisting that the scholar cease to be human. Nothing is easier for us scholars than to abstract from the fullness of our humanity and erase from the picture anything that smacks of values or ideals. Such a perspective is of course welcomed by the social establishment. Aside from those predisposed to accept the status quo without question, no group could be more innocuous than a community of scholars who, in the name of objectivity and freedom, have forsworn themselves against meddling in the status quo. From the start, the retreat from values supports the values in force, and all too often leads to compromising objectivity in order to remain in the good graces of the enforcing powers-that-be. If we ask what is the foremost establishment value in Japan today, the answer can be put quite simplyJapanism. It is on this theme, accordingly, that I shall concentrate my comments.

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IMPLICIT JAPANISM

Japanism may be dened roughly as the location of ultimate or absolute value in Japan. I further distinguish two forms of Japanism: implicit and pure. By implicit Japanism I mean the direct or indirect glorication of Japan, independently of whether those who subscribe to it are aware of the fact that they are glorifying Japan or not. The theory of a Japanese folk Buddhism (W[) is a good example of this implicit Japanism.2 I cannot claim to have researched the premises of this theory adequately and am even somewhat unsure of how to dene it properly. Tentatively we may say that the basic idea of folk Buddhist theory is that Buddhism has been absorbed into the indigenous ethos of Japan and in the process effected the absolutizing of that ethos. Typical of this approach is the claim that whatever foreign religious traditions have been introduced into Japan, the basis (or original mentality) behind the religious consciousness of the Japanese remains unchanged: a reverence for the ancestors (memorials for the dead). A concrete example of this general formulation can be had from the following discussion between Umehara Takeshi and Yamamoto Shichihei:
Umehara: And so lately I have begun to question whether or not Japanese Buddhism can be considered real Buddhism. Yamamoto: Yes, one does start to wonder. Umehara: Doctrinal matters aside, if we look at what is actually done in the name of Buddhism, it consists mainly of funerals, the O-bon and O-higan festivals for the ancestral spirits, and other anniversary memorial services. Is there any way that this can be considered Buddhism? The most ancient forms of Shinto survive in the north and south of Japan, which leads one to suspect that the ancient religious ceremonies of Japan are still preserved among the Ainu or around Okinawa. And if we look at their understanding of religion, what we nd in fact is that it consists entirely of memorial services for the dead. When we die, our ancestors await us in heaven. The spirits of the dead are sent off to heaven, then return at O-bon or O-higan, only to be sent back again. By and large this is the form of religion that is preserved in the north and the south of Japan. In actual practice, then, this is what Buddhism does. Because doctrine is unimportant to the Japanese, it is assumed that a Buddhist monk need do nothing more than perform funerals, O-bon services, memorial 357

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services, O-higan services and the like. If this is so, I am not sure that these ceremonies can really be called Buddhist so much as pre-Buddhist Shinto.3

The above exchange shows that the theory of folk Buddhism is one of the main pillars of support for the kind of Japanology (Nihongaku ) that Umehara espouses. Umeharas words also typify the folk Buddhist position that, in general, Buddhist doctrine is of no value or at best only of formal value, thereby uncritically absolutizing the base of religious consciousness shared by the Japanese masses. In this way, the idea of ancestor worship seems to be revered without qualication. Although this way of thinking dominates current research in Japanese folk studies and cultural anthropology, the warning of the historian Kuroda Toshio is very much to the point:
Most importantly, as long as this sort of (perverted) perception is taken as a self-evident truth, the connection between right-wing Shinto ideology and the folk studies and cultural anthropology that support it can only grow stronger.4

