Centre for Japanese Studies University of Marburg OOCCCCAASSIIOONNAALL PPAAPPEERRSS No. 29 Rationality, ritual and life-shaping decisions in modern Japan Prof. Dr. Michael Pye Centre for Japanese Studies University of Marburg Marburg 2003 Edited by Centre for Japanese Studies University of Marburg Biegenstr. 9 35032 Marburg Germany Tel.: +49 (0)6421 28 24627 Fax: +49 (0)6421 28 28914 Email: [email protected] Author Michael Pye Centre for Japanese Studies Religion and History of Ideas University of Marburg Biegenstr. 9 35032 Marburg Germany Tel.: +49 (0)6421 28 23662 Fax: +49 (0)6421 28 28914 Email: [email protected] Copyeditor Petra Kienle Centre for Japanese Studies University of Marburg Biegenstr. 9 35032 Marburg Germany Tel.: +49 (0)6421 28 24908 Fax: +49 (0)6421 28 28914 Email: [email protected] ISBN 3-8185-0373-7 Rationality, ritual and life-shaping decisions in modern Japan Michael Pye A young lady inscribing a votive tablet at Tōkyō Daijingū, which specializes in enmusubi. Photo by author, October 2002. Rationality, ritual and life-shaping decisions in modern Japan Introduction 3 Religion, rationality and modernisation 5 Religion, rationality and irrationality 5 Disenchantment and modernisation 7 The demythologisation of karma 10 Modernisation as an intellectual shift 12 Persisting enchantment 14 Persisting enchantment in Singapore 14 Persisting enchantment in Japan 18 Life-shaping decisions in Japan 20 Shintō in the context of Japan's primal religious system 20 Name-giving 21 Traffic safety and good behaviour 25 Conclusions: primal religious systems in East Asia 27 References cited 30 Introduction There are three main steps in the argument and materials presented below. First of all an exploration is made of the relationship between rationality and irrationality in the history of Japanese religions. This relationship may appear in some respects to be a paradoxical one but, however interpreted, its historical and analytical significance is beyond doubt. Second, a brief account is given of the continuing presence of religion in "enchanted" or as one might say, non- demystified forms in contemporary Japan. Some illustrative material from the Chinese culture of Singapore is also adduced for comparative purposes. Third, detailed examples are presented from the context of contemporary Shintō. These might seem to a casual observer to be extremely automatised rituals or even "superstitious" acts. However, as will be explained, such acts may be regarded as internally rational in the sense that they seek to correlate a given human situation with various possibilities of shaping one's own life for the good. The human situation is perceived, at any one time and for any one life, to be partly inherited and partly determined in other ways. It is therefore regarded as somehow given. The following questions then arise. How can the situation be analysed, what can be done about it, and how can life be shaped accordingly? Much religious activity in Japan and other parts of East Asia is devoted to the consideration of such questions and to providing a ritual context for the development of life- shaping decisions such as how to name children, when to start a new business and many other matters of daily importance. In conclusion it is argued that such phenomena are best understood in the context of primal religious systems, and that these are likely to be in evidence for years to come. This paper has by no means arisen in a vacuum. It is related in various respects to a research project on interpretations of fate and life-shaping decisions in contemporary Japanese religions, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and currently in progress at the University of Marburg.1 In addition, parts of the paper below were presented to an international forum of Japan experts in Helsinki in November 2002, under the title "The paradox of rationality and 1 The project is an example of the way in which a particular subject area in the university, Religionswissenschaft, which is lodged in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Philosophy, works closely together with the Centre for Japanese Studies of the same university. At this point I would also like to mention the helpful cooperation of those who have worked in the framework of this project at various times and various capacities, namely Dr. Monika Schrimpf, Dr. Katja Triplett, Mr. Richard Böhme, M.A. and Ms. Sybille Höhe, M.A., and who have all been helpful to me in various ways. A substantial, multi-authored account of the results of this project is currently in active preparation. 