CHAPTER VIII

THE JAPANESE SPIRIT:

Foundation of Japanese Peculiarity

GUO JIEMIN

Each ethnic group has its own cultural features, but it is indeed rare in the world that the Japanese not only “bring in” foreign cultures as they please, but also possess a clear-cut stand for tenaciously defending their own traditional culture. People often bemoan their inadequacy in understanding this “puzzle”. For example, the U.S. philosopher Moore held that Japanese culture is the most mysterious and most fantastic of all the great traditions.¹

China and Japan are close neighbors separated only by a strip of water, both belong to East Asian Confucian cultural circle. Because of historical origins, they have many similar traditions, giving people the impression of “the same culture and the same clan”. But, in-depth understanding reveals that the Japanese are “much different from” and less similar to the Chinese or “apparently the same, but actually different from” the Chinese, especially at the deep layer of culture. For example, in belief, we “proscribe one hundred schools of thought and espouse one as the orthodox ideology, while the Japanese pursue the trinity of Confucianism, Buddhism and Shintoism. In aesthetic conception, we advocate the satisfactory acme of perfection, while the Japanese enjoy the “beauty of incompleteness”. Chinese emperors could abdicate and hand the throne to others, while the emperors of Japan have come from the same family generation after generation.

As Chen Bohai pointed out in his book entitled The Chinese Cultural Road, different ethnic groups created different cultures according to their own needs and possibilities in their historical development process. Culture embodies the wisdom of subsistence and is determined by its inherent “soul”. To have an in-depth understanding of an ethnic group’s culture, nothing is more necessary than firmly grasping and exploring its “soul”.

THE JAPANESE SPIRIT: THE IDENTIFYING MARK OF THE JAPANESE

Many foreigners living in Japan for years have had a common experience: The Japanese are exclusive. Though they are always polite and courteous, they will never treat you at heart as one of them.

The difference between the Japanese and Chinese is not simply one of race and extraction. Some years ago, a number of Japanese “war orphans” brought up by Chinese of goodwill, out of their yearning for their native place flew to Japan from Northeast China in order to embrace their native ethnic group. However, these genuine Japanese have not really integrated into the Japanese society of the “so-called 100 million of Japanese brothers” and some have returned to China. The reason is that, growing up against a different social and cultural background, they lack tacit interaction with native Japanese in their hearts and have been regarded as foreigners.

As the Japanese have long been of a single ethnic group and the emperors of Japan have always come from the same family, their ideology is relatively stable and their “soul” is relatively identical. They have a strong sense of cultural identification with each other and can often have a tacit understanding in expressing feelings. In interpersonal contacts, it is a taboo to speak candidly or sharply, or to persist in one’s old ways. Thus the whole Japanese society has an “ambiguous” tendency. The speech made by Oe Kenzaburo, famous Japanese writer and the winner of Nobel Prize in Literature 1994, was entitled “I Am in the Ambiguous Japan”.

To foreigners, this kind of ambiguity is hard to adapt to. Many Westerners consider understanding the Japanese code of conduct to be more difficult than decoding the secret code of Japan used in dispatching special agents in WWII. In his book How to Do Business with the Japanese, Michell Doidge said bluntly that contacts with the Japanese were one of the most difficult and intolerable experiences in his career.

The Japanese regard the Japanese spirit or style of soul which causes many peculiarities, such as ambiguity, to be very important. Except for the Japanese spirit, all can be replaced in time. From the ancient “combining of the Japanese spirit with Chinese learning” to the modern “combining of the Japanese spirit with Western learning”, “learning” can be either “Chinese” or “Western”. But the “spirit” remains unchanged. In the drama Sargasso by the famous Japanese writer Mori Ogai, one passage in the dialogue between an old and young man who believe in the theory of “combining Japanese spirit with Western learning”, is representative. One says that, if European and US customs and habits are indeed good, undoubtedly they can be used as a good lesson, but that won’t do without “Japanese spirit”. The other says that there is no need to talk about Western material civilization. Examining Western ethics and religions, we can also choose and follow what is good, but the reason why the Japanese become Japanese cannot be abandoned in the final analysis. The reason must naturally be the “Japanese spirit,” without which the Japanese will not be Japanese. Obviously, the Japanese spirit is the hallmark of the Japanese. Even if of the same race and pure extraction, Japanese without the Japanese spirit (for example, the above-mentioned war orphans) are not the Japanese in a real sense, at least not in the Japanese subconscious.

