Animism in Contemporary Japan: Voices for the Anthropocene from Post-Fukushima Japan 1138228036, 9781138228030

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Animism in Contemporary Japan

‘Postmodern animism’ first emerged in grassroots Japan in the aftermath of mercury poisoning in Minamata and the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. Fusing critiques of modernity with intangible cultural heritages, it represents a philosophy of the life-world, where nature is a manifestation of a dynamic life force wherein all life is interconnected. This new animism, it is argued, could inspire a fundamental rethink of the human–nature relationship. The book explores this notion of animism through the lens of four prominent figures in Japan: animation film director Miyazaki Hayao, sociologist Tsurumi Kazuko, writer Ishimure Michiko, and Minamata fishermanphilosopher Ogata Masato. Taking a biographical approach, it illustrates how these individuals moved towards the conclusion that animism can help humanity survive modernity. It contributes to the Anthropocene discourse from a transcultural and transdisciplinary perspective, thus addressing themes of nature and spirituality, whilst also engaging with arguments from mainstream social sciences. Presenting a new perspective for a post-anthropocentric paradigm, Animism in Contemporary Japan will be useful to students and scholars of a wide range of fields including sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and Japanese Studies. Shoko Yoneyama is a Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Her key publications include The Japanese High School: Silence and Resistance (Routledge 1999).

Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

71. Rethinking Japanese Studies: Eurocentrism and the Asia-Pacific Region Edited by Kaori Okano and Yoshio Sugimoto 72. Japan’s Quest for Stability in Southeast Asia Navigating the Turning Points in Postwar Asia Taizo Miyagi 73. Gender and the Koseki? in Contemporary Japan Surname, Power, and Privilege Linda White 74. Being Young in Super-Aging Japan Formative Events and Cultural Reactions Edited by Patrick Heinrich and Christian Galan 75. The Japanese Communist Party Permanent Opposition, but Moral Compass Peter Berton with Sam Atherton 76. Japan’s Colonial Moment in Southeast Asia 1942–1945 The Occupiers’ Experience Satoshi Nakano 77. Animism in Contemporary Japan Voices for the Anthropocene from post-Fukushima Japan Shoko Yoneyama 78. Political Sociology of Japanese Pacifism Yukiko Nishikawa 79. Zainichi Korean Women in Japan Voices Jackie J. Kim-Wachutka For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Routledge-Contemporary-Japan-Series/book-series/SE0002

Animism in Contemporary Japan Voices for the Anthropocene from Post-Fukushima Japan

Shoko Yoneyama

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Shoko Yoneyama The right of Shoko Yoneyama to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book. ISBN: 978-1-138-22803-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-39390-2 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor & Francis Books

To ancestors

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Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Style

viii ix xii

INTRODUCTION

A theoretical map: Reflections from post-Fukushima Japan

1

PART I

Animism as a grassroots response to a socio-ecological disaster

41

Life-world: A critique of modernity by Minamata fisherman Ogata Masato

43

Stories of soul: Animistic cosmology by Ishimure Michiko

79

1 2

PART II

Inspiring modernity with animism 3 4

109

Animism for the sociological imagination: The theory of endogenous development by Tsurumi Kazuko

111

Animating the life-world: Animism by film director Miyazaki Hayao

159

CONCLUSION

Postmodern animism for a new modernity

205

Epilogue: The re-enchanted world of post-Fukushima Japan

231

Index

238

Illustrations

Figures 1.1 2.1 3.1 3.2 6.1

Life-world The ‘Ishimure Michiko Phenomenon’: Ishimure Michiko in mainstream Japanese media (1970–2014) Folk and institutionalised Shinto: Conceptual map Conceptual mandala to think about animism A tiny shrine withstands the tsunami

62 85 135 148 233

Tables 0.1 3.1 3.2

Contrasting discourses on animism in Japan and the West Critiques of the modernisation/globalisation paradigm Folk and institutionalised Shinto: Institutional, political, and ideological differences

25 125 130

Acknowledgements

This book project began after an unexpected ‘en’ (karmic force) connected me to Ogata Masato. He generously agreed to my interview request on three different occasions. The extraordinary power of his words inspired me to write, and I cannot thank him enough for that. I want to express my gratitude to the late Ishimure Michiko, who also infused me with the marvellous power of her language when I interviewed her at her home in Kumamoto. The letter I received afterwards, along with a poem and a drawing of a kitten, is my treasure, together with the memory of the sweets she made from lily bulbs to welcome me that afternoon. I am most grateful to Okura Shonosuke, a Noh o-tsuzumi player, who introduced me to Ogata-san and Ishimure-san. Without his hospitable introductions, I would not have been able to collect the interview data which is at the heart of this book. My thanks also go to Kimura Hiroko, foot painter and poet, who joined me for my fieldwork in Minamata and who has helped this project in many special ways. My six years of writing this book were supported by a number of colleagues and friends in academia, but first I offer my sincerest thanks to Simon Avenell for his continued interest in my project and, more specifically, for reading my manuscript and raising tough questions which were indispensable for sharpening the focus of the book. I am most grateful for his critical insights and valuable suggestions. Natalie Edwards has been a marvellous mentor. Her unfailing encouragement gave me strength to keep writing, and I am most thankful for her amazing support. I am indebted to Shirley Leane, who worked tirelessly as my personal editor. Her professionalism and willingness to help got me through the project, and I am most grateful for her wonderful assistance. I also thank my research assistant, Dane Fewtrell, for finding materials essential for this book and for our inspiring conversations over many cups of coffee. In developing the ideas presented in this book, I received helpful input from Tessa Morris-Suzuki, who invited me to contribute a chapter on animism for her book, New Worlds from Below. Mark Selden, before accepting my article on life-world to Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, suggested a follow-up interview with Ogata, and this turned out to be essential for consolidating my argument. Kent Anderson and Gavan McCormack have given me fantastic

