文化受容のリミックス史：表面の受容と深部の抵抗A History of Japanese Cultural Remixing

One characteristic of the Japanese often cited, and now widely shared internationally, is a talent for taking in the cultures of other countries. Geographically, Japan is an island nation beside the vast Eurasian continent, and the influence that came by way of China, a great power of history, was large in several periods. Yet even the word China covers more than the Han Chinese majority that dominates today: from ancient times there were multiethnic, many-sided influences, and beyond them came influences from Russia to the north, Southeast and Central Asia, and, from as far away as the Middle East, the West, which complicates things further. Still, it is quite plausible that as these historical factors deepened in complex ways, a temperament peculiar to the Japanese took shape.

But the question cannot be answered by looking only at outside factors. I think it is precisely because something like a temperament the Japanese had held from long ago lay at the bottom that such a distinctive character, not seen elsewhere, formed over the years. Britain, another island nation beside a continent, Europe, is often compared with Japan. When I lived in London in 2018-2019, I could indeed agree that Britain has a temperament that is similar, though not the same. There is one big difference, though: nothing like the Japanese spirit can be found in Britain.

So in this article I will first look at the major events that were great threats in history and that had a deep effect on Japan’s cultural and spiritual history. As the major factors I take up the arrival of Buddhism, the threat of the Tang-Silla allied forces, the Mongol invasions, the arrival of the Black Ships, and the occupation after the Second World War. Going back further, it begins with the influence of the differing cultural spheres of different peoples in the Jomon, Yayoi, and Kofun periods.

Let me first say what I think of the Japanese temperament. Basically I see it as very mild, yet in the years around upheaval its excitement rises, and it has a speed by which it changes in no time into a new culture. Japan and the Japanese today are very slow, so this temperament seems lost, but in these unsettled days, when some new turmoil is drawing near, it is quite possible that the same will happen in the next period of change, and when it does, I think other countries’ view and evaluation of Japan will change completely. Yet now that the influence of the great powers of each age, China, Russia, Europe, Britain, and the United States, has run its course in history, no absolute great power will appear next, and since the dispersal of power across the world in the twenty-first century is self-evident, how the Japanese will take in the cultural inflow of the next age is an interesting question.

For example, if a great political upheaval occurs in neighboring China, many people will move toward Japan, and the same will happen if the Korean Peninsula is shaken or a Taiwan contingency arises. I also have a view of my own: the inflow of overtourism and digital nomads is, I think, a kind of mass arrival from across the sea, and I consider it daily. That these compound factors will have a strong influence on the psychology of Japanese society next (and at the same time strong resistance) can be inferred from the flow of history.

In that age, I predict, the current stereotype of Japan as mild and peaceful will change completely. When tension in society rises, moments arise in which resentment toward people from outside grows easily, and signs of this are already rising in Tokyo and are steadily appearing in regions with many immigrants, such as Osaka, Shizuoka, Aichi, Gunma, Saitama, and Okinawa. Keep in mind, then, that if a symbolic incident occurs, the mood of society can change astonishingly fast. This is not mere speculation but something I am convinced of from my own study of Japan.

Historically, it begins with the first arrival of Buddhism in Japan in the mid-sixth century. Buddhism did not exist in Japan originally, but through the history that followed, Buddhist culture took root so deeply that Japanese culture cannot do without it. It should be noted, though, that Japanese Buddhism is less Indian Buddhism than a Buddhism remixed in China. The Japanese of the time did not accept Buddhism readily either. Fierce conflict arose between the pro-Buddhist (崇仏派) and anti-Buddhist (排仏派) camps, which led to war and gave rise to a new age in which the rulers were replaced. When the pro-Buddhist camp took authority, the court actively accepted Buddhism, and the building of temples and the arrival of scriptures accelerated.

Meanwhile, the push for Buddhism from the center met reactions from many directions in a Japan that was not yet a unified state, and these grew until even the Buddhist powers, who held authority, could not ignore them. So, as a measure to root Buddhism in Japan, the court had no choice but to steer toward setting the foreign religion of Buddhism against the native belief of Shinto (神道) while bringing the two into harmony. Cases in which religions clash and then fuse are probably rare in other countries, but in Japan at this time the thought of shinbutsu shugo (神仏習合), which identifies the kami with the buddhas, was born. Linking a foreign faith to native gods can indeed be called flexibility, but at the same time we must not be misled by this surface acceptance of culture. One important feature of Japan’s way of taking in culture is a layered structure in which acceptance is shown on the surface while the native is defended strongly in the depths. This is a difficult structure for outside commentators to read, and it is a reason international understanding of Japan goes astray.

