How is it that some human beings are capable of exceedingly violent and cruel deeds in war, yet at all other times are models of kindness, gentleness, and even love?
The answer would appear to be that we are biologically conditioned to enter what might be called "war mode" under circumstances of threats to our existence. An interesting aspect of this is that we do not seem to suffer any kind of deprivation or frustration if we live our entire lives without experiencing this aggressive and predatory state. We do not need, in other words, to know this state of being -- it exists within us only for use in response to situations of extreme emergency.
There is no reason, therefore, why humanity could not live in conditions of total peace. We would all be better off for it, because the results of "war mode" -- both for the enemy and ourselves -- are grotesque. Almost 200,000 people died in the battle of Okinawa in 1945, where the Americans attempted to get a foothold on Japan. The Japanese defenders, hiding in caves in the cliffs, tore through the bodies of the landing troops with bullets, while the Americans in turn burned the locals troops alive with flame-throwers, or blew their bodies apart with grenades. In part because they did not want to repeat this experience, the Americans three months later blasted and irradiated the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs.
It was while contemplating the scene at the Okinawa cliffs in 1991, just when the world was preparing for another war to be known as Operation Desert Storm (in which some 100,000 Iraqis were to be blown apart, burned or buried alive) that an American living in Japan and hoping to become a Roman Catholic priest decided to research pacifism among the post-war Japanese. This book is the result.
To be exact, what he studies are the attitudes toward peace among followers of Japan's "new religions." Many of these religions have emerged since the late 19th century, and the author chooses to look in detail at five of them.
What is important to realize from the start is that Robert Kisala doesn't really approve of any of these religions uncritically. As a Roman Catholic, he adheres to the doctrine, orthodox since the fourth century AD, of the "just war." According to this, war is permitted to Christians -- despite unequivocal prohibitions on killing in both the Jewish Ten Commandments and Jesus Christ's Sermon on the Mount -- if the reason for going to war is a good one. For all intents and purposes this has meant that all wars are permitted, and pacifism has been relegated to the sidelines (minority sects such as the Quakers and the Anabaptists) among Christians ever since.
The situation is very different among these new religions of Japan. In a survey conducted in 1992 and 1993 of eight such groups, 68 percent of those questioned thought Operation Desert Storm was morally unjustified. In one group the disapproval rating rose to 93 percent.
This does not seem particularly significant until you realize that followers of these groups account for 15 percent of all Japanese, half the 30 percent of the population who take any religion seriously.
Kisala makes the point that if any religion gets big enough to harbor political ambitions it must of necessity modify its pacifist position. The state is about power, and power cannot be exercised unless it is, or can be, enforced. Therefore when a religious organization such as Soka Gakkai, the biggest of these new religions with a membership of around 8 million, opted to found a political party, it had to act on occasion against its formal beliefs. Its active participation in Japanese political life made its former pacifist position untenable, argues Kisala (having in mind, no doubt, the experience of the Holy See).
This may indeed be the case, but then there is no obligation of religions to take part in politics. Orthodox Buddhism, with a great many more followers, had managed to keep at least its monks out of armed conflict for well over 2,000 years.
An alternative view to Kisala's is therefore possible -- that these new religions of Japan represent an important mass movement against war in all its hideous manifestations.
Journalists used to press the great Russian novelist and eventual pacifist Leo Tolstoy with questions such as "If a man was about to kill your wife, would you kill him in order to save her?" Tolstoy once privately remarked that he had to keep saying he would not, implying that in practice things might turn out differently. Once he agreed that he might be tempted to kill the assailant, he said, it would be taken as implicit approval for entire wars in which millions would die. His pacifism, very influential at the time, would become a dead letter.
And the truth is that modern wars do not consist of attacks on isolated individuals by marauding killers intent on rape and pillage. They are mass events organized by governments. All the greatest crimes of the last century were committed by governments. Popular resistance to militarism, therefore, such as manifested by several of Japan's new religions, can be an effective brake on megalomania in high places (often backed by industrial and commercial interests).
Although Japan's constitution expressly prohibits military spending, its Self Defense Forces (which 80 percent of Japanese legal experts in the relevant sphere consider unconstitutional) are among the most lavishly funded in the world. Yet when the government proposed sending these forces to the Gulf to help evacuate civilians, religious leaders countered by calling for contributions for the chartering of civilian planes instead to effect the same purpose. The response was so great the government was forced to withdraw its proposal.
Perhaps modern Japan has still not seen the full extent of popular opposition to official military initiatives. This cautious book provides much useful material on the state of play so far.
Nov. 11 to Nov. 17 People may call Taipei a “living hell for pedestrians,” but back in the 1960s and 1970s, citizens were even discouraged from crossing major roads on foot. And there weren’t crosswalks or pedestrian signals at busy intersections. A 1978 editorial in the China Times (中國時報) reflected the government’s car-centric attitude: “Pedestrians too often risk their lives to compete with vehicles over road use instead of using an overpass. If they get hit by a car, who can they blame?” Taipei’s car traffic was growing exponentially during the 1960s, and along with it the frequency of accidents. The policy
Hourglass-shaped sex toys casually glide along a conveyor belt through an airy new store in Tokyo, the latest attempt by Japanese manufacturer Tenga to sell adult products without the shame that is often attached. At first glance it’s not even obvious that the sleek, colorful products on display are Japan’s favorite sex toys for men, but the store has drawn a stream of couples and tourists since opening this year. “Its openness surprised me,” said customer Masafumi Kawasaki, 45, “and made me a bit embarrassed that I’d had a ‘naughty’ image” of the company. I might have thought this was some kind
What first caught my eye when I entered the 921 Earthquake Museum was a yellow band running at an angle across the floor toward a pile of exposed soil. This marks the line where, in the early morning hours of Sept. 21, 1999, a massive magnitude 7.3 earthquake raised the earth over two meters along one side of the Chelungpu Fault (車籠埔斷層). The museum’s first gallery, named after this fault, takes visitors on a journey along its length, from the spot right in front of them, where the uplift is visible in the exposed soil, all the way to the farthest
“Designed to be deleted” is the tagline of one of the UK’s most popular dating apps. Hinge promises that it is “the dating app for people who want to get off dating apps” — the place to find lasting love. But critics say modern dating is in crisis. They claim that dating apps, which have been downloaded hundreds of millions of times worldwide, are “exploitative” and are designed not to be deleted but to be addictive, to retain users in order to create revenue. An Observer investigation has found that dating apps are increasingly pushing users to buy extras that have been