In other words, while on the surface these disciplines advocate objectivity and freedom from value judgments, the reality is that their idea of a Japanese folk Buddhism puts their work at the service and support of establishment values. Such is the invariable fate of all value-free theories. As the distinction between implicit and pure Japanism implies, I take the ethnocentrism of the former to be of an impure sort, and in this regard I offer the Japanology of Umehara as a prime example. From beneath the utter of the monks robes the glint of polished armor quickly catches the eye. While robing himself outwardly in a critique of National Studies (kokugaku ) that espouses an objective, value-free, manyfaceted, multilayered, global approach to Japanese research,5 next to the skin he wears the heavy plated armor of belief in the superiority of the Japanese race. In a discussion between then Prime Minister Nakasone and Umehara, Nakasone summed up his understanding of Umeharas ideas: The original character of Japanese culture, the most ancient in the world, is still fully present in the Japan of today, and it is that to which both Buddhism and Confucianism have been adapted. Umehara agreed entirely with the characterization. Even though no mention is made of the superiority of the Japanese race, the context in which these words were spoken, and repeated almost verbatim, establishes it as a clear assumption:
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Nakasone: You have written that the basis of Japanese culture was formed before the Yamato court, in the time of the Jmon period, prior to the introduction of agricultural cultivation. In Japan we have excavated earthenware that is twelve thousand years old, the oldest in the world. This is four-thousand years older than the oldest earthenware discovered in Mesopotamia, the so-called birthplace of civilization. The original shape of that culture is still entirely alive in todays Japan, and both Buddhism and Confucianism have adapted to it. The framework of the Jmon period lived on in the midst of these foreign cultures or ideas, and took them in. In other words, you are saying that Buddhism and Confucianism did not effect any great changes in Japan. Have I caught your sense? Umehara: When I was thirty-ve years old I began to question whether European philosophy was enough, and realized that a wonderful philosophy was hidden right beneath my feet. From that time on I changed directions and have spent twenty-ve years since studying Japan. My conclusion from these twentyve years, as the Prime Minister has just said, is that after all is said and done, Japanese culture is indeed a most ancient culture.6

Likewise, in his Speech on Intellectual Standards (22 September 1986) Prime Minister Nakasone again referred to the oldest earthenware in the world, as the spiritual structure of our ancestors from the Jmon period. In any case the oldest earthenware in the world has been discovered in Japan. The discovery of earthenware from twelve-thousand years ago proves just how old the history of this country is.7 What makes it possible for him to draw a straight line from the presence of the worlds oldest earthenware remains to the great age of Japanese culture and history is nothing other than his conviction of the superiority of the Japanese race. It was in this speech, it will be recalled, that Nakasone laid the blame for Americas educational problems on the countrys Afro-Americans. But the real underlying problem with his remarks is not so much the open insult as the fact that it was premised on his conviction of Japanese superiority. As a Buddhist, I opposed the establishment of Umeharas International Research Center for Japanese Studies on the grounds that it is no more than a faade for the promotion of ideas of cultural supremacy, which of course devalues all foreign religions, including Buddhism.8
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Umeharas view that Buddhism consists in the doctrine of tathgatagarbha,9 the attainment of Buddhahood by mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees ([u[), and Prince Shtokus teaching of harmony (wa ) is well known. What is often forgotten is just how much this very philosophy of harmony was touted in wartime Japan. I would cite, by way of example, the following remark from the same dialogue cited above:
Another thing is the Japanese attitude towards nature. I mean, we have always protected nature because we have managed to preserve intact from our days as hunters an understanding of nature according to which mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees all attain Buddhahood. We need to resurrect this unique characteristic.10

Note also the following comment of Prime Minister Nakasone:

We Japanese are not monotheists. We go through a cycle that draws us into the world of polytheism, being born into Nature and returning to Nature at death. The mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees are our brothers: this is the origin of the notion that mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees all attain Buddhahood. In a larger sense, however, the idea that mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees all attain Buddhahood belongs less to Buddhism than it does to a transmission of the Japanese people dating from the Jmon period.11