x

Acknowledgements

support and encouragement over the years, and for that I am most grateful. I also appreciate the training Yoshio Sugimoto gave me in comparative sociology, which forms the basis of this book. I want to acknowledge the great help of colleagues and friends in Japan, especially that of Yoshiyuki Nagata, who introduced me to the topic of spirituality when he was a visiting researcher in Adelaide, and Nakagawa Yoshiharu, who enlightened me in the field of sociology of spirituality during my stay at Ritsumeikan University in 2008 as a visiting researcher. My thanks also go to John Breen and Nanyan Guo for inviting me to give a seminar on animism at Nichibunken, the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, in 2013 and for their kind support since. Friends and colleagues, current and former, at the University of Adelaide have been my strong allies over the years, and without their friendship and collegiality I would not have been able to complete this project. I will not be able to thank them all, but my special thanks go to Delia Lin, Gerry Groot, Purnendra Jain, Anna Szorenyi, and Chilla Bulbeck in particular. Carol Johnson directed me to some key references with quotations, which were very valuable indeed. I also would like to acknowledge the intellectual stimulus and energy I received from my students at the University of Adelaide, including my PhD students, Maki Hammond and Rie Kido. I am also thankful to Jennie Shaw, Susan Oakley, Kayoko Enomoto, Akiko Tomita, Miwako Takasawa, Midori Kagawa-Fox, Shamira Barr, and Sarah Hoggard for providing me with various kinds of support over the years, which also helped me to complete this project. The preparation of the manuscript was financially supported by the School of Social Sciences Staff Research Fund 2016–2017. My very special thanks go to Heather Leane, who produced diagrams of the highest quality from my scruffy, handwritten drawings. I also thank Reverend Lyn Leane for reading part of my manuscript. Her feedback, from the viewpoint of Christian clergy, gave me assurance at an early stage of my writing. I commend Stephanie Rogers and Georgina Bishop of Routledge for their patience and professional assistance. I very much appreciated their sense of trust and flexibility, as well as the practical help I received from them. It was once again a pleasure to work with Routledge. My heartfelt thanks go to my family, my mother Kyoko, Noriko, Hajime, and Yumi, who supported me in many ways while I was working on this manuscript. I thank them for their quietly Japanese love and support, which enabled me to complete what at times seemed like an unending project. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the permissions obtained to produce this book. The Introduction and Chapter 1 contain materials that appeared in an article I wrote in 2012, ‘Life-world: Beyond Fukushima and Minamata’, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol.10, issue 42, no.2, which was reproduced with some modifications in Brian Earl (ed.) 2013, Japan’s ‘abandoned people’ in the wake of Fukushima’, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Course Reader no.6, pp.84–110. Permissions to reproduce these articles were granted

Acknowledgements

xi

by Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. I was also invited to publish the article with some changes in Asian Perspective, vol.37, no.4 (October–December 2013), pp.567–592. Permission to reproduce it was also granted by Asian Perspective. Permission was granted by ANU Press to reproduce a chapter I authored, ‘Animism: A Grassroots response to socioenvironmental crisis in Japan’, in Tessa Morris-Suzuki & Eun Jeong Soh (eds) 2017, New Worlds from Below: Informal Life Politics and Grassroots Action in Twenty-First-Century Northeast Asia, pp.99–130. Chapter 3 and the Epilogue contain materials that appeared in the ANU publication. Extensive excerpts from Oiwa Keibo & Ogata Masato 2001, trans. Karen Colligan-Taylor, Rowing the Eternal Sea: The Story of a Minamata Fisherman, were reprinted with permission by Rowman & Littlefield. Permissions were also obtained from Ogata Masato, the author of Chisso wa Watashi de atta [Chisso was I], to translate and quote his words. The Asahi Shimbun newspaper granted me permission to quote a 1970 article, ‘Ningen o kaeshite kure to sakebi tai’ [We want to shout: ‘Give us back our humanity!’], 16 May, p.23. The translation is mine and not an official translation by the newspaper. Permission was granted to reprint part of Rigoberta Menchú 2007, ‘Live the Culture of Life!’, ETC Foundation – COMPAS, Learning endogenous development: Building on bio-cultural diversity, by Practical Action Publishing. Taylor & Francis gave me permission to reuse an article by Tim Ingold (2006), ‘Rethinking the animate, re-animating thought’, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, vol.71, no.1, p.10. Permission was obtained from Encyclopaedia Britannica to reprint ‘Slime mold’ from Britannica Concise Encyclopedia 2006, p.1767. The amazing photo of a small village shrine standing alone in the area devastated by the 2011 tsunami was provided by Imamura Fumihiko, Director, International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS), Tohoku University. I express my sincere gratitude for his kind courtesy. Tottori, Japan

Notes on Style

Japanese names are given according to the East Asian convention of family name first except in cases where Japanese authors are writing in a language other than Japanese. The Hepburn system of romanisation has been employed throughout except in cases where an established convention exists for corporate or individual names. Unless specifically acknowledged, all translations included in this volume are attributable to the author.