Next comes the Battle of Baekgang (白村江の戦い) in 663. Japan fought its first foreign war and was crushed by the overwhelming Tang-Silla allied forces. Facing the danger of invasion by the victorious allies, Japan was forced to reform its governing machinery from the ground up. After the defeat at Baekgang, it did attempt a root-and-branch change of the whole system of rule, in diplomacy, military affairs, and politics, to prepare against a Tang-Silla invasion. This showed in the strengthening of its defenses: the posting of sakimori (防人), the border guards, the building of a communications network, and the construction of fortresses in northern Kyushu, where an enemy would land. Fortunately, Tang and Silla went to war with each other at this time, and no invasion of Japan came. That gave Japan room to press ahead in earnest with building a centralized system modeled on the legal codes of Tang, the absolute power of the day. As a result, Japan declared itself a ritsuryo state (律令国家) centered on the emperor, and changed its name from Wa (倭) to Nihon (日本).

Out of this desperate response were laid the foundations of Japan: the name Nihon, the imperial system, and the cultural trait of taking in foreign culture while developing it in its own way. The source of the “island consciousness” of the modern Japanese lies especially in this national crisis of the late seventh century. Up to this point, though, no actual invasion by another country had occurred. War broke out on the continent and the peninsula, and refugees from the defeated side fled to Japan and brought new culture, which happened often. That state, in which the crisis did not become real, lasted a long time, but in the latter half of the thirteenth century an invasion by an outside enemy became real, and Japan became conscious of an external enemy for the first time. This cannot yet be called the consciousness of a nation as we know it today, but it was a major cause of the birth of its prototype. That was the Mongol invasions.

The age was the latter half of the thirteenth century, in the Kamakura period, when the samurai had overthrown the aristocratic government and taken power. The rising Mongol Empire (the Yuan) and Goryeo invaded Japan twice, in 1274 and 1281, and these invasions are called genko (元寇).

The Kamakura samurai kept fighting the Mongol invasion, but had the Mongols been able to advance in great numbers, there would have been no chance of winning. At this moment, as the Mongol forces advanced from the Korean Peninsula toward the coast of Kyushu, a sudden storm shattered their army, and the Mongols gave up on invading Japan. This stroke of luck was passed down as kamikaze (“the divine wind,” by which foreign enemies were driven off by a wind of the gods), and became the source of what later led to emperor worship (the kamikaze special attack units of wartime also rest on this). This event had long been considered legend, but recent archaeology has found evidence, and it is now clear that it really happened.

The sense of crisis from this unprecedented attack by an outside enemy gave a great shock to Japanese society and spiritual culture, and had a large effect on Japan’s military system, social structure, and spiritual culture. For the Japanese, who until then had spent their days in internal battles (wars within the country), the dawning of the awareness of “preparing against an outside enemy” was a great change. From then on, defensive walls were built along Hakata Bay, and the shogunate also made the awareness real by strengthening institutional preparations such as the Ikoku Keigo Banyaku (異国警固番役).

Once the threat of the outside enemy had passed, though, the samurai plunged again into the Sengoku period, when they spent their days in internal wars. Christianity, which had reached Japan in the age of exploration, also failed to take root in Japan, so there was no particularly large outside enemy. In that state Japan entered the Edo period as a unified country, and with the policy of national isolation (鎖国) begun to sweep away Christianity, awareness of an outside enemy gradually faded among the Japanese over the years. In this period of stable domestic rule, no crisis of attack from outside had come for a long time, so the rulers forgot the character of an island nation and neglected coastal defense. The pioneer who traveled across Japan and appealed directly to the shogunate, the domains, and the imperial court about the importance of coastal defense was Shihei Hayashi (林子平, 1738-1793).

Shihei argued for sounding the alarm and making preparations, but in a peaceful age an attack from outside was a dream and he was ignored. So, as the summing-up of his life, he published Kaikoku Heidan (Military Discourses on a Maritime Nation) in 1791 at his own expense, in only thirty copies, and preached the importance of coastal defense, but to his regret he ended his life without anyone understanding. Yet in 1792, the year after publication, a Russian bearing a letter from the Russian emperor actually entered the port of Nemuro in Hokkaido and asked for trade, and the shogunate’s optimism fell apart. Then, in 1853, sixty years after Shihei’s warning, the American Black Ships (黒船) led by Commodore Perry appeared off Uraga, and the next period of upheaval began. As I have written a little before, the arrival of the Black Ships was not the direct cause of the change; a small number of Japanese had pointed out beforehand that this would happen. The problem is the rulers who ignored them.

