Japan since September 11 ― The Spiritual Path Octover 17, 2003 by Katsusuke Miyauchi I am pleased and honored by this opportunity to speak to you today on this, my sixth visit to India. I am a Japanese author, but I have been deeply influenced by India. My encounter with India gave birth to the man I am today. I first came to India in 1971. I had lived for four years in the US, then crossed the Atlantic to Europe and traveled to India via the Silk Road. Through these travels I found a world of which I had been totally ignorant. I saw a chaos that appeared to me to replicate the original flow of human evolution. I was dazzled by the profound workings of the human spirit reaching back thousands of years. I was 27 years old. From the foothills of the Himalayas to the Comorin Cape, I concentrated intently on my Indian pilgrimage. Then, I went into seclusion in Banaras and read the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. I met Krishnamurti. I then encountered the works of Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Ramakrishna, and Vivekananda, and was deeply influenced by each of them. These works helped to unravel the Western intellectual framework that had conditioned me to that point. My world view changed. In India, I was reborn as an Asian. What I have said thus far is so stereotypical I’m afraid you are already bored. Of course, India today dominates a major share of the world’s computer programming, and I am well aware of the reputation of Indians for excelling in mathematics. However, I want to speak today about the spiritual nature of the Indian people. I believe that the Indian people consider it a “national mission” to carry on and develop the spirituality of the human race. The second time I came to India I climbed from Rishikesh into the Himalayas to visit some sages who lived in a cave. I shivered with cold in that cave as I lived for some time with the Sadus. An elder I met in the Valley of Flowers became my guru. He is known as Bengali Baba, and of all the people I had ever met, he was the most deeply compassionate and the most spiritually advanced. If I had not met this elderly sage, I would probably be a run-of-the-mill nihilist. I have written two novels set in India. The first is a novelette called Golden Elephant about a Japanese youth who traveled to India then returned to Japan. Last year, I published a longer novel called Golden Tiger. This is my life’s work. It took fifteen years to complete and is my attempt to present a new world view, an alternative to dominant Western civilization. I hope it will someday be translated into English so you can read it. Let me turn now to the topic of my talk today - Japan since September 11. That terrorist event changed the entire world. The Cold War ended and business was becoming the official language of the planet, when suddenly the deep rage of the Muslim people, their hatred of the US, boiled over. Of course, I reject all terrorism. Still, I want Americans to understand why their country has become a target for terrorism. Soon after the incident, the US began bombing Afghanistan. Missiles poured down from the blue sky killing thousands of innocent people. I am not a socialist, but I must admit that I have not reacted like a normal literary person. My homepage is full of appeals against the war. Japan has invaded Asia once. Now we are taking the side of those who are again killing Afghani people. I want desperately to stop that. I teach literature as a visiting professor at Waseda University in Tokyo. On September 11, I was on summer vacation secluded in a hotel out in the country trying to finish Golden Tiger. Then, two passenger planes flew into the World Trade Center. When summer vacation ended, I stood before my first class and noticed the students looking directly at me, waiting to see what I would say. I realized that I had to respond to their earnest questioning. From that day forward, I have devoted all my classes to discussion, an extended discussion of the September 11 terrorist attacks. I tell these privileged students who lack for nothing and have no bombs or missiles coming down on their heads, that they are being forced to think deeply. I tell them it is their duty to think so hard about this that their noses bleed. “What you think, the human race thinks,” I say, “Get it right.” When the Afghanistan bombing began, I participated with my students in a peace walk through downtown Tokyo. Unfortunately, at that point, the anti-war movement in Japan was a pitiful minority. Young people, intellectuals, literary people-nearly everyone was silent. At the time of the Afghanistan bombing, I came to the sudden realization that this war was taking place in the age of the Internet. Faster than newspapers and TV, information came pouring in. My friends and I traveled the Net gathering opinions and theories, then published a book entitled NO WAR. That book sold nearly 100 thousand copies. Those who participated in creating it sent the profits to a group that offers free medical care to Afghan refugees in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I am now slightly embarrassed by that action. Somewhere a voice keeps telling me that artists are supposed to be writing masterpieces, not participating in social movements. But I was unable to act as if nothing was happening. Today, I intend to speak completely openly about the situation in Japan. After 9/11, I put out a call on the Internet begging my acquaintances to join the peace walk. Not one author responded. Editors I have known for many years refused; not one participated. I have to struggle with embarrassment as I tell you this. I believe that in all of Japan only about three authors really put themselves at risk, investing themselves fully in raising a voice against the war. The same was true of the younger generation. When the bombing of Afghanistan started, I invited my students to the peace walk. At first, only two of them showed up. Japanese students today are extremely quiet, introverted, and not inclined to participate in such things as anti-war demonstrations. The term “engagement” as advocated by Jean-Paul Sartre has become a dead word in Japan. There are two main reasons that Japan’s young people avoid social