by Hatakeyama, Yasuo D.Theol

1. The Notion Of Purity/Impurity In Japanese Folklore And Religions

It is said that Japanese society is a homogenous community in relation to its single language, culture and folk, from which reason the unity of the nation is easily realized and has, therefore, the merit to keep on the high level in education and technology among people, for example. It is of course a kind of presupposition without reexamining its reasons. Such a presupposition is challenged by the groups of indigenous and foreign minority people just like the Ainu in Hokkaido, Okinawans, Buraku people or Korean residents who are seen as polluted and thus are discriminated by the majority of Japanese people because of the religious notion of pollution. In order to solve the discriminating social problems, in this paper we try at first to trace the notion of pollution in Japanese folklore and religions.

In Japanese folklore it can be said that people are used to live in two separated days between ‘hare’ which means the extraordinary and joyful, ceremonial days and ‘ke’ which are related to the ordinary or normal days. In days of ‘hare’ people feel to be liberated from the daily works and life itself. They put on special and beautiful Japanese costumes, Kimono, called ‘haregi’ which means Kimono for the day of ‘hare,’ and eat special dinner in order to celebrate the days as festival ones. Religious celebrations are yearly repeated in the days of ‘hare’ by Shinto shrines, so that, these days of ‘hare’ are days for the matters of gods which are cut from ordinary days and seen as the ‘holy days’ according to Eliade’s definition, on which human beings and gods are closely related. These days are, for example, New Year’s days, all saints days in August, Thanks giving festivals after harvest of rice and so forth. There are also the days of ‘hare’ for the individuals like the seven- five- three year old festival for children - they are celebrated by the Shinto shrine, when they become three, five, or seven years old. Twenty year old celebration as initiation and marriage are, for example, also days of ‘hare.’ The days of ‘hare’ are, therefore, related to happiness of human beings, something good and wishful. It is a remarkable fact that these festivals or ceremonies are monopolized to celebrate by Shinto shrines only in comparison with Buddhism. They have not anything to do with Buddhist temples.

In comparison with ‘hare’ the days of ‘ke’ are recognized as the time of ordinary life. The notion of ‘ke’ means something ordinary, something unreligious, which is not closely related to gods’ matters. In this sense it is a notion of time in terms of secular matters and behaviours in our social life. The notion of ‘ke’ is neutral for value judgment and, therefore, neither something good nor something bad. This neutral notion of ‘ke’ can be easily changed according to man’s value consciousness or the Zeitgeist. Namihira insists that something important of people’s daily life in Japanese folklore, which is neither ‘hare’ nor ‘ke’, has to be recognized as the other category. She categorizes it as ‘kegare’ which means pollution, uncleanness or something dirty. By means of categorizing the notion of ‘kegare’ as the independent area of Japanese folklore, it is also classified as special days in comparison with days of ‘ke.’ The days of ‘kegare’ has, however, nothing to do with something joyful or gods’ matter in ceremonial atmosphere. On the contrary, it is closely connected with the image of death which people have to feel as something unhappy, something evil or guilty. "The matters of unhappiness, the matters of something evil, the matters which people do not will, which death represents for example, belong to this category. What is brought by death, is pollution and uncleanness." To the category of ‘kegare’ belong some notions as follows: the matters of something evil, namely unhappiness, illness, death, guilt, pollution, injury and so on. Because of strong notion of ‘kegare’, death has been tabooed by Japanese folklore. It is an usual custom that people who come home from the funeral of their friend scatter the salt in front of the gate of their house on behalf of cleaning their body and preventing ‘kegare’ which would invade into the house and be made the family members unclean. We see here the notion of death as something dirty, which would bring us new unhappiness.

By such notion of ‘kegare’ in the matter of death, it is in a sense inescapable that people who are related to death as their job like diggers of grave have been seen as humble and dirty in Japanese history. Even Buddhist priests have to be segregated to participate in ceremonial feasts by Shinto shrines in some cases according to Namihira’s observation. Of the reason of the segregation the villagers said, that Shinto fests must be joyful and affirmative to the life of human beings, on the one hand, and Buddhist priests are usually connected with death funerals and they do not purify themselves after funeral as the ceremony which Shinto always does, on the other. The example showed here is of course somewhat extraordinary, but we can generalize the difference of the rolls of two representative Japanese religions as follows: Shinto represents the side of the notion of ‘hare’ and Buddhism the side of the notion of ‘kegare,’ whose different rolls are not changeable in our days.