Obviously Umehara and Nakasone are in complete agreement, and the point on which that agreement pivots is the conviction that the idea that mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees all attain Buddhahood is praiseworthy not for being Buddhist but for representing a traditional and uniquely Japanese worldview or understanding of nature that has persisted from the ancient Japanese days as hunters or the Jmon period. This is entirely coincident with Umeharas claim that doctrine is unimportant for the Japanese. In his Speech on Intellectual Standards, Prime Minister Nakasone again alluded to the idea of all of nature attaining Buddhahood, but made himself look rather ridiculous by quoting Dgen to the effect that grasses, trees, and the land (F) all attain Buddhahood.12 He had also cited this passage earlier in a policy speech to the Diet on 27 January 1986, which makes me wonder just how happy Buddhists, and in particular St Zen Buddhists, can be with this sort of attention.13 Similarly, there are many examples of Umeharas lauding the philosophy of harmony (wa ) inscribed in the Seventeen-Article Constitution.14
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As a concrete example of emphasis on this philosophy in wartime Japan, we may cite the Kokutai no hongi u (Cardinal Principles of the National Entity of Japan). The signicance of this work, compiled and published in March 1937 immediately after the controversy over whether the role of the emperor transcended the state or was simply an organ of the state (February 1935) and the February 26th Incident (FebruaryMarch 1936), is well known. By explicitly rejecting the idea that the emperor was simply a functionary of the state and conrming the ideology of a divine nation, the aim was to mobilize popular sentiment for national purposesthe most important of which was to prepare for full-scale war. The rst chapter of the Kokutai no hongi includes a section on Harmony and Truth in which the ideology of harmony is spelled out. The Lu-kou-chiao Incident took place in July of 1937 (the year that the Kokutai no hongi was published), provoking Japan to invade China and launch itself into an all-out war of aggression. This, together with the later Nanking Incident (December 1937), reveals the true character and historical reality of the philosophy of harmony taught in the text. It seems apropos of the discussion here to cite from this rather lengthy workwhich, in its entirety, ought to be considered required reading for all Buddhists in Japanin order to get a clearer idea of the sort of harmony it was advocating:
When we trace the marks of the facts of the founding of our country and the progress of our history, what we always nd there is the spirit of harmony. Harmony is a product of the great achievements of the founding of the nation, and is the power behind our historical growth; while it is also a humanitarian Way inseparable from our daily lives. The spirit of harmony is built on the concord of all things [lit., the fusion of all things]. When people determinedly count themselves as masters and assert their egos, there is nothing but contradictions and the setting of one against the other; and harmony is not begotten. In individualism it is possible to have cooperation, compromise, sacrice, etc., so as to regulate and mitigate this contradiction and the setting of one against the other; but after all there exists no true harmony. Harmony as of our nation is not a mechanical concert of independent individuals of the same level that has its starting point in (cold) knowledge [lit., reason], but a great harmony that holds itself together by having the parts within the whole through actions that t the parts with all things having their characteristics, mutually different and yet manifesting their [individual] characteristics, that is, manifesting the essential qualities [lit. 361

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essential nature ] through the parts that thus harmonize with the monastic world [sic; lit., monistic world, world of one truth: ichinyo no sekai su]. That is, harmony as in our nation is a great harmony of individuals who, by giving play to their [individual] characteristics, and through difculties, toil and labor, converge into one. Because of [individual] characteristics and difculties, this harmony becomes all the greater and its substance rich. Again, in this way individualities are developed, and special characteristics become beautiful and at the same time even enhance the development and well-being of the whole. 15

Here we see the basic premise of the philosophy of harmony. The passages I have italicized strike me personally as a statement of Hua-yen philosophy, but in any event there is no other word that sums up the base ideology than totalitarianism. No reason for the existence of the many elements that make up the whole is allowed other than that they consolidate the whole into a single unity. In effect, what is demanded of each element is simply that it eliminate the self and return to the one or extinguish the self to serve the public. More conventionally, the idea of fullling ones destiny is laid out as follows:
Going a step further, this harmony must also be made to materialize in communal life. Those serving in Government ofces as well as those working in rms must [all] follow this Way of harmony. In each community there are those who take the upper places while there are those who work below them. Through each one fullling his portion is the harmony of a community obtained. To fulll ones part means to do ones appointed task with the utmost faithfulness, each in his own sphere; and by this means do those above receive help from inferiors, and inferiors are loved by superiors; and in working together harmoniously is beautiful concord manifested and creative work carried out.16

That this way of thinking was not restricted to the militarist extremists can be seen from comments made by Nishida Kitar in a public lecture on philosophy sponsored by the Japan Committee for the Promotion of the Sciences in October of 1937, the very year that the Kokutai no hongi was issued. Japan, he announced, has preserved in all things its selfidentity with the Imperial Family as the center. At the same meeting, Takakusu Junjir also commented:
Our nation, from the time of its founding, has been totalitarian. We have preserved that totalitarianism until today. One needs to fully comprehend the Kegon (Hua-yen) truth, with everything in perfect 362