movements. The first is the tragic aftermath of the student movement of the 1960s and 70s. In the 70s, the student movement in Japan was extremely radical. Some of them hid in the mountains planning an armed rebellion. They started a lynching, and one after the other all those students were killed. It was a tragic incident that still evokes nausea. That broke the back of the Japanese student movement, which collapsed quickly. That was when young people first lost hope for social reform. They turned inward. The second reason is the sarin gas attack in the subway in Tokyo. You may have heard of this event. A new religious cult called Aum Shinrikyo made some poison gas and released it in the subway. People were killed indiscriminately. As you can guess by the name Aum, the group began with yoga training. It was a mixture of Hinduism, Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Tantric yoga, and other disciplines, and they worshiped primarily Shiva. Conventional new religions target the poor and the sick and others living on the margins of society, but Aum was completely different. It was the type of cult that emerges in advanced nations. Most of its believers were promising youth in their twenties who had attended first-rate universities. Many were science students majoring in physics, computer science, and the like. They were influenced by so-called “new science,” a fusion of physics and Buddhism, and were attracted to Aum by this ideology. Their purpose was to spark a final world war and initiate a thousand-year reign under their group. In the grip of this delusion, they made the poison gas sarin and used it. They were also attempting to make an atomic bomb. If they had obtained the materials, they could probably have accomplished it. They were certainly intellectually and technologically capable. Their founder, a 40-year-old blind man, claimed to be a reincarnation of the god Shiva. Without any profound understanding of Indian thought, he imitated only the destructive aspect of Shiva, the god of destruction and creation. If any of you would like more information about this sarin subway incident and the new cult, I will be happy to take questions later. These two incidents have had a profound negative impact on youth in Japan. Most have come to believe that it is impossible for a student movement to accomplish significant change. Nor can they explore their own spiritual or inner worlds. The youth of Japan have closed themselves off from meaningful action. They have fallen into a dilemma, a trap that has made them gradually more impotent. Of course, there are TV games and other influences in the sophisticated capitalistic society of Japan, but whatever the cause, there is no student movement in Japan today. Economically, we have become the second most prosperous nation in the world. We are wondrously blessed materially. We have no caste system, we are free to marry for love. We are free to choose what we want to be. We have freedom of speech. At present, we are in an economic recession, but almost no one is hungry. We have much better social benefits and medical insurance than Americans. Unfortunately, we are losing the meaning of life. We have no idea what we are living for. Society has become totally systematized and controlled. Children go to kindergarten, elementary school, junior high, high school, then college. Throughout they are struggling with intense competition. From the time they are toddlers, they are selected for intelligence, stratified by IQ. This competition places tremendous stress on our young. After graduating from college, they live in a society governed exclusively by economics. They can do nothing but work all the time. You may not believe this, but the Tokyo subway runs every three minutes. That’s how busy we are. Communities are collapsing. Perhaps because of urban housing, very few families now live in three-generation households. Nearly all are in nuclear family or two-generation homes. Millions of elderly face death alone in nursing homes. Human relationships have become terribly superficial. As a result, young people have lost the sense of actually being alive. Their sense of reality is superficial. The real world is unreal. Their strongest emotions come to them from through images on screens, shadows on glass. In Japan, over 30,000 people commit suicide every year. Depression is an epidemic among our youth. We even have a new fad called risuto katto, that is, wrist cut, the cutting of one’s own wrist with a razor. You may not believe this either, but some children start cutting their wrists at 12. This is a fad spreading through Japanese society, the world’s number two economic superpower. This is a fact. September 11 came as a great shock to Japan. I said earlier that when I invited students to join my peace walk, only two showed up initially. However, a little later, those two became five, then ten, then fifty. About half of my students ended up participating. When the Iraq War started, over 40 thousand people gathered for an anti-war demonstration. This may not be as many as in other nations, but this was the first demonstration close to that size in thirty years. Introverted, closed young people are now starting to look at the real world. But the terrorist acts continue. Bombs explode here and there; the world is falling into utter turmoil. Young people, too, suffer this confusion, and many are again losing hope. In a cafeteria in one corner of our campus, we discuss terrorism day after day. The students are searching for something to believe, something to rely on, some sense of direction. Ideology is useless. The war is between a Christian country, the US, and Islam, so obviously religion holds no answers. I myself am stumped. They want me to say something hopeful, but I can’t think of anything to say. And yet, if there is anything I believe, if there is anything that supports me in my darkest hours, it is Mahatma Gandhi. So I tell Japanese students the following. Mahatma Gandhi took on the British Empire, the world’s strongest nation, ruler of the seven seas, very much like the US today. Against that overwhelming power, he fought with fasting and nonviolence, and he won India’s independence. However, India still suffered