Nowadays Japanese Buddhism is sometimes criticized as ‘the funeral Buddhism’ which means the Buddhism whose main task and connection with the society is only funerals. Historically observed, the funeral is not essential for Buddhist teaching to make it ceremonial. On the contrary, Japanese Buddhism has a remarkable tendency that the priests were also afraid of being polluted by the dead body, whose notion was indeed influenced by the notion of pollution in Japanese folk religion, Shinto.

In comparison with the notion of death as ‘kegare,’ it was a kind of culture shock, when Christians in the 16th century Japan showed the other notion and attitudes to death among the common people. Christians, for example, endeavoured to bring the dead to the church which were not buried by any person including even family members and Buddhist priests because of being afraid of ‘kegare’ from the dead body, to hold mass for them who were not Christians and to bring them to the church grave in order to bury them. They behaved such acts as a work of love to their neighbours which was described in the catechism as one of Christian’s duties by faith. It is said that the funeral ceremony in Buddhism was influenced by the catholic mass in those days. Because of strong persecution to Christians after the flourishing 16th century of the catholic mission which is called as ‘the Christian century in Japan’, the history of Japanese church had, however, to be interrupted by the new established Tokugawa regime for over two hundred years till the new beginning of Christian mission in the early 19th century.

As mentioned above, we traced out the notion of purity/dirtiness in Japanese folklore and religions. In addition to it, we need to connect such a notion with the sociological theory on the relation of holiness/secularity. Durkheim already noticed two dimensions of the realm of holiness, namely something holy in general sense and something dirty and cursed in contrary sense. Eliade also defines holiness with his two technical terms, hierophany and craftphany based on his understanding of holiness that it contains two elements, namely something holy and something dirty. In the form of epiphany of the holy, it differs from something ordinary and secular, and makes a kind of contrast with it. The holy in general sense is defined as ‘cosmos in terms of social order which must be solid and unchangeable.

The genesis of cosmos as the origin of our world is understood as the work of gods’ creation according to many mythological creation stories in the world. As far as the creation of cosmos by gods was concerned, it would be already purified in its origin, because it could easily communicate with the holy world of gods. Outside of the world there is no other world like our world any more, because it must be recognized as chaos, the world of disorder. The realm of chaos is not unchangeable, but it can become the cosmos, the world of order, if human beings can conquest it and live there by means of forming the social order. The process of forming the social order means according to Eliade’s opinion the process of purifying the chaotic world, to which dirtiness, curse, unhappiness or something like that belong, and it reflects on the genesis mythology by which it is told that holy gods created the cosmos as holy and orderly in eternally original time.

Cosmos and chaos are contradictory in terms of their role and function, on the one hand, but they belong to the same holy realm in terms of difference from ordinary days and realms, on the other. Peter Berger notices therefore that such dichotomic understanding of the holy is not suitable to the reality of our life and time. He defines the realm, which is neither ‘cosmos’ nor ‘chaos’ as ‘nomos’. It means the world as being ruled by secular order and related to ordinary life and time. In terms of man’s consciousness of order, whether it may concern to the holy order or to the secular one, ‘nomos’ is closely related to the ‘cosmos’ which is the foundation of the former as its norm. Berger defines ‘cosmos’ as the realm of ‘ultimate reality’. The widespreading realm of ‘nomos’ which common people feel or recognize in the process of their conscientization can be understood as the process of secularization of the realm of ‘cosmos’ by which man’s consciousness of the holy must be faded out. In this process the realm of ‘chaos’ has to be marginalized more than before and the discrimination to those who are seen from outside as inhabitants of the realm of ‘chaos’ must be also stronger than before. For example, the persecution and the oppression to the Jewish people and Schinti and Roma became stronger in the time of forming the centralized nation state in European countries in which the demands of uniformity to the people as one nation became also stronger than ever.