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order, and should expect to devote oneself to public service with not a speck of self remaining. I long to see everybody forget their selves, discarding their selves in order to countenance the affairs of the nation.17

Returning to the Kokutai no hongi, we see that the main accent is put on an extreme nationalism:
The spirit of self-effacement is not a mere denial of oneself, but means living to the great, true self by denying ones small self. Individuals are essentially not beings isolated from the State, but each has his allotted share as forming parts of the State. And because they form parts, they constantly and intrinsically unite themselves with the State; and it is this that gives birth to the spirit of self-effacement.18

That even the principle of harmony is bent to the service of afrming war becomes clear in the following passage:
And this harmony is clearly seen also in our nations martial spiriton the occasion of the Emperor Jinmus august expedition to the East martial spirit was exercised. But this martial spirit is not (a thing that exists) for the sake of itself but for the sake of peace [lit., harmony], and is what may be called a sacred martial spirit. Our martial spirit does not have for its objective the killing of men, but the giving of life to men. This martial spirit is that which tries to give life to all things, it is not that which destroys. That is to say, it is a strife that has peace [lit., harmony] as its basis with a promise to raise and to develop; and it gives life to things through its strife. Here lies the martial spirit of our nation. War, in this sense, is not by any means intended for the destruction, overpowering, or subjugation of others; and it should be a thing for the bringing about of great harmony [], that is, peace, doing the work of creation by following the Way.19

Such is the real nature of the philosophy of harmony. Not surprisingly, the Kokutai no hongi quotes the rst clause of Prince Shtokus Seventeen-Article Constitution in full as the authoritative proof of its philosophy of harmony. As the above citations make patent, the totalitarian and nationalistic understanding of august harmony in the rst clause cannot be dismissed as mere misinterpretation. As Hakamaya noted in his essay Thoughts on the Ideological Background of Social Discrimination, the Seventeen-Article Constitution itself is totalitarian and nationalistic and in no sense can be said to teach religion. So nowadays we have Prime Minister Nakasone and scholar Umehara Takeshi singing the praises of the uniquely Japanese philosophy of har363

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mony. Just how different their claims are from the claims of the Kokutai no hongi that a mere fty years ago were made to support militarism and plunge Japan into disaster is a question the readerparticularly, the Buddhist readeris best left to ponder alone. Let me offer only the following summary. The Kokutai no hongi, by not rejecting Buddhism in its entirety as a foreign religion, represents a form of implicit Japanese nationalism, as do the claims of Prime Minister Nakasone and Umehara Takeshi who insist that Buddhism was adapted to the Japanese spirit. It is this idea of adaptationor perhaps better put, of homogenization that I nd so treacherous because it puts the full weight on the side of the Japanese spirit and relegates Buddhism to a position of insignicance. This is how the Japanese spirit became absolutized. Of course, the reason this kind of nationalism is always kept implicit is that its proponents all belong to the establishment, and the establishment, of course, can never openly espouse pure Japanism. This makes it all the more more dangerous.

CRITIQUE OF PURE JAPANISM

Let us move on to a critique of pure Japanism, which I dene as the idea that Japan as such is a thing of absolute value. As representatives of this position I would like to single out Kawabata Yasunari, Motoori Norinaga, and Mishima Yukio. The Japanism of Kawabatas Aesthetic Optimism Of the three representatives of pure Japanism, Kawabatas Japanism is the one I feel the strongest aversion to naming pure. But the fact is, his brand of aesthetic and optimistic Japanism and glorication of nature is so regularly lifted up as a model by optimistic Japanese intellectuals, that I have no choice but to bring it up for question. In his Nobel Prize speech, Japan the Beautiful and Myself, Kawabata had the following to say about the uniqueness of the Japanese spirit:
Seeing the moon, I become the moon, and the moon seen by me becomes me. I sink into nature and become one with nature. . . [the Zen disciple] enters a state of impassivity, with no thought and no conception. He loses the self and enters the realm of nothingness. This is not the nothingness or the emptiness of the West. It is rather the reverse, a universe of the spirit of an inexhaustible treasury, an emptiness in which everything communicates freely with everything, transcending bounds, limitless. 364