Introduction A theoretical map: Reflections from post-Fukushima Japan1

Silent springs March 2011 in Fukushima turned out to be a silent spring, the depth of which no one may ever know. Residents were evacuated, leaving behind snapshots of the day, their memories, and their lost future, all of which were left to wither and fade away. Animals were abandoned in the tens of thousands: cows, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats; some were free, others caged, but most were left to die from starvation. Peach trees blossomed and horsetail shot up from the snow, but all were irradiated: mountains and rivers, fields and rice paddies, trees and grasses, insects and birds, bears, deer, fish. Random genetic mutations began amongst tiny pale-grass-blue butterflies that were larvae at the time of the disaster. Their damaged DNA began to cause increasing abnormalities in their eyes, wings, and antennas.2 A premonition of many more silent springs deepened. In Japan and around the world, there has been a general sense that an era was being forced to come to an abrupt end with the onset of the nuclear catastrophe that followed the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on 11 March 2011. There is little agreement, however, as to what exactly this era represented and what exactly has actually finished: a paradigm, a regime, a system, a way of life? It is important to discern what exactly has finished in order for us to conceive a new kind of future. This task can be explored on many different levels. It could be addressed as a historical and political question: How did this ‘profoundly manmade disaster’3 happen, and what should be done about it? It could be posed as a philosophical and ontological question: What is the meaning of this disaster, especially in relation to our own existence? It could also be broached as an epistemological question: Do we have an adequate epistemological framework to analyse it in such a way as to prevent something similar from happening again? German sociologist Ulrich Beck writes that Japan, as a result of the nuclear accident in Fukushima, has become part of the ‘world risk society’.4 By ‘world risk society’, he means a society threatened by such things as nuclear accidents, climate change, and the global financial crisis – namely, things that present catastrophic risk beyond geographical, national, and social boundaries. According

2

Introduction: A theoretical map

to Beck, such risk is an unfortunate by-product of modernity, and poses entirely new challenges to our existing institutions as they attempt to control the risks using current, known means.5 Gavan McCormack points out that ‘Japan, as one of the most successful capitalist countries in history, represents in concentrated form problems facing contemporary industrial civilization as a whole’.6 Komiyama Hiroshi, former Vice-Chancellor of Tokyo University, makes the same point with his notion of Japan being a kadai senshinkoku (課題先進国), a frontrunner country in contemporary challenges.7 Both suggest that the nuclear, social, and institutional predicaments Japan now faces epitomise the negative consequences of intense modernisation. The connotation of kadai senshinkoku, however, is coupled with kadai kaiketsu senshinkoku (課題解決先進国), which means a frontrunner country in solving contemporary challenges.8 It makes one wonder whether Japan, precisely because of the intensity of the problems it faces, may also have developed, or can also develop, advanced solutions for the management of problems associated with modernity. A key consideration, though, is whether technical or political solutions alone can alleviate these problems. Alternatively, is there something the world could learn from the Japanese experience, beyond technical or political solutions, to bring about a fundamental change in the way we think about modernity in order to minimise the ever-increasing risks associated with it? There is little doubt that Japan is indeed at a significant historical crossroads. Since the outbreak of the nuclear crisis, protests against nuclear energy have proliferated, especially at the time of the restart of the first reactor in May 2012. Although the protests were not reflected in the 2012 election results, there were large-scale anti-nuclear demonstrations around the country, some with one to two hundred thousand people, making them the largest protests since the campaign against the Japan–US security treaty in the 1960s.9 The nuclear crisis does seem to have opened many doors that had been firmly closed for a long time. But what is the issue? What have the people been protesting about? Apart from anti-nuclear slogans, statements such as ‘Life (inochi いのち)10 is more important than money!’ (金より命の方が大事) have been ubiquitous, suggesting that many citizens see a problem not only with nuclear power generation but also with something more fundamental: the prioritisation of the economy over life. The fact that such an obvious proposition has been raised as a point of protest indicates the depth of the problem. This leads us to further questions: How is this rather extreme dichotomy between life and the economy to be faced at this point in modern history? And what will be Japan’s contribution, if any, to envisaging a new kind of modernity? With these questions in mind, the purpose of this book is to illuminate the above-mentioned problems by putting ‘life’ at the centre of the discourse about modernity. My aim is to repackage and reinterpret the problems in an attempt to produce something new. In order to do this, I intend to create a fusion of Japan’s modern and ancient heritages. And I use animism as a key

Animism in contemporary Japan

3

concept that can address the fundamental issues that arise in the space where super-modernity and intangible cultural heritage meet. I call this space ‘grassroots Japan’.