THE DEFINITION AND ESSENCE OF THE JAPANESE SPIRIT

The explanation of the Japanese spirit in Japan’s Kujien is first that it is the wisdom and ability in real life related to Chinese learning, and second that it is the national spirit of the Japanese ethnic group.

In literature, the term “Japanese spirit” first appeared in Japan’s classic The Tale of Genji. The hero Genji, talking to the queen mother about the education of his son, says that the ordinary person must take learning -- here referring to Sinology actively imported from China -- as the foundation; if he also possesses the Japanese spirit and applies the Sinology in practice, he will be the strong. The whole sentence stresses the importance of the Japanese spirit. After that, in Japan’s ancient books and records such as Tales of the Past and Present, Imakagami and Gukansho, the term “Japanese spirit” frequently appeared.

From the beginning “Japanese spirit” implied living knowledge and the ability needed in reality. However, its contents were changeable. With the strengthening Japanese national awareness and a swelling sense of superiority, Japanese traditional culture represented by Japanese spirit was crowned with the name of “spirit of national prestige” and given enormous publicity. It became the quintessence of Japanese culture. Later, out of political needs, Japanese rulers combined it with Bushido, the way of the warrior, to unify national awareness, to instigate the Japanese people to follow them in external aggression and expansion, and to “sacrifice their lives for the country”. For example, Motoori Norinaga, the modern Japanese national cultural master, chanted, “If asking what Japanese spirit on the treasured islands is, that is the wild cherry blossoms whose scent is wafted under the rising sun.² Wild cherry blossoms are splendid for a short while and then leave fallen petals in gay profusion. This symbolizes timely withering like autumn chrysanthemum and spring cherry, that is, the spirit of facing death unflinchingly. What is more, Miyake Setsurei nakedly propagated that “Japanese spirit” is composed of self-respect and patriotic feeling (that is, feeling of love for the emperor’s family). The spirit of Bushido is Japanese spirit of “controlling selfish desire, laying stress on virtue and righteousness and making the country powerful and prosperous, . . . exactly the close to affinity between organizing the country and the indispensable quintessence of Japanese culture”.³

In WWII, it was in upholding such “Japanese spirit” that the Japanese imperialists committed the crime of aggression against China and many Southeast Asian countries and peoples, which remains fresh in memory. As Oe Kenzaburo said, upon hearing “Japanese spirit”, people studying Japan’s modern and contemporary history will not possibly calm down, for “Japanese spirit” has become a dangerous term in modern and contemporary times.⁴ “Japanese spirit” in this sense has been swept onto the rubbish heap of history together with the specter of Japanese militarism. Kenzaburo advocated recovering the initial meaning of Japanese spirit including commonality and the resonating power of such human psychological activities as reason, emotion and imaginations.⁵ Japanese spirit expressed in such classics as The Tale of Genji -- living knowledge and ability conforming to actual needs -- is exactly the concrete explanation of “common feeling”.

Upon what is Japanese spirit or “common feeling”, based? This can in fact be summed up in a word “wa”. “Wa”, first of all, is in particular referred to Japan, for instance, “wafuku” (Japanese clothes), “waka” (Japanese ode) and “washoku” (Japanese-style food). Then it can be understood as praising “harmony”. The Japanese use “wa” as the pronoun of their country, embodying their yearning for harmony. “Wa” came from China’s classic Book of Changes, meaning everything should be in a harmonious proportion. Since ancient times, Japan has had the idea of “all things in creation having intelligence”, holding that all lives and substances are equal, human, animal and plant or mountain, river and even soil and stone. Therefore, when the spirit of “harmony” was passed on to Japan together with Chinese characters, it was soon accepted by the Japanese, who had the greatest esteem for it and further took advantage of Japanese euphony to use “wa” as their country’s name. This act was not a sudden impulse; but their ideal and pursuit was built upon it.

In the early stage of Japan’s Heian era, after Korean Confucianist Wang Ren brought The Analects to Japan, the idea of “harmony being prized” struck root in the hearts of the people and was known to almost all. As Japan was an isolated island in a vast sea and natural disasters (earthquakes and volcanic eruptions) were unceasing, they needed a common basis of thought to unite, aid each other and pull together in times of trouble. This cannot be done without “harmony”. In 604, Shotokutaishi promulgated a seventeen-article constitution which stipulates that harmony is prized. The Japanese society should be built on such a basis: The prime principle of all social civilized contacts is “harmony”, that is, harmony between social members. From then, the principle of harmony became the principle of the Japanese society and the natural core and characteristic of Japanese culture. Many Japanese regarded “harmony” as a creed and hung horizontal inscribed boards of the word “wa” in their rooms and working places. Many mottoes related to harmony were derived therefore, for example, “meiroaiwa” and “iwaseisanwa”. In 1937, the Japanese Education Ministry compiled a book entitled The Original Meaning of National Prestige, discussing Japanese culture with “harmony” at the core. It held that people could find the spirit of “harmony” by tracking the facts of Japan’s founding and its historical orbit. “Harmony” was presented as the force pushing the Japanese history forward since the founding of Japan and also the indispensable ethics of human relations in daily life.