In the turbulent last years of the shogunate, many young people who thought the rule of the Tokugawa could not carry them through the next age left their domains, moved about the country, and began working in secret with like-minded people. Some thought that the shogunate could not be overthrown unless the fiercely hostile Satsuma domain (modern Kagoshima) and Choshu domain (modern Yamaguchi) were allied. The man who ran about for that alliance was Ryoma Sakamoto (坂本龍馬, 1836-1867), born in the Tosa domain (modern Kochi). Sakamoto had the talent and flexibility to take in Western culture at once, and he took the forceful step of making the alliance by holding the supply of funds and weapons for overthrowing the shogunate. The one who took on this request was Thomas Glover, a Scot who had come to Japan as an arms dealer in the age when the British Empire was scheming to open Japan’s market. So Sakamoto at last allied Satsuma and Choshu and produced the wave of a military coup centered on lower-ranking samurai. This was the important movement that led to the Meiji Restoration (明治維新).

The shogunate, already dysfunctional, was shown the military power of the Western powers, and with lawlessness at home as well, it was forced to open the country. This opening was not a good thing in any sense. It was imposed as a forced opening of the market, in effect an invasion of Japan, and it drove many Japanese to resist. Foremost in the effort to push back the pressure of the West were the hot-blooded samurai of the Mito domain (modern Ibaraki), but to their regret their leading figures died in the Great Ansei Earthquake (安政の大地震) of 1854, their movement faded, and the coup came to depend in effect on Satsuma and Choshu.

The Meiji Restoration of 1868, which took real power from the Tokugawa, is glorified as a great reform that abolished the old feudal order and made a modern state, but in substance it was a military revolution, and imitation of the West began only on the surface. If we overlook that the new age began with a strong irritation toward the pressure of the West held inside, we miss its essence.

Even so, the swords of the samurai could not beat warships and artillery of modern technology. So the Meiji government decided to adopt the advanced institutions and technology of the West for the time being, and bet on a future Japan that could meet the West on equal terms. Centralized government, a constitution and parliament, and a modern army were set up rapidly, and Westernization was pushed in every aspect of society. But in the process, once the Meiji period steadied, the rulers forgot the future of equal footing that had been their first intention, and clung to vested interests. In particular, Takamori Saigo (西郷隆盛, 1828-1877), the Satsuma leader who was the central figure of the Meiji Restoration, was driven in the end to take his own life by the designs of the Choshu faction, and this had a large effect later. By driving Saigo out of the government, the Choshu politicians who had removed an obstacle moved at once, under Aritomo Yamagata (山縣有朋), to create a bureaucratic state.

What must be understood here is that Saigo was revered by the Japanese of the time as a person of the highest character. With Saigo in Satsuma, many young people of Kyushu who admired him were deeply influenced, and as the Meiji period went on and the Choshu faction took real power, they could not bear the sight of Choshu officials embodying the vested interests and calculation seen as symbols of the West. This is how the right wing was born in Japan in the Meiji period. The source of the Japanese right wing lies in Meiji, and what matters is that those who were active here were the people of Kyushu who inherited the will of Takamori Saigo. The most representative was Mitsuru Toyama (頭山満, 1855-1944), who had received Saigo’s influence and founded the right-wing group Gen’yosha (玄洋社). He firmly argued for resisting Western advances into Asia, and became the main pillar supporting independence movements in Korea, China, India, and elsewhere. Toyama’s true successor was Ryohei Uchida (内田良平, 1874-1937) of the right-wing group Kokuryukai (黒龍会), and both were born in Kyushu.

These groups are commonly seen as the source of the later Pan-Asianism (大アジア主義), but to me, as one who studies the history of the right wing, this is a complete mistake. The Asianist ideals of Toyama and Uchida were not the sophistry, later led by the Japanese government (the army), that justified invading other countries. They lay in backing the leaders of each country’s independence movement and, at times, supporting them with troops from Japan, so as to stand against Western domination. In fact, Japanese took part in other countries’ independence movements from the Toyama-Uchida right-wing organizations.