The Anthropocene and the enchantment of modernity In a broader context, I hope that by considering the future from the vantage point of post-Fukushima, world-risk-society Japan I can contribute to the Anthropocene discourse. The Anthropocene, as pointed out by Clive Hamilton et al., represents ‘a threshold marking a sharp change in the relationship of humans to the natural world’.11 They argue that as well as human-induced changes in nature that have a close effect on our existence (e.g. industrial pollution, extinctions, and desertification) and changes that occur at a broader planetary level (e.g. climate, atmospheric chemistry, and the oceans), human-induced changes might also have occurred in rocks, thus allowing the designation of a new geological age, the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene thesis demands a paradigmatic change in the way the world is perceived, not just by the scientific community but also by those in the humanities and social sciences, as it means that ‘humans have become a telluric force’ or ‘a force of nature’.12 In other words, it demands a total rethink on the current scientific consensus, which has until now been based on the episteme of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment that separated nature from the human– society–culture trifecta ‘temporally, ontologically, epistemologically and institutionally … [and denotes] the end of the Nature/Culture dichotomy’.13 It thus follows the pioneering trend of post-Cartesian social sciences initiated by Philippe Descola, Bruno Latour, and others in the 1990s.14 The post-Cartesian thesis of Anthropocene discourse, however, seems to have two theoretical implications for modernity, depending on the way we interpret nature. If nature/the earth is considered to be a combination of materials, energy cycles, and planetary metabolism, the physicality of the earth is something which modern humanity and the social sciences ‘must come back to’.15 We must come back to it from our current, less physical concerns regarding the economy, society, and culture, concerns involving mere ‘arrangements, agreements and conflicts among humans’.16 According to Hamilton et al., the end of the nature–culture dichotomy means that the humanities and social sciences ‘need to be rematerialized’ in the new ‘techno-natural orders’.17 If, on the other hand, nature is envisaged as an ‘inner essence or vital energy or force’18 which also has physicality, then the end of the nature–culture dichotomy, or rather, the call for humans to ‘come back to the earth’, or ‘becoming-Earth’,19 could also mean a ‘re-enchantment’ of the social sciences and the end of the Weberian thesis of disenchanted modernity (or the secularisation theory of modernity). In fact, the re-enchantment thesis has emerged as a critique of modernity in recent years,20 and the discourse on ‘new animism’ that arose in the late 1990s (see a more detailed discussion later in this Introduction) can be considered very much a part of this rethink.

4

Introduction: A theoretical map

At this historical juncture of the post-Fukushima era and the dawn of the Anthropocene, I will use the case of Japan to further explore the reenchantment thesis with the aim of imagining a new paradigm for the future. Japan is exceptionally well positioned to explore the possibilities of a new paradigm because it has three solid ‘fundamentals’, three strong frames of reference that we can draw upon to consider the relationship between humans and nature in modernity. First, Japan has experienced the full extent of modernity, becoming a postindustrial, democratic society with strong postmodern values. This aspect of Japan is an essential component of the thesis of this book because the primary aim is to consider whether, and how, animism has a role to play in our search for a new direction in the post-Cartesian, post-Weberian paradigm of modernity. The Japanese case is useful because most studies of animism are based on anthropological and ethnographic studies of societies which have had limited exposure to modernity. Second, the strong animistic underpinnings of the indigenous/folk Shinto belief system and of Buddhism that have permeated everyday life perceptions of nature present a useful case for rethinking the nature–human dichotomy. Nakazawa Shinichi remarks in his dialogue with Descola that the nature– culture dichotomy principle has been the biggest challenge presented to Japan by Western civilisation because Japanese culture is based on the notion that humans are subsumed in nature; and therefore that the work of Descola, which challenged this grand premise of Western civilisation, suggests the relevance of Japanese culture today and in the future.21 To use Latour’s phrase, the extent to which Japan has ‘never been modern’ is greater than that of the advanced societies in the West, but, at the same time, Japan is far more modern than the other societies that have provided frames of reference for the study of animism. Being positioned on this spectrum of modernity, Japan should be able to present a good case for using animism to imagine a new kind of modernity. Third, Japan’s experience of modernity brought about not only economic prosperity and maturity, but also two of the most catastrophic social and ecological disasters in human history – Minamata disease and the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. While my problem consciousness (mondai ishiki 問題 意識) is with Fukushima, the chief reference point of this book is Minamata, where one of the biggest industrial pollution incidents in contemporary history occurred. Minamata is an integral component of this book because discourse on animism, with its attendant critique of modernity, emerged as a grassroots response to human and ecological tragedy in Minamata. Based on these three frames of reference, it is my hope that this book will contribute to the Anthropocene discourse by including insights from a society in Asia, which typically seems to constitute a rather large blind spot in this major area of academic enterprise. With this broad orientation, Part I: Animism as a grassroots response to a socio-ecological disaster presents the narratives of two powerful intellectuals from Minamata: the fisherman