This shows that Japan had long taken “harmony” as an honor and managed state affairs with “harmony”. The soul of the Japanese has always been nurtured in the idea of “harmony” and their basic values have been based on the principle of “harmony”. In other words, the most universal and important “common feeling” is “harmony” (“harmony being prized” and “harmony above all”). So, it is not forced or distorted to explain the Japanese spirit as the Japanese-style of soul stressing “harmony”.

THE PROPERTY OF THE JAPANESE SPIRIT

In the Japanese “common feeling”, there is no firm belief or idol they are ready to die in defense of like the God in Christianity, or no complete theoretical system or teaching of sages like China’s doctrine of Confucius and Mencius. Shintoism in Japan’s homeland is based on the worship of life. All unusual objects of reverence are “gods”, including humans, birds, beasts, mountains, rivers, grasses, trees and other things. They are quite different from the Buddha, bodhisattva and sage in other religions. This property of the Japanese spirit can be specifically divided into the following two aspects.

No Sense of Principle

The Japanese spirit, that is, the “common feeling”, has many values. It does not recognize one sole correct ideological system or absolute justice. Managing with difficulty to distinguish right from wrong, superiority from inferiority or nobility from humbleness, certainly will lead to quarrels and even drawn swords. How then can “harmony” then be taken into consideration? The Japanese do not like to get entangled in an absolute theory. In extreme terms, what all agree to is “correct”. It is no wonder that Japanese thinker Nakae Chomin said frankly that Japan has had no philosophy from ancient to modern times.

So, the Japanese have no such mode of thinking that separate one to choose this or that; they take in everything. People often say that the Japanese receive Christian baptism at the time of birth, abide by the rules of Shintoism at the time of marriage and ask Buddhist monks to chant scriptures at the time of death. Generally they do not take extreme measures even for some decree. For instance, when the Meiji government ordered nationals to trim their hair worn in a bun and have short hair, it solved the issue mainly by “guiding,” rather than “banning”.

Famous Japanese cultural anthropologist and sociologist Nakane Chie pointed out that there is no fully independent frame, form and skeleton in Japanese culture. Compared with China and India, Japan is like a mollusk, while China and India are similar to mammals such as horses and lions, which have clear-cut bones. It can be said that Japan is close to living beings without bones similar to the sea cucumber, which in principle does not present an obvious form and often changes it.⁶ This vividly summarizes the Japanese lack of a sense of principle.

It is hard to infer normally and explain logically this mollusk of Japan; it leaves an elusive impression. For example, in the days of the Tokugawa government, as supporting the government system was regarded as “correct”, “honoring the monarch and resisting foreigners” became “correct”. But some years later opening the door and absorbing foreign cultures was correct. In WWII, Japan devoted major efforts to propagating a “great world harmony”, but after defeat, peace and democracy became Japan’s highest objectives. To the Japanese in different times the meaning of justice is different. The so-called just cause changes, subject to social conditions.⁷ It was a ferocious wild animal yesterday and may become a docile lamb today. Upon Japan’s defeat, the US occupation army was astonished at the Japanese immediate change of attitude to positive cooperation. Japan’s emperor set a good example and specially visited General MacArthur. This is because they soberly recognized that they had been defeated completely and must submit to US will to rally their forces. Due to Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Americans more or less understood Japan and did not go so far as to be at a loss on what to do in the face of the Japanese 180-degree turn. After decades, the Japanese “common feeling” to the U.S. has again begun to change; publicly and privately it is held that Japan should say “no” to the U.S.

Pragmatism

Because of “no sense of principle” of the Japanese, their “common feeling” lacks absolute values pursued at all costs. They neither look forward to the next life nor have blind belief in heaven. This results in their regarding interests of this life as of prime importance and giving their value orientation and national character an obvious pragmatic trend. Japan’s earlier concept of good and evil was directly related to good or ill luck and fortune or misfortune in people’s daily life. All favorable is good; all harmful is evil. This is based on the awareness of community.

Japan’s monks can marry. The founder of the Pure Land Sect Shinran was married twice and had four sons and two daughters. Sitting in meditation has been popular in Japan, but the purpose is generally to nurture the ability of self-restraint rather than to transcend worldliness and attain enlightenment. From this we can see a touch of Japanese pragmatism.