great internal turmoil. The conflict between Hindus and Muslims continued. I tell the students about the famous fast in Calcutta. It was in 1947, after India became independent. Gandhi was already 78 years of age. That translates to about 90 years in today’s terms. It was very dangerous for him to fast. His disciples gathered and begged him to stop, but Gandhi wouldn’t listen. He said he would continue until the fighting between Hindus and Muslims stopped. He continued the fast day after day. The violence between Hindus and Muslims continued. All of India was watching, holding its collective breath. At this rate, Mahatma Gandhi might actually die. Then one day, a disciple came running in with a newspaper, Finally, both sides had stopped the fighting. India was silent. Gandhi smiled, got up and took some food. I read about this incident when I was a young boy. It was in a biography written for young people, so there were some factual errors among the details. I firmly believed, for example, that Gandhi broke his fast by eating rice gruel. As a child, I always had rice gruel when I was sick, so I have always had it etched in my memory that Gandhi ate rice gruel. The next year, in January 1948, Mahatma Gandhi started his last fast. Again, it was to foster peace between Hindus and Muslims. Then, on January 30, he was assassinated. This is a digression, but I saw that assassination in a dream. In the dream, I am walking beside Gandhi helping to support his slender body. Then, the assassin appears right before my eyes, points the gun, and I see clearly the instant when he pulls the trigger. I hold the Mahatma as he falls. I am covered with his blood. When the Iraq War started, I often remembered that dream. Over 10 million people around the world had taken to the streets to oppose the war, and yet they failed to stop the war. Over 200 years ago Kant wrote a book entitled For Permanent Peace. Now tanks rolled over the desert as if laughing derisively at international alliances, the United Nations, and all the extended efforts to build a world on reason. The land where civilization was born became a sea of flame. Missiles and cluster bombs come falling from the blue sky. And the dead, of course, were not the powerful authorities but women and children and other civilians. How foolish can human beings be? How cruel can we get? I sat dazed, this question racing through my mind. I was close to giving up on human beings. Again, I received the support I needed from Mahatma Gandhi. He was my last crutch. Somehow, this violent, cruel, repulsive homo sapiens produced a person like Gandhi. That fact is my one faint hope. Gandhi’s life and the hope he represents are still relevant. Ideology has been destroyed. Ethnic and religious conflicts are everywhere. Gandhi is more compelling than ever. They say the world is globalizing. Capitalism and economics have become the official language. We are all being standardized and simplified. Some see the war in Iraq as part of a worldwide “civil war,” the first global civil war. And it is taking place in the age of the Internet, broadcast around the world faster than newspapers and TV. Even India, with its thousands of years of spiritual tradition, is becoming an IT nation. Meanwhile, we are hearing a great deal about the so-called clash of civilizations. The conflict between Christianity and Islam is reaching into the present from the time of the Crusades. The fighting continues between the Jews in Israel and the Muslim Palestinians. The September 11 attacks, the bombing of Afghanistan, the war on Iraq-all this does appear to be some sort of religious war, an intense clash among the One-God religions. We live in a time of globalization, and we are encountering potentially disastrous problems coming down to us from a thousand years ago. Since 9/11, as an Asian author, as a Japanese author, I continually asked myself what I can do. We live in a Westernized world. The apartment in which I live is on the 11th floor. As far as I can see is nothing but concrete, steel and glass. Day after day, I write on my computer. And yet, somewhere inside me, I retain memories of another Asia far away. On the surface, the flood of globalization is hiding the centuries of work that has been done by the human spirit, the rich diversity of culture. But however standardized the world becomes, India will retain its profound spiritual culture. This culture is an asset belonging to the human race. The people of India are on the vanguard of spirituality, and you are working on behalf of the human race. Many authors are appearing now in India who write in English. It appears to be a boom, perhaps the first literary boom since Latin America. One example is the excellent author Arundhati Roy. In addition to writing novels, she has written many messages that flow around the world over the Internet. Japanese, too, are reading her in real time. Indians and Japanese straddle two worlds - Western and Asian. We live in an increasingly composite world. We stand in a position that allows us a deep understanding of both Asia and the West. I believe it is our role and duty to take full advantage of this position to give birth to a new culture, a new world view, and a new literature. The world has not yet recovered from the confusion of 9/11. With the One-God religions at war with each other, the world is becoming a giant stock market controlled by the money game. Blood flows freely for oil. Human voices are lost in the din. This world is the outcome of Western modernization. Today, I wanted to say only one thing. As Asians who live in two worlds, we need to articulate a new culture, an alternative world view. To that end, I hope the relationship between India and Japan grows deeper and more intimate. If you have any questions about Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I am in India for the sixth time, but I hope to return over and over again. If you can think of anything I can do as a Japanese author, please don’t hesitate to ask. It will be my pleasure to serve you. India, the home of Mahatma Gandhi, has affected me deeply. I have tremendous love and respect for this country, and I am deeply grateful for this opportunity to speak before you. Thank you very much. |