Animism in contemporary Japan

5

Ogata Masato and the writer Ishimure Michiko. Their narratives are extremely relevant today. First, they are stories of life told in relation to modernity. Second, they help us to imagine a dimension previously ignored in the theoretical construction of modernity in the social sciences: the narrative of the unseen, soul and spirituality. Third, Ogata and Ishimure’s stories of life and soul are an integral part of their notion of nature. To put it differently, Part I presents their stories of life, soul, and nature as their discourse of animism in contemporary Japan. Part II: Inspiring modernity with animism presents the work of two luminaries: sociologist Tsurumi Kazuko and animation film director Miyazaki Hayao. Their work provides a bridge which connects the Minamata narrative of animism with their own fields. The work by Tsurumi explicitly bridges animism with the theoretical discourse of Western-made social science. Miyazaki, on the other hand, portrays animism through his animation films, which have had an enormous impact globally in the field of popular culture with their ability to inspire animistic senses and imageries in the hearts and minds of his audience. I will explain in more detail, towards the end of this Introduction, how and why their life stories are important for this book. Before doing so, however, let us position ourselves, within the historical and conceptual framework underlying this book, our starting point as well as our end point, as it were, the point where we stand today, which Beck calls ‘world-risk-society Japan’.

World-risk-society Japan The relevance of the concept of world risk society is obvious when we consider the disaster unleashed at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant on 11 March 2011. The severity of the disaster was rated as Level 7 by the Nuclear Safety Commission established by the Japanese government. This is the highest level of disaster, and is equivalent to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, which in 2010 was ranked by Time as the world’s worst environmental disaster.22 With the same rating as Chernobyl, the nuclear disaster at Fukushima is clearly one of the worst social and ecological disasters in human history. In Fukushima, substantial radiation has been released from the stricken reactors. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has estimated, based on data collected at the plant, that 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactive material (iodine-131 and caesium-137),23 equivalent to 17% of the fallout from Chernobyl,24 was released into the atmosphere. In addition, 150,000 terabecquerels were released into the sea in the first six months after the accident.25 An international scientific collaborative study, on the other hand, has estimated, based on data collected from across the globe, that an amount of caesium-137 equivalent to 43% of the fallout from Chernobyl was released into the atmosphere in the first six weeks after the accident, 18% of which was deposited over Japanese land areas and most of the rest of which fell over the northern Pacific Ocean.26 Geoff Brumfiel in Nature suggests that these two vastly different estimates may be complementary rather than contradictory

6

Introduction: A theoretical map

because the data were collected at different, mutually exclusive locations.27 One thing is clear, though: the nuclear accident at Fukushima has caused, and is still causing, the biggest ever artificial radioisotope contamination that the Pacific Ocean has ever seen.28

Spirituality as a foundation for environmental ethics The concept of world risk society represents a conundrum of the era in which we live: an era that, since around the 1980s, sociologists have variously referred to as ‘late modern’ (Anthony Giddens),29 ‘second modern’ (Beck),30 and ‘liquid modern’ (Zygmunt Bauman).31 This era is distinguished from the earlier, ‘first’ or ‘solid’ modern era in that in late/second/liquid modernity the individualisation of social institutions advances, and social bonds, which had connected individuals to modern institutions such as the (predominantly nuclear) family, the (reasonably stable) workplace, and, in the case of the West, the (influential) Church, are weakened. Instead, living one’s own life and pursuing individual life projects have become the common denominators of late/second/liquid modernity in advanced industrial countries.32 The question now becomes: What can provide us with an ethical foundation in the face of a world risk that can jeopardise our own existence, when the risk itself is the product of the social system in which we live?33 In order to explore this question, the report from the Ethics Commission for a Safe Energy Supply, which was convened by German Chancellor Angela Merkel immediately after the triple disaster of 11 March 2011 (i.e. the earthquake, the tsunami, and the nuclear accident), and of which Beck was a key member, presents a significant point of reference. It reads: The progressive destruction of the environment has prompted the call for ecological responsibility – not only since nuclear accidents and not only in this area. It is a matter of how humans interact with the natural environment and the relationship between society and nature. A special human duty towards nature has resulted from Christian tradition and European culture.34 There are two significant points to note about this statement. One is that it draws upon a spiritual tradition – that of Christianity – as the foundation of its ethical position. The other is that it highlights Europe as the cultural basis of its ethics. These two points immediately raise two questions. The first is whether we have a framework in social science that can address adequately the question of spiritual tradition, be it of Christianity or other religions, in relation to environmental ethics, and the second is what an appropriate ethical and cultural foundation in regions other than Europe, or more broadly outside the West, might be. Given the fact that Asia now plays an increasingly significant role with regard to such issues as global warming and nuclear accidents, which are two key components of world risk society, it seems

Animism in contemporary Japan

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urgent to address these questions at this critical juncture in human history. Within the framework of this broad theoretical concern, a more specific question is what ethical foundation might Japan draw on to frame its future in response to the multiple crises which followed the 11 March 2011 triple disaster. I argue in this book that animism, which emerged as a grassroots response to modernity in Japan, may be able to provide an ethical foundation that makes it possible for humans to coexist with both animate and inanimate creations on our earth.