I think highly of the character of Toyama and Uchida and of Masahiro Yasuoka (安岡正篤, 1898-1983), a major right-wing figure before and after the war in their line, and they strongly opposed the army-style statism and ethnic nationalism that affirmed invasions such as Manchuria. To equate the two is to misread history. But their movement had only a local effect politically. In the age after the opening of the country, through the collusion of officials and bureaucrats, a rapid change to admiring the West in every aspect of politics, society, and culture occurred, and the new government took in Western culture, pressed on with modernization, and hollowed out.

The symbolic ideal raised at this time was wakon yosai (和魂洋才): to keep the Japanese spirit (wakon, 和魂) while actively taking in Western knowledge and technology (yosai, 洋才). In the Taisho period (1912-1926) that followed Meiji, this ideal became the driving force of the democracy movement among a new generation of young people who knew nothing of the turmoil of Meiji, and the age entered what is called “Taisho Democracy” (大正デモクラシー). The admiration of the West in this age was quite one-sided, and so it became in turn a stepping-stone for the rise of the right wing. The Taisho period was short, only fifteen years, and a new Showa period began, in which Japan at last entered an age of confronting the West and stepped up its invasions of other countries. Just looking at this age, I cannot think at all that the Japanese simply accepted foreign culture. I think we must not forget that a strong reaction always arises over the long term.

It was the army that revived in the Showa period. The Kwantung Army (関東軍), a lawless group that was uncontrolled even within the army, reached its turning point when it caused the decisive Manchurian Incident (満州事変) of 1931. This force seized various interests in Manchuria, such as opium and railways, and held great wealth, and through that wealth it became the engine that influenced Japan’s political world strongly and established the army’s absolute power. The one who took the opium interests and worked behind the scenes here was Nobusuke Kishi (岸信介), who later became prime minister under the protection of the American CIA and greatly distorted postwar Japanese society.

So the runaway army could no longer be stopped by anyone, and an age came in which the army’s claim for all-out resistance against the Western powers carried the day. Under an army with the power to move even the emperor, even when Japan’s defeat was plain to all in the last stage of the Pacific War, various proposals for a ceasefire were ignored and only the army’s claim to continue the war was held high. In the end Japan lost battle after battle and lost territory, and finally the whole of Japan became a burnt-out field, with the tragedy of the invasion of Okinawa and the atomic bombs.

For the Japanese, then, it can be said that more than the United States, the result of the army’s runaway led to the defeat in the Second World War, and the occupation by the General Headquarters of the Allied Powers (GHQ) began after the war. Here Japanese society was forced anew to undergo a dramatic change from outside pressure. GHQ aimed to demilitarize and democratize Japan and make sure it would not threaten the United States again, and carried out many reforms to turn it into a peaceful state, hollowing out the Japanese spirit.

In the burnt-out postwar, with supplies scarce, the disarmed people could do nothing under the occupation’s rule, and because public order deteriorated extremely in the confusion right after the defeat, a strong danger arose that society would no longer hold together. The ones who stood up in this confusion were neither the government nor the police but the local yakuza organizations who took it on at the people’s pleading. From here rose the Yamaguchi-gumi (山口組), which later achieved national dominance. So although it is glorified as a Japan that swept away its militarist past and was reborn as a state based on peace and democracy, that is a fairy tale for people who do not know Japan, and the substance is very different.

This time I have only looked at the large flow with reference to important events of history, and whether it can honestly be called “the remix power of acceptance” remains doubtful. It is true that the forces that took in a new culture tend to hold power at first, but because this current is always superficial, it immediately allows the rise of reactionary forces, and as a result, in every age the reactionary forces later turn conservative. Seen this way, rather than the conventional view that Japan simply takes in the cultures of other countries, the acceptance stays on the surface, and in the depths there is always a strong resistance to the foreign, which produces a strange harmony in which open exclusion does not occur. Conversely, this resistance in the depths to what comes from outside can be called the core of the cultural structure of Japan, and this layer seems still to flow at the bottom of society today.

At the same time, for a people on an island who lived long in village society, resisting an outside threat openly would have been reckless from the standpoint of survival, so it becomes visible that, in practical terms, a strong awareness of Japan was nurtured throughout history on the spiritual side while a show of accepting other countries’ cultures was kept up. I think this is the fundamental element of Japan’s cultural structure, and from here on I will keep considering it from many sides and open this mysterious capacity to my readers.