Attaching importance to pragmatism is influenced more or less by the Confucian spirit of real learning and empiricism. It is a common feature of such East Asian nations as the China, Japan and Korea, but it manifests itself most prominently in Japan. This is manifested first of all in attaching importance to science and technology. Generally speaking, what the Confucian states in the continent pay attention to is tempering personality and art while looking down upon industrialists, businessmen and craftsmen. But in Japan it is not so. Even in “the era of cutting off the country from the outside world”, Japanese rulers were lenient. They allowed numerous Western advanced sciences and cultures to enter Japan, including astronomy, geography, mathematics, navigation and medicine. They were aware that advanced science and technology in Western culture were useful real learning for Japan. History has proved that without long-term active fostering and the earnest introduction of science and technology, Japan would not have fruitfully gotten onto the road of modernization after the Meiji Restoration, or risen rapidly after the defeat of WWII to become an economic power.

Second, the pragmatic sense has made regulations and restrictions appear unnecessary. As long as it is useful, no matter how multifarious or grotesque, just bring it. Japan has the ability to resolve and restore foreign cultures and abandon some impractical contents or those not conformable to the Japanese “common feeling”. Thus it achieves a coexistence and integration of Eastern and Western cultures and shapes the open structure of Japanese culture. Someone vividly likened Japanese culture to an apple pear: it appears to be an apple, but tastes like a pear. It is neither an apple nor a pear; it is not only an apple but also a pear.⁸

Of course, it has many other names like “two-layered culture”, “cross-breed culture” and “half-breed culture”. These names all reflect the pluralism of Japanese culture. The Japanese are good at making different things peacefully coexist. For instance, their belief is the trinity of Confucianism, Buddhism and Shintoism. Their written language is composed of Chinese characters, kana and foreign words. The Japanese usually eat Western-style food such as bread, coffee and milk in the morning, Japanese-style food such as slices of raw fish at lunch and dinner, and go to restaurants to taste Chinese food in holidays and festivals. Such cultural spectacles can be seen everywhere in Japan.

Third, no sense of principle and pragmatism complement each other. The former helps bring about the latter, while the latter strengthens the former. In history, out of their own needs, Japanese rulers sometimes relied on Shintoism, sometimes made use of Buddhism, and sometimes praised Confucianism highly. This kind of pragmatic behavior without principle has caused the Japanese nation and its culture to lack rational rays, but has endowed it with perceptual color. As a Japanese Shinto master pointed out, the strong point of the Japanese mentality does not lie in logic and philosophic reasoning, and still less in building a huge ideological system by putting various ideas in order. This is because the Japanese have not been nurtured in abstraction, so in the history of knowledge they show no profundity of thought. What the Japanese are best at is grasping the most profound truth by intuition and relying on superficial phenomena to show it in an extremely realistic way. Thus Japanese culture is called a “perceptual culture”.

In daily life, compared with law and contract, “justice and charity” (including conscience, honor, feeling and chivalry) play a greater role and to some extent form a business ethics. For example, in Japan’s business circles, a popular sentence is, “I can not treat my partners unfairly, as this will destroy the principle of justice”. In the past, business people in Osaka often added the following postscript in their contracts: “I will never violate this agreement. If by any chance there is any violation, I will not have a grudge against others, even if meeting with ridicule.⁹ This shows that “meeting with ridicule” is more humiliating than “violence of agreement”. In Japanese awareness, a contract is nothing more than a form to maintain an outward show, so there is no need to take it too seriously. Both parties to the agreement are Japanese with the same nation, language and culture, so regardless of the contract matters can be settled through consultation. What is important is that justice and charity cannot be violated.

Because of the perceptual feature of Japanese culture, Japanese aesthetics is extraordinarily developed, creating such aesthetic concepts as “sensitiveness to beauty”, “quiet beauty” and “quietness” and enriching the treasure house of world culture in such fields as fine arts, drama and literature. Especially the “do culture” combining aesthetic with concrete skills, such as floral art, the tea ceremony, calligraphy and fencing, is unique and matchless.