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There are of course masters of Zen, and the disciple is brought toward enlightenment by exchanging questions and answers with his master, and he studies the scriptures. The disciple must, however, always be lord of his own thoughts, and must attain enlightenment through his own efforts. And the emphasis is less upon reason and argument than upon intuition, immediate feeling. Enlightenment comes not from the teaching of others but through the eye awakened inwardly. Truth is in the discarding of words, it is independent of language.20

Glorifying the beauty of Japanese nature, and taking the uniqueness of the Japanese spirit to be sinking into nature or becoming one with nature is an ethos found in wartime Japan as well. For example, the attempt to locate the uniqueness of the Japanese spirit in a unity or harmony with nature that contrasts with the Western conquest of nature had earlier been laid out in the Kokutai no hongi:
Again, this harmony is also seen in the intimate relationship between man and nature. Our country is surrounded by the sea, excels in mountains, (is blessed with) limpid waters and with (happy) changes in the four seasons, and has natural features not found in other countries. These beautiful natural features were brought to birth by the heavenly deities together with the (many) deities; and though they be things on which one may set ones affection they are (certainly) not objects of fear. It is here that our national trait to love nature is begotten and the harmony between man and nature is established. India, for instance, is overpowered by her natural features, and in the Occident one senses the subjugation of nature by man, and there is not found a deep harmony between man and nature as in our country. On the contrary, our people are in constant harmony with nature.21

If we seek a Buddhist background to this ethos of harmony with nature, there is no better place to begin than with the notion that mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees all attain Buddhahood (so lauded by Umehara), or the common understanding of the Tendai doctrine of original enlightenment, which provides the undergirding and is assumed to be the culmination of Mahayana Buddhist thought.22 This way of thinking has also been taken to be representative of Zen Buddhism, as can be seen from Kawabatas use of such phrases as no thought and no conception ([[o), direct intuition (?) or nonreliance on language (#Ck). All of these ideas are based on the doctrines of tathgata-garbha and original enlightenment and as such all can also be
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counted among the objects of the criticism of the doctrine of tathgatagarbha. (In this connection, Kamalalas critique of Chinese Zen in the Samye debate that took place in eighth-century Tibet is still worthy of attention.) To put it simply, if somewhat idiosyncratically, it all comes down to whether or not being a rock, which in the true sense of the term has no thought and no conception, is preferable to being a human. The Japanism of Motoori Norinaga Next I would like to turn to the Japanism of Motoori Norinaga, a thinker whothrough the graces of Hirata Atsutanehas had considerable inuence on later generations, and whose impact has extended to the political realm as well. Let us consider here opposing estimations of Norinaga offered by Kobayashi Hideo and Hakamaya Noriaki. Although Kobayashi himself took the posture of defending the value of thought in his famous debate with Masamune Hakuch, in fact he devalued it by praising Norinaga for having kept the real life of the rst oor apart from the thought of the second oor by removing the stairway between the two.23 Hakamaya countered by drawing attention to Norinagas praise of the Confucian scholar Dazai Shundai (who rejected Shinto) as a true Confucian, thus demonstrating that the true character of Norinagas thought does not entail a separation of the intellectual life from real life.24 According to Hakamaya, not only did Norinaga oppose the idea of original enlightenment, but he was one of those rare thinkers able to see deeply into the importance of language. On both counts, Hakamaya asserts, he is comparable to Dgen.25 I nd this correct as far as original enlightenment goes, but must say I was surprised by what I found when I actually dived into Norinagas work. What he had to say about the way of the gods and the emperor system not only shows no intellectual belief in the importance of language, it also sinks to the level of mere naturalism and pragmatism. Consider the following passage expressing his worship of the idea of the natural, the of-it-selfness (onozukara) to which no wisdom (sakashira) need be added, and its concomitant rejection, if not outright denigration, of language:26
Since our honourable country is called Kamunagara Yasukuni, the divine land ruled in peace, we do well to recall what is written in the Nihon Shoki in the chapter Naniwa no nagarano mikado concerning the term kamunagara. It is said that in following the way of the kami, he [the 366