3 irrationality in religion in its relation to modernisation processes in Japan and elsewhere".2 In both of these contexts the question of finding the right terminology has arisen, partly as between different languages and partly as between different academic disciplines. The title of the wider Marburg project was rather carefully formulated in German some time ago as Schicksalsdeutung und Lebensgestaltung in japanischen Religionen der Gegenwart. It is not easy to find exact equivalents for these expressions in English. Schicksalsdeutung could be translated either as interpreting "fate" or as interpreting "destiny", an option which can easily lead into long discussions about the possible meanings of these two words. Lebensgestaltung is an extremely convenient German term, which means something like the shaping or the constructing of our lives. In the title of this paper, "life-shaping decisions" has been used to refer to approximately the same field, because the German word Gestaltung ("shaping") implies a decisive initiative. The shaping of life does not just happen by itself. Such terminology varies therefore, with subtle nuances, even between English and German. But at the basis of our work in this research project lies common Japanese terminology such as unmei 運命, innen 因縁, kaiun 開運, kitō 祈祷 and many less well-known expressions such as tennen 天然 which will be discussed in the appropriate places. It is very important to be sensitive to the implications of the discourse of religion and ritual in the Japanese context itself, and not to be led astray by the kind of generalised terminology which gets itself established in not a little sociological, theological and journalistic writing. It is presupposed here that direct and extended knowledge of the cultural field is crucial as a basis for responsible theoretical representation. Examples given in the later part of the paper have therefore been drawn from immediately recent fieldwork (October 2002). If the first step in this account may seem to be rather historical, it is nonetheless necessary. This is because some serious misconceptions about the phasing of Japan's modernisation processes, and in particular about the way in which these are related to religion, are widely current. The question of demystification and rationalisation is or should be a major theme in retrospective reflection on the early modern period of Japanese thought, that is the Edo Period, and in this respect the author has paid particular attention to the works of Tominaga Nakamoto (1715-1746, 2 The title of this conference-workshop (Helsinki, 11-14 November 2002) was "Japan as a Model for Asian Modernisation", and the conference coordinator was Professor Rein Raud. I am grateful to him and various colleagues present for detailed and helpful discussion of the paper. In particular, as good fortune would have it, a participant from Singapore happened to know the temple practices reported from there and vouched for the accuracy of their description. 4 see further below). And of course the Edo Period also has its intellectual pre-history in earlier periods. Hence it is quite misleading to focus only on the Meiji Period when discussing questions about modernisation. At the same time, processes of demystification cannot be considered in isolation from the recognition of the continuing strength of everyday religious practices in East Asia. In other words the "enchanted" world (to use Max Weber's vocabulary again) continues to exist in some kind of symbiosis with the rationalised, modernised world. As far as the history is concerned, attention may also be drawn to a more limited problem in the assessment of the way in which modern Japanese studies of religion have developed. This problem, frequently misunderstood, is connected with the word "religion" itself, to which is usually assigned the Japanese equivalent shūkyō 宗教.3 Although both of these terms took on a particular value in the nineteenth century encounter between an invasive western world and a defensive and self-assertive Japanese culture, neither of them is locked entirely into the discourse of that time. Both have an older history and a later history. It is therefore fair to say that the term "religion" and its approximate and most general equivalent shūkyō may be used, at least by specialists in the study of religion, to refer to the various successive and overlapping religious systems of Japanese history. The equivalent term, it may be added, is also used both in general and in academic contexts in Korea and China. This may appear to some readers to be a rather obscure topic, but it bears a fundamental relationship to the way in which modern Japanese history is conceived and also to wider questions about orientalism and occidentalism, the Nihonjinron debate (i.e. about the idea that there is some kind of quintessential "Japaneseness"), and so on. Religion, rationality and modernisation Religion, rationality and irrationality The apparently simple distinction between rationality and irrationality has been related to religious phenomena in many ways, and the complexities which arise may cause some impatience among those whose main interests lie elsewhere. Yet religion, regarded by some as "irrational", is big business in Japan and Taiwan. It is very significant in Korea. It persists 3 For rather different accounts of the way in which academic reflection on "religion" has developed in Japan see Isomura 2002 and Pye 2002 (following earlier statements on the subject).