The Japanese deeply understand that to ensure the maximum “profit” they must seek the maximum “harmony”. Some shopkeepers know the truth well and simply choose the name of harmony and profit for their shops, such as “walikan” and “waliya”. On the basis of this “common feeling” group awareness has naturally emerged. This is a main feature of the Japanese society. It has made members of a community interdependent in feeling and to share a common fate. It has brought Japanese enterprises and even all parts of the whole country together in order effectively to bring the utmost energy into play. As individuals the Japanese are not very outstanding, but once they unite to form groups they work as one to produce tremendous energy. Through long-term accumulation, group awareness has been integrated into Japanese cultural psychology and become the inherent demand and conscious action of every social member. In Japan, an individual’s self-value does not depend completely on personal struggle, but is realized through the group. Individual and group are not antagonistic, but mutual conditions for achieving their respective interests.

To sum up, the properties of Japanese culture with the Japanese spirit at its core are “no sense of principle” and pragmatism, from which derive a series of cultural elements rare in the world.

UNDERSTANDING THE JAPANESE SPIRIT MEANS UNDERSTANDING JAPAN

Because of Japan’s tremendous achievements in modernization and its important contributions to world economic development, people have treated it with increased respect. The fact that the Western G-7 summit had to include Japan, an Eastern country, showed its decisive position as an economic power.

Exploring the puzzle of Japan’s success will certainly be linked with its culture, which has developed a school of its own. A large number of scholars (including Chinese scholars) hold that Japanese culture indeed has its own superiority. In Relations between Eastern and Western Cultures and Modernization, Cai Zukuan said that the current Japanese culture is a new one growing up sturdily after integrating the strong points of Eastern and Western cultures.¹⁰ And in Approaching Oriental Culture and Modernization from the Perspective of Japanese Rejuvenation, Song Yuelun said that post-war Japan has become a sufficiently rich and stable country to represent Oriental culture.¹¹ Their view is that to advance Oriental culture, Japanese culture is “enough to represent Oriental culture” and should be developed first. Japan’s sense of self is particularly good, given that it has always been introducing foreign cultures. Now it is time to export Japanese culture to the rest of the world. The Japanese Government has set as a new objective becoming a cultural power.

However, we should note that the Japanese “soul”, that is, the “common feeling” lacks a sense of principle and is only pragmatic. So it is a two-faced animal like the god of dual nature in Japan’s mythology. In normal times it is a god of peace, mild and composed; in times of emergency it becomes a fiendish and brutal god. For example, was it not Japan’s group awareness that promoted Japan’s rise and also has almost pushed it to the verge of destruction? The Japanese national character also has a contradictory or dual nature, not only fighting, warlike and with self-respect, but also docile, beautiful and self-abased. Japan’s pattern of behavior is hard to understand. Obviously it took “harmony” as the base to build up the country,¹² but it just as hastily launched wars. The Japanese tend to turn into the opposite, sometimes in masterstrokes. One commentator likened the Japanese to a swarm of small fish. They swim in good order in one direction till a stone falls into the water and throws the ranks into confusion. Suddenly they turn to the opposite direction, but the ranks remain in good order.¹³

Of course, there is indeed much in Japanese culture that we can make use of, such as the ability to incorporate things of diverse nature; this has played an important role in Japan’s rise. No matter what the perspective, Japan is a country worth attaching high importance to and well worth in-depth research.

To understand Japan, nothing is more important than first understanding its spirit. Only by grasping the Japanese spirit can we successfully understand not only the past and present of Japan, but also its future. The reason is that all have been created or occurred under the role of the “Japanese-style soul”. Though the concrete contents of the Japanese spirit change subject to the times, and the Japanese adjust their “common feeling” according to their own needs at all times and places, the properties of the Japanese spirit will not change. This has provided a point of reference for understanding Japan. The Japanese spirit is the foundation of the Japanese peculiarity, and thus a key to understanding Japanese ideology and behavior.

NOTES

1. Quoted from Japan Studies (Beijing University Press, 1990), no. 2.

2. Bushido (The Commercial Press, 1993), p. 95.

3. Nationalism in the First Half of the Meiji Era (Miraisha, 1958), pp. 60-61.

4. Quoted from Zhang Guoan, “Ambiguous Culture: Japan’s Atomic Bomb Ignited by the Human Body”, Mengya, No.2, 1996.

5. Ibid.

6. The Japanese and Japanese Culture, p. 81.

7. Sakaiya Futoruichi, Knowledge Value Revolution (Oriental Publishing House, 1986), p. 278.

8. Chen Weili, Appearance of Wholesale Westernization and the Body of Oriental Civilization (Hunan Art Publishing House, 1988).

9. Mysterious Japanese Cultural Psychology (Congqing Publishing House, 1992), p. 131.

10. Oriental Culture Research (Beijing University Press, 1994).

11. Ibid.

12 The Current Japanese -- Tradition and Change (The Commercial Press, 1992), p. 114.

13. Ibid.