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emperor] himself becomes the way of the kami. To follow the way of the kami means that his way of ruling this world is to rule it the way it has been done since the age of the kami, without the addition of any human wisdom. In this way, by calmly ruling the world as it had been ruled since the age of the gods, the way of the kami functions naturally and of itself, making it unnecessary to seek anything outside of it. It has itself become the way of the gods. And so when we speak of our current deity [the emperor] or the Great Land of Eight Islands, it means that the reign of the emperors down through the ages has become the reign of the gods. This is also the sense in which the word kamunagara is used in poetry like the Manysh. And in fact this is what the people of China meant when they called our country the land of the gods. In ancient times, no one even spoke in terms of a way. Our country was then simply the country where everything conforms to the gods and nothing was expressed in language.27

But it was the following passage that sealed my view on the matter once and for all:
As we all were born of the spirit of the gods (musubi no kami no mitama chPuf), we know by nature all that needs to be done in life and so do it. By virtue of the spirit of the gods, then, what is to be done is known to all things that live in the world, including birds and insects, each in its own way, and so it is done. Among living things, human beings were born superior, and in accord with that superiority they know whatever they should know and do what they are supposed to do, so why is there any need to force them beyond that? If human beings were not able to know or act without being taught, then they would be inferior to even the birds and insects. Goodness, righteousness, ritual propriety, humility, lial piety, brotherhood, loyalty, trustworthiness, and the like are all things that human beings are supposed to do. As long as these are the things that they are supposed to do, they will know it by nature and will do it well even without relying on such teachings. The Way of the Sages was fashioned with the aim of forcing order on a country that was difcult to rule. This went beyond the limits of what human beings should be, so that the things that were forced on them and strictly taught are not the True Way.28

Here, Norinaga is saying that there is no need to force human beings to do more than what comes naturally, because by nature they are already disposed to do what needs to be done. Since [human beings] naturally do as much as they ought, why do we have to force them to do more?
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On reading these lines, the image of the crucix of the Japanese Kirishitan martyrs came to mind, and I thought to myself, How foolish it would seem to Norinaga that one should die for ones beliefs! As is always the case with a naturalist, he was too much the optimist and pragmatist to imagine him putting his life on the lineeven for the way of the kami that he extols in Naobinomitama. I am not sure, in the end, whether it makes sense or not to think of ideals or ideas as realizable in actuality. But insofar as those ideals are pragmatic and given to compromise, surely they no longer qualify as ideals. Insofar as Norinaga looked down on the intellectual life, he tended towards naturalism, a tendency that, through Atsutane, was to become more pronounced as time went on. The Pure Japanism of Mishima Yukio Finally, I would turn to Mishima Yukio, whose death is already more than fteen years behind us and to whom I feel I should pay my respects as a truly pure Japanistby which I mean idealistically and intellectually pure. Mishimas intense intellectual commitment to Japanism is apparent in the level of consistency he achieved between what he thought and what he did. For him, Japan was an absolute value, so much so that he could not conceive of his own existence without Japan or of Japan without the emperor, the logical consequence of which was that without the emperor he himself did not exist. Set against the backdrop of Kobayashi Hideos pragmatic Japanism, Mishimas purity shines all the more brightly. Once in 1970 when elding questions in a meeting with students, Kobayashi was asked about the emperor. He began his response by rst making it clear that he was not making political statements, and only then went on to laud the emperors virtues.29 This sort of guarded commitment is the polar opposite of what we see in Mishima, particularly in his nal years. Even before people he did not know, Mishima would begin his talks with the shout, Long live the emperor! There is more involved here than simply a difference between an ethos for life and an ethos for death. It is a matter of a fundamental difference in the purity of convictions. Mishima had the following to say in a debate with the young revolutionaries of the Students Movement at Tokyo University in May of 1969:
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Its okay if things dont work out. I am Japanese. I was born Japanese and I will die Japanese, and that is all right with me. I have no desire whatsoever to remove these limits. I cannot take away from myself the fact that I have Japanese nationality. I am convinced that this is my destiny.30