Spirituality: A lacuna in social science If indeed spirituality is key to environmental ethics as postulated by the Ethics Commission for a Safe Energy Supply in Germany, the next question is whether we have a framework in social science that can address it adequately. Social science in general, and sociology in particular, has had an uneasy relationship with spirituality. Spirituality is a term that rarely appears in classical sociology texts or ‘in the index of sociological works, even those devoted to religion’.35 Behind this observation is the fact that sociology is a product of modernity, which has the capacity to ‘de-spiritualise’ cultures.36 Sociology also is founded upon ‘methodological secularism’, which focuses on the social origin and function of religion rather than on questions of spirituality per se.37 In this particular context, spirituality is understood to be something belonging to an ‘other reality’ as against ‘this world’,38 a reality which is taken to encompass the supernatural39 and ‘issues of animism, ecstasy, magic and spells that sociology tends to treat with the utmost reserve, if not disdain’.40 For Max Weber, the ‘elimination of magic’ from the world (or disenchantment of the world: Entzauberung der Welt, or secularisation) is ‘one of the most important aspects of the broader process of rationalization’,41 that is to say, the key to modernity. To say anything counter to this fundamental premise has long been almost illegitimate in sociological discourse. Peter Berger, for instance, positions his 1969 A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural as a non-sociological work, before arguing that it is essential to take into account the supernatural in a modern world that is dominated by the ‘secularization of consciousness’.42 Berger explains that he ‘sticks [his] neck out’ to discuss the significance of the supernatural, as he could not address it in The Sacred Canopy,43 a work he published two years previously which he considered to be a more legitimate sociological text on religion.44 Berger writes: Today [the late 1960s] the supernatural as a meaningful reality is absent or remote from the horizons of everyday life of large numbers, very probably of the majority, of people in modern societies, who seem to manage to get along without it quite well. This means that those to whom the supernatural is still, or again, a meaningful reality find themselves in the status of a minority, more precisely, a cognitive minority – a very important consequence with very far-reaching implications.45

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Introduction: A theoretical map

Contrary to the secularisation thesis of modernity and the ‘hang up’ of sociologists, however, what Thomas Luckmann called ‘invisible’ religion46 gradually became evident, and by the late 1970s or early 1980s most sociologists ‘came to agree that the original modernization and secularization thesis was untenable in its basic form, which simply said modernization and secularization are necessarily correlated developments’.47 What I am referring to here is the rise of a ‘new spirituality movement’48 that includes such movements as ‘New Age’ in the US, ‘body-mind-spirit’ in the UK, ‘esoteric’ in Germany, and ‘mind/ heart world’ (seishin sekai) in Japan.49 As Beck points out, the new spiritual culture ‘transcended the frontiers of nations and religions and borrowed its religious beliefs and practices at will from the religious and spiritual traditions of both east and west’.50 He refers to the new spiritual culture as ‘postmodern religion’, one characteristic of which is to emphasise the individual quest for personal development which accompanies the ‘enrichment of the soul’.51 This change in culture in advanced societies has been substantiated by three World Values Surveys in the period 1981–1998, which report that ‘concern for the meaning and purpose of life became stronger in most advanced industrial societies’.52 Ronald Inglehart and Wayne Baker point out: The power of the established hierarchical churches may be declining, but the rise of postindustrial society does not necessarily diminish interest in religion. Indeed, the evidence suggests that it leads to growing interest in spiritual concerns.53 What Inglehart and Baker refer to as ‘spiritual concerns’ includes asking ontological questions such as ‘Where do we come from? Where are we going? Why are we here?’54 They suggest that a change in values is key to postmodern and post-materialist societies. Although what they mean by spirituality is very broad and does not specifically refer to the supernatural, the ‘new spirituality culture’, which is the manifestation of this value change, does in fact include a strong interest in the supernatural as indicated by the New Age culture.55 With such evidence found amongst highly industrialised societies, the complicit relationship between sociology and modernity, that is, the marginalisation of spiritual matters, seems to be evolving not so much as a theoretical response but as a pragmatic response to the cultural shift in late-modern societies. Recent trends in academia reflect the transition clearly. For instance, the British Association for the Study of Spirituality was established in 2010 and The Journal for the Study of Spirituality was launched in 2010. Both The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion56 and The Handbook of the Sociology of Religion by Cambridge University Press57 have substantial coverage of spirituality. Sociology books on spirituality have mushroomed in the 2000s with such titles as The Spiritual Revolution,58 The Spirituality Revolution,59 and A Sociology of Spirituality.60 Spirituality, including its supernatural aspect, now seems to have gained legitimacy as a topic of study in sociology.