In this way ‘cosmos’ and ‘nomos’ are opposed to the realm of ‘chaos’ even in modern times. The formation of the realm of ‘nomos’ as human world order was believed to be based on the creation of ‘cosmos’ from ‘chaos’ by gods according to myths, so that ‘chaos’ as disorder and formless being before the creation could be also understood as devil’s power which could bring the world as ‘nomos’ back to the chaotic world. And ‘nomos’ gets its foundation of social power structure from the holy world order ‘cosmos’, so that the protest and the resistance against the social order or status quo has to be judged as treason or rebellion to the rulers as well as to gods.

Japanese Historian Kuroda adopts these three categories in sociology and shows the diagram of social class system in Japan’s Middle Ages as you see on the other paper. To his original diagram we would add three categories in Japanese folklore such as ‘hare’, ‘ke’ and ‘kegare’ whose meaning is already mentioned above. ‘Hare’ can be connected well with the category of ‘cosmos’ because of their holiness and divineness whose character is extraordinary. ‘Ke’ has a good combination with the category of ‘nomos’ because of their ordinary and normal meaning in life and time of human beings. Namihira’s category of ‘kegare’ can also be related to the category of ‘chaos’, as far as these extraordinary character concerns with something negative such as impurity, dirtiness, uncleanness and so forth. On the other side we have to mention the difference between Berger’s sociological concept and Namihira’s category.

In Berger’s theory the realm of ‘cosmos’ does not shift to the realm of ‘chaos’ or not belong together with the latter to the holy realm, by which the concept of the holy is ambiguous, but they are separated clearly to each other. These realms can be easily changed according to the socio-economic changes of the given society with whom people’s consciousness also accompanies at any rate. In this point, it is right when Mary Douglas insists that ‘dirtiness is not isolated, but it can only exist in that realm, where the notion is ordered systematically in the society.’ Something dirty and unclean means in its essence to invade the order, whether it is seen as holy or secular. In order to invade the social order or the sacred one, one needs to have power, so that chaos, which comes into existence by means of invading the given religious or social order, has something to do with danger and power of which common people and rulers have to be afraid.

The order itself means the power, by which the outline of the social structure is clearly drawn and people are forced to obey it. The order as the holy and the ‘cosmos’ is a means of ideology for ruling the people and the system of value consciousness for making them obedient. It is in this sense not possible to form the social order as absolute, if the ideology for ruling the people cannot be accepted by them, as if it were a kind of religious belief. Then people who will not accept the social order or cannot harmonize with it must be excluded and banished, i.e. they must be marginalized and discriminated. They have to be labeled the polluted and oppressed as criminal as antisocial. The society with the discriminating ideology could be solid in its social order because of the smart domination, which is divided into two directions between the ruling class and its ascending neighboring people who are seen holy in any sense, and the oppressed people who are excluded and seen as humble and dirty by descending his social status.

As Karl Marx once defined the slavery system in Asia in terms of the so-called Asian way of production, there were many slavery and discriminated people since ancient times in Asia. These discriminated people in the period of antiquity of Japan, however, cannot be confirmed as the ancestors of the Burakumin in the current days. In terms of the origin of forming the discriminated Buraku and its people, Japanese history experienced the break through because of radical changes of social order accompanying the shift of value consciousness among people in the last period of the antiquity or the period of disappearing of the ancient powers. We have to look for the origin of the Burakumin in this period of the 13th century Japan, though the discriminated people in those days were not directly the ancestors of the current day Burakumin because of the radical changing and changed social order afterwards. With the help of the historical science, we can, however, trace back the beginning of discrimination against some parts of the discriminated people today.

In the Middle Ages of Japan there were the people called ‘Kugonin’ who were not farmers and in economic sense closely related to the Tenno family, because they offered to Tenno many sorts of products. They could get the special permission as merchants and craftsmen to wander the whole country, to make their own products, to get them from others, to buy and to sell them or to bring them to the Tenno as their offerings. They armed in order to protect themselves from their enemies, so that they were also half-Samurai in this point. They once belonged to the special groups whose task was namely to bring the Tenno special products from sea and mountains in the whole country, so that they were closely connected to the power of the Tenno. The special permissions to wander the wohle country and to pay no tax was from such a reason given to them by the Tenno. Within these people there were also many entertainers of various sorts of entertainment.