I cannot read these words without being moved, so much am I struck by the earnestness with which Mishima faced an audience, most of it twenty years his junior and more, and expressed his real feelings candidly. I nd this a most eloquent, even beautiful, expression of Japanism. What made Mishima so fanatic about Japan? This is a question that has pestered me since I began to read his works a few weeks ago. The initial stimulus came from the remarks of a friend that among Japanese writers only Akutagawa Rynosuke and Mishima Yukio were able to prove the existence of the external world.31 The words rather took me aback. Taking external world in the sense of the bhyrtha that the mind-only school of Buddhist philosophy rejected, I understood the remark to mean that most of the time we are so immersed in the world of self-identity within our own mind that there is no way for us to reach the pure or absolute other of external objects. But Mishima Yukio, through action (`), was able to break out of the literary world of self-identity (|s). In any case, I was driven to seek in Mishimas works an answer to the roots of his extreme Japanism, and was particularly struck by phrases like cultural continuity and temporal continuity in his essay In Defense of Culture.32 On the surface, the idea of cultural continuity seems to provide the key to Mishimas Japanism, but at the same time it looks to be the same as the self-identity that I would have expected him to reject. If tathgata-garbha thought is a philosophy of identity, then the theory of mind-only is a philosophy of self-identity.33 Unlike mere identity, selfidentity somehow brings temporality into the picture; that is, it suggests the possibility of a self-enclosed past. Nowadays it is the fashion among Japanists to wave the ag of the racial identity of the Japanese people,34 but Mishima was less attracted to this kind of optimistic identity than to the pessimism of continuity. Indeed, he would even use the ordinary word time to refer to this idea of temporal continuity, as we see in the following:
The base of a people, the mentality of the Japanese, has persistedthis is the problem of time that I have been talking about. The Japanese who 369

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have learned to give shape to space are the new Japanese like all of you. But the country is still full of Japanese who live within time. These are the Japanese who cannot nd a way to make sense of space.35

The unity of meaning between the time of the above passage and the self-enclosed time of the mind-only school is well attested in his nal work, the Sea of Fertility tetralogy. The beginning and end of the work read like a Yogacara sermon on mind-only, and there are portions that can even be called technical explanations of the theory of the storehouse consciousness (layavijna), all of which indicate just how deeply Mishima was involved with Yogacara thought. Mishima rightly called this work a tale of dreams and reincarnations, for surely nothing is more suited to Yogacara idealism than dreams and transmigration. The question I began with, however, had to do with how Mishima viewed the existence of the external world of objects. In the end, I came to the conclusion that Mishima must have had a total aversion to the Yogacara world of self-identity. His distaste for transmigration was stronger than most, and he was always preoccupied with breaking out of the mind-only world of the writer:
Everything abominationdebauchery, death, madness, pestilence, destruction. How was it that such things could so entice the heart and allure the soul outward. Why did souls have to exit, discarding easy, dark, and quiet dwellings? Why was it that the human heart rejected tranquil inertness? That was what happened in history and with individuals. If men did not do thus, it was because they surely felt that they could not touch the wholeness of the universe. Inebriated, disheveled, tearing their clothes, and exposing their genitals, blood dripping from the raw esh in their mouthsby such actions, they must have felt they could scratch the surface of that wholeness.36

Mishima nally tore himself away from the world of mind-only through the act of suicide, but I hardly think this was intended to conrm the existence of the external world. Indeed, if it demonstrated anything, it was the non-existence of the external world, in the sense that the only thing he could envision outside of the realm of his own mind was death. This is why he can be thought of as a consummate Yogacarin. For Mishima the external object, that is, the pure other, was always death, and the encounter with that pure other was the fundamental force driving his thought.
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Mishima Yukio demonstrated with his own lifeor rather, with the ending of his own lifethat pure Japanism is necessarily a philosophy of death. The truth of that proposition (which I nd to be true without exception) is in no way contradicted by the fact that the underlying motivation of his thought was not pure Japanism at all but rather a philosophy of death. In other words, because he understood the truth of that statement, he made himself into a pure Japanist in order to bring himself to death:
This temper, further distilled and puried, formed Isaos world, one Honda had not shared with him in his younger days, one he had observed only as an outsider. Noting how Isaos youthful Japanese mind, struggling in absolute isolation, had destroyed itself, Honda could not but realize that what had permitted him to live the way he had was the strength of Western thought, imported from the outside. Unfertilized thinking [about uniqueness] brings death.37 If one wished to live, one must not cling to purity, as Isao had done. One must not cut oneself off from all channels of retreat; one must not reject everything. Nothing had ever forced Honda to probe the question of an unadulterated [pure] Japan more deeply than had Isaos death. Was there any way to live honestly with Japan other than by rejecting everything, than by rejecting present-day Japan and the Japanese people? Was there no other way of living than this most difcult one, in which ultimately one murdered and then committed suicide? Everyone was afraid to say, but had not Isao given proof by his acts?38

