Althouse: "Visiting a shrine to pray is different from being religious..."

September 7, 2015

"Visiting a shrine to pray is different from being religious..."

"It has nothing to do with religion. Most Japanese, including me, don’t think about whether we’re religious or not."

14 comments:

rhhardin said...: Radio Japan regularly, each year, reports on the Prime Minister visiting some shrine that also remembers war criminals and outrage from China and Korea. It's like a Chinese opera.

As if anybody gives a hoot.

The mysterious East.; 9/7/15, 6:59 AM
rhhardin said...: Americans visit a shrink to pray.; 9/7/15, 6:59 AM
traditionalguy said...: They claim to have forgotten Shinto, but the sun god operating through its incarnation the Emperor was ordering the slaughter of every other race on earth with Japaneses ingenuity and commitment until our fathers fought them to the death.

When the mega patrocities so easily enjoyed by thesShinto assholes are examined the big question is how could God allow that to happen. The answer is the sun god enjoyed every hour of the rapes, murders and tortures of prisoners until it ran up against the USMC and finally a more powerful God operating through Curti LeMay.; 9/7/15, 7:29 AM
Scott said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/7/15, 7:38 AM
Scott said...: Some religions hold that you are what you believe. You are a Christian or a Muslim because of your beliefs.

Others hold that you are what you are. You are a Jew regardless of your beliefs. You can be a Jew and an atheist; they are not inconsistent. Hindus regard their beliefs as self evident; you can't be "converted" to the religion.

Shintoism is in the second category. Althouse lives in a country where religions of the first category predominate. She applies the epithet "lightweight religion" to Shintoism. But what does "lightweight" mean? It's dismissive, a little snotty, and ultimately meaningless, because it says nothing about a person's relationship with God.

"Lightweight religion" is an uncritical throw-away expression of cultural bias.; 9/7/15, 7:40 AM
ken in tx said...: When you appeal to a supernatural power for favors, good luck, and wealth, that's not religion, that's superstition. You might as well carry a rabbit's foot. When you ask a supernatural power to help you be a better person, meet higher standards of conduct, and treat others better, that's religion. Both behaviors occur in most if not all religious traditions.; 9/7/15, 8:55 AM
Etienne said...: An acquaintance of mine has been restoring a late 19th Century Nunnery in Germany. The Nuns could no longer afford to maintain the large home, so the state took it over and used it to house asylum seekers. This led quickly to further deterioration and finally fell into disuse, and ugliness, amid some high value homes in the area.

The problem was, that whoever bought the place from the state had to maintain the historical nature of the building, so when this couple bought the home for one Euro, they agreed to restore it faithfully, which they did, at huge expense.

In the garden was a grotto and a statue of Mary with her hands out as in an embrace. Both he and his wife restored the grotto with loving care, even though they are not religious people. The thought that 1000's of Nuns through the ages had prayed at this very spot was overwhelming to them.

I thought about that, and wondered what I would do in that situation, and my first thought, was that it would never be used, so why waste money on it. But the more I thought about it, why destroy it and just put in more lawn. Then I thought, wait, I'm just a temporary owner, and the next owner may in fact be very religious. It has a legacy through many wars, through many failed crops, and through great piety.

When I look at my home now, it has nothing to offer the next owner, other than a roof and electric appliances. What an empty box to leave future societies.; 9/7/15, 9:10 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: Japanese wood joinery is pretty cool.

So are the cube-shaped melons.

But a lot of their women have a regular-sized torso with rather short legs.

Hey, can't win 'em all.; 9/7/15, 9:30 AM
RJ said...: When you appeal to a supernatural power for favors, good luck, and wealth, that's not religion, that's superstition. You might as well carry a rabbit's foot.

This.; 9/7/15, 9:35 AM
Balfegor said...: Re: Scott:

Shintoism is in the second category. Althouse lives in a country where religions of the first category predominate. She applies the epithet "lightweight religion" to Shintoism. But what does "lightweight" mean? It's dismissive, a little snotty, and ultimately meaningless, because it says nothing about a person's relationship with God.

I think this is part of what distinguishes Christianity and Islam (and to some extent Buddhism) from other religious traditions -- the focus on the relationship between the individual and a God, and the salvation that God holds out to his worshippers.

Modern Japanese "religious" practices are essentially custom and ritual, sometimes "Shinto," sometimes "Buddhist," often Confucian masquerading as Shinto and Buddhist (many "Buddhist" practices in Japan are more Confucian than Buddhist, e.g. the three years mourning). There's eight million gods in Shinto, but as far as I am aware, none of the Shinto gods promise you eternal life if you will only worship them.

I'm in Tokyo now as it happens. This all makes me feel like I ought to go make an offering.; 9/7/15, 9:56 AM
Balfegor said...: Re: Coupe:

In the garden was a grotto and a statue of Mary with her hands out as in an embrace. Both he and his wife restored the grotto with loving care, even though they are not religious people. The thought that 1000's of Nuns through the ages had prayed at this very spot was overwhelming to them.

I thought about that, and wondered what I would do in that situation, and my first thought, was that it would never be used, so why waste money on it. But the more I thought about it, why destroy it and just put in more lawn. Then I thought, wait, I'm just a temporary owner, and the next owner may in fact be very religious. It has a legacy through many wars, through many failed crops, and through great piety.

Indeed, as Larkin puts it:

I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.; 9/7/15, 10:00 AM
Anonymous said...: Coupe and Balfegor -

Good stuff.; 9/7/15, 10:44 AM
mikee said...: Catholics, starting up in the midst of a pagan empire worshiping many gods, fused their triumvirate monotheism (don't ask, its a mystery) with the concept of intercession between God and Man via prayer by priests, prayer and offerings to saints, and offerings to the Church. Eternal life after death was the prize offered for conforming to belief and practice in this life. Nobody ever came back from the dead to complain, at least after that Mideastern guy rose bodily into heaven.

Protestants refined the concept by creating, over time, a wide array of ways for individuals to obtain the eternal prize of the afterlife with less priestly intercession, offerings to idols, or even structured hierarchy in the Churches they created.

Today, even a child raised under Muslim influence who attended an anti-American racist demagogue's Protestant church for 20 years yet never heard one sermon that stuck with him, can be known as a good Christian.

I, for one, have dropped a coin into the collection box at a Shinto shrine, and heck, I even enjoyed Princess Mononoke, but comparing Shintoism to anything regarding Christianity is comparing apples to squids. Both are religions, forms of worship of the supernatural, and that is about it.; 9/7/15, 10:58 AM
YoungHegelian said...: Shinto is a strange duck among the world's major faiths. It only seems to concern the Japanese, and so, it is theirs to do with as they see fit.

I have, however, never heard anything but good things from those friends who have visited Shinto shrines in Japan. All have remarked on their beauty & sense of tranquility.

Oh, balfegor & coupe, like anglelyne said, good stuff.; 9/7/15, 12:02 PM