TOP・UPDATES・FOUR PILLARS・CINEMA/TV・GAMES・MANGA/ANIME・MUSIC・WRITINGS・FAQ・LINKS
TOP・UPDATES・FOUR PILLARS・CINEMA/TV・GAMES・MANGA/ANIME・MUSIC・WRITINGS・FAQ・LINKS
In 1945, Japan surrendered to the allied powers and Emperor Shouwa made his famed "humanity declaration," where he officially renounced the orthodoxy that he was of a divine bloodline and admitted to merely being a human being. Many were affected by this, but none was more so than Mishima Yukio. In his diary, he wrote a very interesting note: "Only by preserving Japanese irrationality will we be able to contribute to world culture 100 years from now."
This phrase stuck with me because I've come to feel very similarly when it comes to cultural heritage movements. I want to do my best to explain how I believe that it is irrationality and arbitrariness which in fact can be the most important things in sustaining and preserving cultures around the world. I'll mostly focus on Japan as an example culture here, but this should be taken as applicable for any culture anywhere in the world in need of preservation and/or renewal.
I think that when we encounter things that seem uncommon or opposed to us in other cultures, we're generally tempted to try to explain them. One case I remember that I found interesting was a discussion in some book about Chinese history which mentioned an interesting contrast. In much of the western world, it seems that our sort of intuitive wiring tends to unite agriculture and harvest with feminine deities. The archetypal example is Demeter, the goddess of the crops and the grain. She embodies a nurturing, sustaining, fertile, and fecund mother figure. Much of this iconography may have been derived from Cybele in Anatolia. We tend to even think of some of our most ancient representational pieces of art, like the Venus of Willendorf, as being part of this tradition. Of course, it makes sense. The grain sustains us and nurtures us like a fertile, loving mother.
But in China, it is quite different. The gods of the harvest there are, traditionally, male. And not just men, but manly men who could fight and be courageous and brash and warlike. But then again, this also makes sense. If we think about who actually would have been doing the harvesting and the real WORK of harvesting in the ancient period, it would have been mostly men. And without things like tractors, it would have been tiring work that you would have to be strong and tough to accomplish.
I think in a lot of ways we seek to deal with cultural differences and different conceptions of the world like this by trying to explain them, in order to show that "those guys and their wacky ideas aren't too weird, they're human just like you and me if you really get right down to it and try to understand them." This can even apply to things that aren't what we might call the real intelligent, scholarly parts of culture like religion and art and so on but are more commonplace and everyday. These most basic things are called "mores" or "folkways" in anthropology. That is, these are the things that any culture takes as general customs, habits, manners, norms, and so on.
For example, in a lot of western societies it is considered impolite to slurp your food or drinks. But in Japan and China, it is considered a sign of respect and thanks to the chef. So this is a lot less abstract and theoretical than the above ideas of divinity. But again, I think westerners have an easier time accepting it, even if maybe they think it's a little weird or gross, because there's a rationalization of it. By showing that respect it makes society become a bit more polite and happy, because the restaurant is filled with the sounds of thankfulness and gratitude.
But my question is this: What if there are mores or folkways that HAVE no rationalization or justification? These, I think, are among the kinds of things that Mishima is talking about when he talks about "Japanese irrationality." And they are the most important and yet also the most fragile things there are.
As philosophical or sociological thinkers, we are often tempted to create a "rationalization" or "justification" to each and every bit of a culture, as if it all fit in as a puzzle piece creating a big picture. For example, I thought a bit about this when I was learning Japanese. This is going to be a long example to set up before you see how it's relevant, but hear me out. Anyone who studies Japanese and comes to it from a European language will go through a bit of a paradigm shift in their thinking where they have to stop thinking in terms of pronouns. Yes, there are personal pronouns in Japanese, like "watashi" for "I," "anata" for "you," and so on. But the vast majority of the time in Japanese, you don't put these words in.