Mishima saw that in order to be really pure, one had to let go of life (an idea that should please Kobayashi Hideo). This impression is corroborated by the fact that Mishimas Japanism was more intense in his later life than during the war years, although already in wartime he had become fascinated with the philosophy of death. In any case, the rare coincidence of thought and action we see in Mishima Yukio produced a Japanism of the highest purity, a purity whose end demonstrates more clearly than any mere argument can that pure Japanism is a philosophy of death. As a Buddhist, I stand opposed to any and all philosophies of death, and must therefore renounce pure Japanism in its entirety.
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MATSUMOTO SHIR

OPPOSITION TO JAPANISM

In conclusion, I should like briey to clarify my own position concerning Japan. Somehow I cannot sympathize with the position of no-Japanism ([), a rather odd phrase that I take to mean the notion that Japan does not actually exist or that there is no entity that actually corresponds to the word Japan. Montesquieu is reported to have said that, I am of necessity a human being, but it is by accident that I happen to be a Frenchman.39 I nd this ippant in comparison with Mishimas assertion that being Japanese was his destiny, or with what Uchimura Kanz wrote in his diary on 11 August 1921: I have a desire to someday cease being a Christian and become a pure Japanese. Such words have a religious ring to them.40 I nd myself in sympathy with the following passage from the writings of Hori Tatsuo, which seems to me the perfect response to the question of Buddhism and the Kami:
Perhaps it is because of all of the ancient remainsthe temples or old pagodasin this area known from of old as Ikaruga no sato, but the surroundings have the air of something out of time immemorial. Over there, centered on Yumedono, was where Umayado no miko [Prince Shtoku] lived, whose sincere contemplation, perhaps unwittingly and without his ever realizing it, deeply inspired everything around him. And so, as the surrounding mountains and forests were at an ever-increasing pace awakened from their primeval slumber, the numberless small kami that dwelled therein were driven out, and the hearts of the villagers who had gazed morning and night on those mountains and those forests gradually calmed down and they were led to drink deeply of the joy of life. It would probably take two or three years of study, but I should like to write a story telling of the mournful parting of those numberless kami as they set forth on their journey of exile to faraway lands as the new religion of Buddhism was transmitted to Japan and gradually came to replace them. I would choose a young nobleman for the main character and would have him feel profound sympathy for the banished kami; but even in his longing, he would be awakened to the new faith. Would that not make a ne tale?41

Mishima was envious of Hori Tatsuos ability to write such exquisite prose effortlessly, but he was not particularly arrested by this passage or its message. Horis words are a farewell, overowing with love and devotion for Japan, spoken from the viewpoint of the new religion. In it he makes
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a contrast between Buddhism as a philosophy of life and pure Japanism as a philosophy of death. The notion that the ancient Japanese view of life was optimistic and only turned pessimistic with the introduction of Buddhism is nonsense propagated by people who know not the rst thing about the meaning of religion. In fact, the ancient Japanese had no ground for any kind of hope. Their lives were spent in the frightened but stoic anticipation of death and the journey to the dreaded land of darkness (yomi no kuni). Their rst hope for life, the rst conviction of resurrection in the next world, came through the encounter with Buddhism. As for my personal relationship with Japan, I can only say that I consider love of Japan to be a form of self-love. I experience Japan as an extension of my own mind and body; just as I love my own body, so do I love Japan. Self-love, narcissism, is sweet and enticing, easy to fall into and hard to climb out of. Love, on the other hand, is rooted not in the self but in the other. If it is directed to the self, it is not love but mere selfattachment. The Buddhist teaching of no-self leads to the two conclusions:
1. One should detest oneself. 2. One should love only the absolute other (God or Buddha).

As a Buddhist who follows the doctrine of no-self, I must never get to the point of loving Japan as an extension of my own physical self. Although I believe that I ought not love myself, the fact is that I most certainly do; and even though I believe that I ought not love Japan, I nd I cannot avoid it. Still, the teaching of the Buddha is absolute, which leaves me no other choice than to conclude: A Buddhist must not love Japan. [Translated by Jamie Hubbard]

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