According to the excellent historian Amino, Yoshihiko, Tenno’s close relation to these people shows that he could once rule the areas such as mountains, rivers, sea and so forth. They formed groups and behaved as members of them, and each member had the equal rights of membership. There were also the people who played the same important role for big shrines who were called ‘jinin’(direct translation god-man) and for Buddhist temples or for aristocrats’ families who were called ‘yoryudo.’ These ‘kugonin,’ ‘jinin’ and ‘yoryudo’ were seen as holy, because they related directly to the holy beings such as Tenno, shrines and temples where Shinto gods, Buddha and others were worshipped as the holy, and aristocrats who played also some parts of the important roles in terms of the holy order. Sometimes ‘jinin’ played also the role of ‘yoryudo’ at the same time, so that they could be the big groups with the strong power.

In the beginning period of Middle Ages the word ‘hinin’ which means literary ‘inhuman being’ were also documented as those who played the role of purifying something dirty. Concretely, their main tasks were to purify the dead through funeral and also to purify the sinners and those who touched them through their role as criminal officers. It was believed that they had also to do with purifying the dirtiness of the world through their special abilities as entertainers like skills, tricks, dances and so forth, because these abilities were connected with the holy. These ‘hinin’ was according to Amino’s opinion also ‘jinin’ or ‘yoryudo,’ so that they were also segregated from the common people because of their roles and relations to the holy. They were respected or feared by other people because of their holy power. Their role to purify something dirty or someone who became dirty was directly related to the role of Tenno who were seen as the most pure being. He could exist, therefore, in the centre of ruling structure of Middle Ages as ideological apparatus, though Tenno’s political power, which is closely related to the power of ancient aristocrat, was already usurped by Samurai class.

It was the 13th century Japan, that the radical social changes took place, so that the value consciousness among people had also to be changed. As a result of it, the realm of the holy had to be divided into two parts. Namely the Hinin, who had once strong power and were respected or feared by the common people because of their existence as the holy, were gradually degraded and discriminated, so that their special rights themselves became the cause of discrimination and alienation from other people. As already above mentioned, they could have once the special rights or permissions by means of their relation to the holy whose basis was the religious authority of the antiquity. They not only lost their special rights and permissions, but also were seen as dirty and discriminated. The reason why they who were seen once as holy were discriminated, cannot be found within themselves. We have to search for the reason in degradation of the value consciousness towards the holy according to the radical social changes, which occurred in the 13th century. As a result the holy lost its authority and power.

The question must be raised in this point: Why did the changes of value consciousness and social value system occur? What did occur in the turning point of Japanese history? Amino seeks the answer in the extraordinary figure of a Tenno named Godaigo who endeavoured to get again Tenno’s power in the last period of the first Samurai regime called ‘Kamakura regime’, in which the Tenno system since the antiquity had to meet the largest crisis since ever. The reign and the power of the Tenno was always decreased and the Tenno family itself was divided into the two family branches and conflicted to each other on behalf of getting the crown of the Tenno. The Tenno family could not automatically decide the successor without permission on the side of the Samurai regime.

Accompanying with the conflict of the Tenno families, aristocrats also straggled to each other and were weekend as a result of their conflict, so that the social order since the antiquity was deeply confused and the Tenno family could not compete against the Samurai regime any more. The deep confusion of the social order and the social value system, which had to give the deep influence on the common people was the primary reason and cause of the radical changes of the notion of holy/dirty connotation and of its social role. Amino presupposes that it was possible to let another person outside of the Tenno family to be Tenno because of the so deep confusion and the paradigm shift in terms of changing value system and people’s value consciousness.

