Dr. George Williams

When Japanese scholars ask questions about how language handles experiences of the sacred, they focus primarily on two responses: (1) foreign languages really cannot render the unique qualities of Japanese religion and culture, and (2) Japanese religion is experienced as inner, subjective, immediate and mysteriousmaking any verbal expression 'inadequate. Christian missionaries have raised a different issue: there at are no adequate terms in Japanese for translating essential Christian terms like God, Son of God, Holy Spirit, and so on. This latter point will be returned to at the end of this brief essay. We will be looking at a civilization in which the sacred is experienced horizontally or immanentally-in nature, nation, community, family; in human relationships; in culture. So we must examine the Japanese language to see which features emerge from the chaos of human possibility.

What are the unique qua] ities of the Japanese language as it describes experiences of the sacred? Every study of a religion begins with a minimum of techni - cal terms which have no exact equivalent. But there is also something more intangible embedded in the heart of an indigenous language in which a religion has evolved. This brief essay will attempt to suggest something about these issues.

Even though Japanese is of an entirely different language family than Chinese, it borrowed the Chinese writing system. Attempting to create a term for their unsystematic religious and cultural traditions, the Japanese borrowed two Chinese characters -- shen, which corresponded to the indigenous word kami, and dao (Japanese: to or do); together these characters became "the way of the Gods" or "the way of the Kami" -- Shinto.

The Japanese attempted to use Chinese characters as their writing system which they called Kanji, and this began a process which led to four writing systems. Kanji utilized Chinese meanings, and attempts were made at a Chinese pronunciation, but the original Japanese word with the same meaning has a second pronunciation of the Kanji-the kun or Japanese reading. The two languages could not have been more different. Japanese words are polysyllabic, Chinese single characters were monosyllabic. So the Japanese took elements of Chinese characters and invented a phonetic system for their own native words called Katakana. They then added a second phonetic system for foreign words which is known as Hiragana. Finally, a romanization of Japanese was developed in the modern period called Romaji. Currently one can find all four forms of mitten Japanese in the same sentence- in a newspaper or a book. Hiragana allows any idea in the world to be expressed but distances it from what is truly Japanese and integrated into Japanese culture.

This last point returns us to the problem of religious language. The word for God or deity is kami. It is singular and plural. It must not be assumed that Christian or Jewish definitions of the deity apply to this Japanese word. The adventure in understanding other religions begins in the simple realization that languages do not signify the same meanings nor do they correspond to identical concepts.

The first Christian missionaries to Japan in the sixteenth century tried to find a Japanese term for God. At first Dainichi was used until Francis Xavier realized that it was a Buddhist term. This great Roman Catholic missionary then switched to the Latin Deus, but opponents began pronouncing Deus as Dai-uso ("a big lie"). Then Tento, the heavenly way (T'ien Tao, Chinese characters transliterated in Wade Giles spelling favoring a Cantonese pronunciation), was used from about 1580 until the Kirishitan were all but extinguished by 1640. The Shogunate closed Japan to the West except through its contact with the Dutch in Nagasaki. After Commodore Perry forced Japan open in 1853, the treaty of 1857 allowed Christian missionaries to begin permanent work among the Japanese people starting in 1859.

Protestant missionaries had the same difficulty as the Catholics in translating key Christian terms into Japanese. Karl Gutzlaff of the Lutheran Mission completed the first translations of the New Testament in 1837, even before Japan was "opened." He used Gokuraku for God which he understood as "Heaven" (goku, extremely, and raku, spirit). This poor choice was soon replaced with the Chinese character shin (Shen) which can also be read as Kami. By 1859 translators were using Kami spelled out in the Katakana syllabary and printed in larger, bold letters. Dr. J. C. Hepburn, a Presbyterian missionary doctor and member of 1873 New Testament Translation Committee, remarked:

The poverty of the vocabulary and inelasticity of the Japanese language rendered communication and mutual understanding extremely difficult in intellectual and spiritual matters, especially in religion. For example the corresponding words for our'spirit', 'God,' 'Son of God' are almost useless, because to a Japanese they suggest at once their native superstitious ideas of a spirit as a ghost or spectre, or of a god or son of a god, after the fashion of their own numerous gods or sons of gods. The Mikado (Emperor) himself as a direct descendant of the sun goddess is considered the son of a god...

This discussion of the Japanese language and its special characteristics leads to a basic but simple conclusion: phenomenologically speaking, the Japanese language has evolved in a particular way, and its expressions about spiritual matters are a linguistic and cultural reality in Japan.

The point of this brief essay is to call attention to the wonder and breadth of religious experience. Shinto emphasizes the naturalness of the sacred and holy in human life and relationship, in nature, and in culture. This is immanental religion. The family is the first locus of the sacred and the ancestors are venerated with its focus on the kamidana. or "altar to the kami." The community is a second centering of the sacred with its heart at the Shinto Shrine, entered through a torii or gateway and approached by acts of outer and inner purification. And finally, there is the nation whose religious head has been the Son of God, direct descendant of Amaterasu--the Emperor as both ruler and high priest of the nation. And while the current constitution of Japan has redefined it as a secular nation, Shinto and the way the Japanese language has evolved still presupposes a sacred society in harmony with nature and the universe. Both presuppose that religion is in the world--immanent, not transcendent and "other."

From even so brief a look at some of the presuppositions of Shinto and Japanese religious terms we can see how much Westerns can gain by learning about Shinto and its experience of holiness in nature, human life and community. (This essay has emphasized only what is to be gained from Shinto religious terminology because Westerners usually already know weaknesses or pathologies of other cultures and religions.)

 

Dr. George Williams is Professor of Religion

at California State University at Chico CA.