If you want to say "I'm going to buy some drinks. Would you like to go together?," you could say "Watashi wa nomimono wo kai ni ikimasu. Anata mo isshou ni ikimasenka?" But everyone who has studied Japanese knows that this way of speaking reeks of a first-year Japanese student who is still "thinking in" their native language which requires a pronoun in every sentence about a person to be grammatically correct. Because Japanese people rarely put the pronouns in, since the context is perfectly clear without them: "Nomimono wo kai ni ikimasu. Isshou ni ikimasenka?" Literally, "Going to the store to buy drinks. Go together?" There's a lot that is revealed philosophically about how much of the meaning of our language is based on shared contexts of use rather than the actual words that this kind of use can illuminate. Certainly it's something the later Wittgenstein would find interesting. And of course it's this possibility of ambiguity which makes Japanese such a rich language for poetry.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that I started to think a lot about the "cultural" value of this way of speaking. For example, I thought in my head about western metaphysics which have a Cartesian-inspired view of an individual soul trapped inside a body, a "ghost in the machine" versus a Buddhist-inspired conception of "non-self" in Asian societies. Ah, even in the language we see this kind of thing reflected! The westerner is so individualistic because his language reflects the ontology of individual souls, while the easterner is so selfless because his language reflects the transient and illusory nature of the self, as taught by the Buddha since ancient times. What a clear-cut, beautiful theory!
But wait a minute... Who was it who first put forward the idea of "anatman" or a lack of self? Well, this idea was really formulated in India by the Buddha before it was in Japan or China. And what languages were they speaking? Pali or Sanskrit... which are Indo-European languages... which are far closer to those European languages that we speak! Which means that they had the same prominent pronouns that we do! So I guess now that theory is kaput. I give this example to point out that not every bit of culture that we add into the greater picture has some rationality or justification or explanation behind it. A lot of it might simply be chance. But that doesn't mean that it isn't something to preserve and to cherish.
One more example: In Japan, when people say "me?" and point at themselves for emphasis, they point at their face. In the west, they point at their chest. I lived in Japan for a while and thought about doing the English teaching route, but I saw something that really horrified me. I saw a teacher show the kids he taught how in the west, we point to the chest instead of the face, and that they should do this if they talk to a foreigner so he doesn't get confused and think they're talking about their nose or something. Why did this horrify me? Because I immediately got a premonition of what might happen: What if one day everyone in Japan starts pointing at their chest instead of their face? That seemed very likely to me if that reason he mentioned got out. Because I immediately saw how the process would go: Japanese realize that pointing at their faces instead of their chests might cause confusion with westerners who are coming to Japan for the first time. And since Japanese people are so compassionate and accomodating, they don't want to cause trouble. So they do a bit of cost-benefit analysis and realize that it would overall cause less trouble if they just always pointed at their chest instead of their face. Then no visiting westerners would be confused. And they aren't really losing anything by pointing at their chests instead of their face, are they? There's no RATIONAL reason to point at the face over the chest, is there?
Ah. There's Mishima's point. Of course not. There is no rational justification. But who knows what small piece could undo this whole house of cards if we start removing things with no "rational" justification. I was more scared of a small, "irrational" thing like this being lost than anything else. Because I know that a lot of parts of Japanese culture will sustain themselves because they can be rationally justified or have an inherent ideological appeal. The wisdom of Shintou religious thoughts of nature worship can stand even in the presence of more common religious traditions because we will run into ecological crises and it will seem beneficial and helpful to come in touch with a form of spirituality that connects us to the earth. The beauty of Chinese characters can stand even in the presence of simpler and more universal writing systems because we will come to see its virtues of conciseness and poetic richness. The practice of removing our shoes before entering a building can stand even in the presence of more efficient customs of leaving them on because we will recognize the spirit of respect and cleanliness that it represents. But there is no justification or rationality for little things like pointing at the face over the chest. And that is exactly why they are the most fragile and thus the most precious and in need of conscious protection.