Facing to the deep crisis of the Tenno family and the sacred and political power of antiquity itself, Tenno Godaigo rebelled against the Kamakura regime in order to strengthen the Tenno’s power and rebuild the absolutist Tenno system. He endeavoured to gather every possible power and authority such as cursing power of hidden teaching of Buddhism, alien-like priests, scoundrels and Hinin with the extraordinary figures. He could at last succeed the coup d’eta and build the Tenno regime by means of overthrowing the Kamakura regime. Godaigo’s regime, however, could keep its ruling power for only three years.The powerful Samurai leader named Ashikaga who once struggled against the Kamakura regime for supporting Godaigo rebelled against him, so that the struggles within the Tenno families were taken place again. Ashikaga supported the other Tenno family branch whose role was lost by the rebellion of Godaigo, in sofar as the into two branches divided Tenno family lost the right to select the successor prince, such a rule was rejected by Godaigo. After the defeat of the battles with Ashikaga, Godaigo had to exile to the mountain area in Yoshino, so that two Tenno appeared on the historical stage at the same time. Through such a historical incident, Tenno family had to be wounded deeply, because Tenno lost his authority and power in relation to his charisma as the holy.

As the result of it, the authority of the shrines and the Temples which were closely related to the Tenno family was also lost, which means that ‘kugonin,’ ‘jinin’ and ‘yoryudo’ who got once the special rights and permissions because of their close relations to the holy authoritative religions such as Shinto and Buddhism had to also lost their authority. The reason why they could once have their authority became then the reason why they had to be discriminated as much as the ancient notion of the ‘cosmos’ with the notion of the holy and purity had to be divided into two parts. In other words, it can be said that accompanying with the fall of the old ‘cosmos,’ the people who related closely to it were gradually cut down from it and also seen as polluted by the world of ‘nomos,’ so that they were recognized as the inhabitants of the world of ‘chaos’. Especially the people belonging to ‘hinin’ whose main task had something to do with ‘kegare,’ pollution/dirtiness and the prostitutes lost their relation to the holy and also their role of purification, so that they had to be seen as polluted and strongly discriminated afterwards.

3. The Discovery Of The Meaning Of The Gospel By Burakumin

As mentioned above, they were once respected or feared by the common people as majority whose main labour was agricultural works, because of their close relations to the holy and their own holy power which was acknowledged among people with their respect as reality. And then in the process of historical events these people were gradually seen as polluted and dirty and then discriminated. They could, however, contribute to the development of Japanese culture in the Middle Ages of Japan. Such as various sorts of entertainment, Japanese styles of garden and architecture including castles, crafts, Cha no yu(tea ceremony), Ikebana(flower arrangement),Japanese drama such as Noh, Kyogen, Kabuki and Joruri and several sorts of music, all of which are generally acknowledged as typical Japanese culture and were originally produced or developed by these discriminated people. We may not forget this fact. Without their contribution and their creative power Japanese culture since the Middle Ages would have shown the other development and face.

The Tenno family, however, could survive without having completely lost its holy power and authority from the most dangerous time of crisis through the times of two other Samurai regimes till to the present by means of deserting its former retainers ‘kugonin.’ Tenno had neither political power nor economic one in these days, but his religious authority and charisma were still in his hand, so that the existence of Tenno could have a symbolical meaning among and for the ruling Samurai class. After the more than hundred year’s civil war time, in which everything was radically changed once more. The Samurai regime was newly formed by the Tokugawa family and the feudal social order was made solid again in the beginning of the 17th century. The discriminated people were divided into two parts, namely ‘Eta’ whose members were heritable from the parents to their children, and ‘Hinin’ who were mainly consisted by the criminals and not heritable in principle. These ‘Eta’ and ‘Hinin’ were the direct ancestors of the present Buraku people who have been oppressed, discriminated, alienated and exploited till nowadays.

The Buraku areas in the 17th century of the Western part of Japan played also the role of Asylum for many persecuted Christians in those days. They escaped to the Buraku areas in order to keep on living and believing God. In other words, they could be accepted by the Buraku people into the Buraku area. But in the almost all cases excepting some places in Kyushu like Nagasaki, where the laymen’s’ organization which was called ‘confraria’ functioned well to keep the Christian faith, their descendants could not keep their Christian belief without having their priests.