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There is one obvious limitation to the emerging interest in spirituality in social science, however. It is that its frame of reference is predominantly Judaeo-Christian. The concept that religion has a Eurocentric bias is indicated, for instance, by the assumption that religion is monotheistic.61 Hence, it is likely that the concept of spirituality also has a Eurocentric bias. In the field of cultural anthropology, for instance, spiritual matters outside the Western tradition have been examined widely. It is questionable, however, whether or not anthropologists are prepared to explore the broader applicability of the observations made within the specific cultural boundaries of their work. In Berger’s words, the question is whether or not cultural anthropologists are prepared to ‘“go native” cognitively’.62 This point brings us back to the questions raised earlier in relation to the Ethics Commission for a Safe Energy Supply in Germany. What might be an appropriate cultural and spiritual foundation for environmental ethics outside the West, especially in Asia, which increasingly holds the balance in the environmental stability of the earth? As the first non-Western society that has completed ‘phase one’ of modernity, what ethical foundation might Japan draw on to frame its future in response to the multiple crises initiated by the 11 March 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident? Although the case of Japan may not have been part of new spirituality discourse in Western academia, Japan has been very much a part of the ‘global’ trend since the late 1970s.63 Underlying the interest in spiritual matters was a broader social change in Japan from modern to postmodern, where post-materialist values became more highly cherished. As mentioned above, World Values Surveys showed that post-materialist values were one of the strongest indicators of the cultural transformation from modern to postmodern in highly industrialised societies.64 Japan was very much part of this general trend.65 The results of World Values Surveys between 1981 and 2000 show a steady increase in the proportion of those in Japan who responded positively to the question ‘How often do you think about the meaning and purpose of life?’ either with ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’. It increased steadily from 76.8% in 1981 (N=1,135) to 86.3% in 2000 (N=1,316).66 A survey conducted annually by the Cabinet Office of Japan shows this shift towards post-materialist values more clearly. It shows that before 1975 there were always more people who considered ‘material wealth’ (mono no yutakasa 物の豊かさ) to be more important than ‘spiritual wealth’ (kokoro no yutakasa 心の豊かさ), but in the late 1970s both became almost equal. In 1980, the balance was reversed, and since then the gap has increased, reaching a point in the 2000s when about twice as many people who responded to the survey considered ‘spiritual wealth’ to be more important (around 60%) than ‘material wealth’ (around 30%).67 As expected, opinions were divided depending on class, age, and gender: men rather than women, young people rather than those over 50, and those who held non-white-collar jobs (in sales, services, security, manufacturing, transport, construction, etc.) tended to indicate that they ‘would still like to continue focusing on the attainment of

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Introduction: A theoretical map

material wealth’ in their lives rather than pursue ‘spiritual wealth’. On the other hand, those who held managerial, professional, and clerical positions were more likely to focus on ‘spiritual wealth’.68 With the increasing gap between the haves and have-nots, the interpretation of this type of data becomes more complex. Nonetheless, when looked at from a broad historical perspective, it would be safe to say, as pointed out by sociologist Imada Takatoshi, that since the 1980s the meaning of existence has been seen as being more important than the attainment of material possessions in Japanese society.69 With regard to interest in spiritual matters, however, there is a major difference between Japan and other advanced societies. Unlike in the West, where ‘New Age’ is positioned as a counter-culture to mainstream Christian culture, the new spiritual movement in Japan is part of mainstream cultural discourse, and is promoted by intellectuals whom Shimazono Susumu calls ‘spiritual intellectuals’. These intellectuals, who hold influential positions in society, have translated and reinterpreted the religious traditions of Buddhism and Shinto into the language of the new spiritual movement, including that of animism.70 Before elaborating on and critiquing their discourse on animism, however, let me draw another sketch of Japan’s modern history that is relevant to the question of spirituality.

Minamata and Fukushima in Japan’s modern history What is the significance of Minamata and Fukushima in Japan’s modern history? To put it succinctly, the two incidents coincided almost exactly with the beginning and end of what might be called Japan’s period of super-modernisation: Minamata disease occurred when the Japanese economy began to rise to prominence in the mid-1950s, and the Fukushima nuclear accident happened in 2011, the same time as Japan’s economy was officially superseded by that of China. Minamata disease (Minamata byo- 水俣病) was officially ‘discovered’ in 1956. It is a disorder of the motor neurological system caused by eating contaminated seafood. The sea around Minamata was polluted with a methyl-mercury compound that had been discharged into the sea by the local Chisso factory: Chisso was, at that time, Japan’s leading chemical company. The mercury pollution caused the death and incapacity of tens of thousands of people around the Shiranui Sea in Kyushu, and people are still feeling the effects of the pollution today. The people affected by the pollution suffer from serious physical impairments, but this is not the only problem. There is also the harm done to other nonhuman lives and the environment. The official recognition of Minamata disease in 1956 roughly coincided with the beginning of Japan’s high economic growth period (1955–1973). The year 1955 also signifies (1) the final year of the postwar reconstruction period according to the then Economic Planning Agency; (2) the onset of the ‘1955 system’ (one-party rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which lasted

