Just as I was finishing up a tutoring class one evening last week, the father of the family came home. He stood outside the front door and called for his teenage daughter to bring some salt. She ran to the kitchen, grabbed the salt shaker, and sprinkled him liberally. I couldn’t understand. As I stood there mystified, the mother explained, “He went to a funeral … ” As soon as she said “funeral” I remembered that that’s what they do in this country, “… to ward off the spirits of the dead.” Both parents are very well-educated, well-traveled, sensible people who were educated in Western schools and speak English quite fluently. These people, who on occasion have been somewhat offended at how “religious” I am, faithfully follow old Japanese superstitions. As Westernized and technologically advanced as Japan has become outwardly, it is still pagan to its core. Superstition controls the everyday lives of the people.
In Japan, there is a system of lucky and unlucky days. If you buy a calendar made in Japan, chances are every single day of the year is marked lucky, unlucky, or one of the four degrees in between. This is one reason I only buy calendars made in America or Europe. Most people follow these days very closely. For example, people never have weddings on Butsumetsu, the day that Buddha supposedly died. (So most of my friends’ weddings were on Butsumetsu, because everything is cheaper! LOL.)
The numbers 4 and 9 are considered unlucky numbers because 4, (pronounced “shi”) is a homonym of “death” and 9 (“ku”) is a homonym of “suffering.” Hospitals and most apartments do not have fourth or ninth floors. Apartments are numbered 101, 102, 103, 105… and parking lots are numbered 1, 2, 3, 5, and so on.
Some other customs include the ritual purifying of land before starting to build anything. Everyone does that. There is even ritual purifying of automobiles, though not everyone does that.
When Ben, Berek, and I went to kendo lessons, the students had to bow before and after every lesson to the teacher, to a shrine, and to the room itself. This gets carried into sports. When my brothers went swimming, the students would bow to the teacher and then to the pool. This is at a swimming school that trains Olympic athletes. When they went to our local basketball club, people would bow to the teacher and the basketball court. Of course, we only bowed to the teacher and skipped bowing to the shrine, pool, and gym. The teachers at the swimming school allowed Ben and Berek to stand upright while all the kids did their extra bows. The folks at the basketball club didn’t really care either way. Some people there did it instinctively. But one of the older kendo teachers (he only visited on test days) flew into a paroxysm of rage when we three refused to bow to the shrine and to the room we practiced in.
Quite often, I hear laments about how moral standards are falling so low in America. Granted, I agree they are getting very bad. But every time I was there for a visit, I was delighted with how refreshingly “clean” things were there. Over here, every store that sells printed material sells pornography. It is in every convenience store, at every newsstand, in every supermarket, in every kiosk in every train station. It is not hidden at all, but put on full display. There are vending machines that sell porn videos and magazines. Prostitution is supposedly illegal, but it is everywhere. There are advertisements in the train, in our mailboxes, in telephone booths. It is an unavoidable aspect of living in Tokyo. There is a “bar” near where I work with underage Filipina prostitutes. There are prostitutes from Eastern Europe with their Japanese pimps lined up on the street just a few feet away from our local supermarket. Mothers pass by with their groceries, kids zip by on their bicycles, families stroll by, all of them as if nothing is out of the ordinary. It’s not as if we live in a cheap or seedy section of Tokyo. We are in a nice, quiet residential area. That’s just the way things are. Adultery and prostitution are taken for granted. Almost every time I get on the train, someone is looking at porn. In this country, where right and wrong are determined by what is shameful or not (thus committing a shameful act is not an issue, but being exposed is), porn is not considered the least bit shameful.
The fascination that some Westerners have for Japan has mystified me for years, but if you are one of them, here are some good books to read. If you actually get through all of them, you’re all set. The first three books are big, heavy, scholarly books. The fourth gives an interesting theory about parallels between Shintoism and the Old Testament. The fifth is is an account of Japan written by an American who tried to become Buddhist. The sixth is an amazingly well-researched, factually quite accurate book about Japan written by the usually-almost-disgustingly-silly Dave Barry.
1. The Enigma of Japanese Power (Karel van Wolferen)
2. The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness (Peter Dale)
3. Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (Karl A. Wittfogel)
4. The Japanese and the Jews (Isaiah Ben-Dasan)
5. Thank You and OK!: An American Zen Failure In Japan (David Chadwick)
6. Dave Barry Does Japan (Dave Barry)
Some of these are only available used so I have linked them to BookFinder instead of Amazon. If you’ve never used BookFinder before, you should read this.
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