After the fall of the Tokugawa regime in 1868, which is called the Meiji restoration, Japan entered into the modern era by means of having tried to form the modern society in order to keep Japan’s independence, in which the feudal systems were abolished in many respects just as the feudal social class system. The abolition of the feudal class system was, however, on the half way, so that the hierarchical class system stayed in Japanese society. Many historians, therefore, do not think of the Meiji restoration as revolution, but as social reform on behalf of modernization of the society. As a fact, the former local feudal rulers were defined as the highest ranked social system with the former Kuge who were court people in Kyoto. The former Samurai stayed also as such. And the former farmers, craftsmen and merchants belonged to the Heimin, which means common people in the same one social class. On the contrary, the former Eta and Hinin, the discriminated people, might not belong to the same Heimin class, but had to belong to the new formed Shin(=new)heimin as the other social class. After the new social order has been formed, the persecution and discrimination against the Burakumin became stronger more than before in the feudal times, because they had to lose their privileges which they gained from Tokugawa feudal regime and local rulers. For Burakumin Meiji restoration, therefore, does not mean their liberation, but the re-bondage by the new social order in modern times.

It was a kind of wonder that the Burakumin could discover by themselves the real meaning of the liberating biblical messages from outside of the church in the modern history of Japan, as Kuribayashi Teruo shows us in his masterpiece ‘Theology of the Crown of Thorn’ in terms of the liberation theology in Japanese context, though a leading Christian named Kagawa Toyohiko suggested the matter to Saikoh Mankichi, who once described the fist draft of the declaration of the ‘Suiheisha’ (the Levelers League), which is the first declaration for human rights in modern Japan.

The Burakumin gathered in Kyoto on 3rd of March in 1922 in order to establish the Buraku Liberation League which they named as the ‘Suiheisha’(Levelers League) and declared their proclamation on human rights fron their long discriminated context. In the declaration they expressed their criticism to the former Buraku movements as appeasement and emphasised the necessity of their liberation movement. They also expressed their suffering situation and lives. And then they cried out as follows:

"The time has come, when the victimized people throw down their stigmata. The time has come, when the martyrs are celebrated because of their crown of thorn. The time has come, when we can be proud of being ‘Eta’(namely the discriminated people)."

Kuribayashi interprets this ‘Suiheisha declaration’ as ‘the declaration of the Exodus liberation for Buraku people’ and ‘the Exodus story for wandering to look for the liberation from the discriminating society.’ They adopted Jesus’ crown of thorn as the symbol of their own sufferings and the design of their flag for their movement. It can be insisted that they wanted to show their sympathy with Jesus of Nazareth who suffered for the oppressed and discriminated people on behalf of his solidarity through his deep love and was judged as criminal, was forced to put on the crown of thorn with his pain and died on the cross for the others, especially for the discriminated and oppressed people not only in his days, but also in our days. The crown of thorn means, as Kuribayashi shows, the most degraded value, nothing valuable and useless being. This crown of thorn was put on to Jesus’ head which was a symbol of becoming valueless and powerless in comparison with the powerful powers of ruling class. The situation of Jesus on the cross is namely as same as Buraku people’s in terms of negation of their existence because by the discrimination and oppression. The crown of thorn is as the Christian symbol closely related to the suffering of Jesus who was humiliated during the trial. The Buraku people also discovered the liberating messages of prophets, whose spirit was clearly expressed by the ‘Suiheisha declaration.’

This historical fact must be very suggestive for us Christians that the biblical messages may not be monopolized by the church, which often tends to insist her role as the only saving organ maintaining the truth. The church has rather often misunderstood the gospel and its messages in her historical processes. The processes of church history, however, cannot be rejected easily, because they are signposts of how the church understood the Gospel correctly and how she misunderstood it. Kuribayashi insists that there are three sources for doing liberation theology:

a) historical experiences of the oppressed people,
b) witnesses of the Bible and
c) Christian traditions in church history.

We would like to insist that these three elements are not only the sources for doing theology, but also are the three different contexts to which we have to face and from which we would like to form the contextual theology of culture with the missiological insights and strategy in order to liberate and to democratize Japanese society and to change human mind and to let each person make metanoia.