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until 1993); and (3) the beginning of Japan’s nuclear energy policy, which was signalled by the 1955 Atomic Energy Basic Act.71 Minamata disease in Kumamoto Prefecture is one of the four worst cases of industrial pollution (ko-gai 公害) in Japan. The others are (1) the atmospheric air pollution from the Yokkaichi City petrochemical complex that caused debilitating asthma; (2) the pollution of a river with cadmium discharged by Mitsui Mining & Smelting Corporation in Toyama Prefecture that caused lethal itai-itai [it-hurts, it-hurts] disease; (3) and another case of Minamata disease also caused by methyl-mercury compounds, with said compounds this time being discharged by Sho-wa Denko- in Niigata Prefecture. These cases all surfaced in the 1950s. Simon Avenell remarks that the ‘encounter with and reaction to industrial pollution [in Japan] was of a scale, intensity, and impact unique in modern Japanese, and perhaps, global history’,72 and that it ‘propelled the country to the very forefront of historic global environmental awakening in the 1960s’.73 Of these four cases of ‘fearsome pollution’,74 the most devastating in all aspects was Minamata disease, which was so terrible that, as mentioned above, even in 2010 it was still ranked as one of the top ten environmental disasters in the world.75 This is not surprising, perhaps, considering that it was not until 1968, twelve years after its official discovery, and 36 years since methyl mercury started to be used in the local factory,76 that the government took action to prevent the polluted effluent from being discharged. It is noteworthy that 1968 was also the year in which Japan became the second largest economy in the world. In 2012, 56 years after the ‘discovery’ of Minamata disease, with an alarming record of corporate denial and court battles stretching over decades, the Japanese government was determined to bring political closure to the problem by enforcing a strict deadline for applications for compensation. By the closing date that year, over 65,000 people had applied to receive ‘relief measures’.77 This number does not include about 3,000 victims who had been officially certified as Minamata disease patients under the more stringent 1977 criteria (most of them are now deceased)78 and another 11,000 sufferers who received a payout in 1995 under an earlier attempt to bring political closure to the issue. These figures give us an indication of the enormous devastation caused by the industrial pollution in Minamata. In response to the government’s push to achieve a ‘final and complete’ solution, those who have worked closely with the sufferers have emphasised that Minamata disease is a long way from over.79 Numerous people, including congenital Minamata disease patients, some of whom now face the added challenges of advanced age, still suffer incapacity. Moreover, epidemiological studies by independent medical researchers, including one conducted in 2009, have repeatedly found expanding areas and increasing numbers of people affected by the disease.80 The strongest sense of problem consciousness, however, comes from the realisation that the lessons of Minamata have not been learnt, either to prevent another disaster, or to adequately deal with the 2011 nuclear disaster. Most

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notably, there has been a failure on the part of those in power to take action to minimise harm and to adequately compensate victims. The nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant, owned by TEPCO, occurred in 2011, 55 years after Minamata disease was officially ‘discovered’. The accident, which was a consequence of the earthquake and tsunami that hit the northeast of Japan on 11 March, occurred only days after China officially displaced Japan as the second strongest economy in the world.81 In the time between Minamata and Fukushima, Japan had undergone not only a high economic growth period (1955–1973), but also a stable growth period (1974–1990) and a post-bubble low-to-negative-growth period (1991–2010). The nuclear disaster at Fukushima thus symbolises the end of Japan’s period of super-modernisation, which is indicated clearly by its decreased economic ranking in the world. The aim of this book is to explore the discourses of animism developed by four intellectuals in Japan during this period of super-modernisation, a period that is bookended by the two human-induced disasters: Minamata disease and the nuclear disaster at Fukushima. The crisis in Fukushima is even more serious in many respects than that in Minamata. In Fukushima, the level of devastation is extremely high and, crucially, the contamination of land and sea has been unstoppable and everexpanding because radiation-contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant remains next to impossible to control. Furthermore, the extent of contamination caused by the melted nuclear fuel under the crippled plant is still unknown. The social impact of the accident is still immeasurable. In 2015, four years after the accident, there were still almost 120,000 ‘nuclear refugees’,82 who were at a high risk of ‘nuclear-accident-related death’ (genpatsu jiko kanrenshi 原発事故関連死). Within three years of the disaster, over 1,700 (mostly elderly) deaths were related to the accident. Seven hundred of these deaths occurred more than a year after the accident, while in the same time period the number of disaster-related deaths was less than 20 in the two other prefectures devastated by the tsunami.83 In addition, by 2017, 154 cases of thyroid cancer in young people had been confirmed along with an additional 40 suspected cases.84 This is ‘several tens of times larger’ than the expected or estimated number of cancer cases.85 The cost to other life forms is also immeasurable. Almost 3,000 cows, 30,000 pigs, and 600,000 chickens and countless pets were left behind to starve to death in the nuclear exclusion zone.86 Within five months of the accident, over 3,400 farm animals were ‘euthanised’.87 Genetic and ecological impacts on other species, such as birds, butterflies, and cicadas, have also been reported.88 Although the nuclear disaster was triggered by the earthquake and tsunami, the official report of the National Diet of Japan judged that the accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant was ‘manmade’ in that it resulted from the ‘collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by [these] parties. They effectively

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betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents’, and their lack of integrity caused the threat and destruction of nonhuman life and the environment as a whole. The impact of a nuclear crisis is global rather than regional, and in respect of the global ecosystem it is not yet possible to determine the ultimate impact of the nuclear accident in Fukushima. The underlying power structure of the Japanese ‘nuclear village’, which controls the industry in Japan, is more formidable than that of Chisso and its power is reinforced by close links to the international nuclear establishment. The causal link between exposure to the ‘poison’ and illness is much harder to establish in the case of irradiation: low level irradiation does not result in distinctive symptoms as in Minamata disease; it takes many years to manifest as cancer, the cause of which is difficult to single out; and the impact upon the unborn, infants, and young children is unknown. Nonetheless, there are important similarities between Fukushima and Minamata: Both involve wide-scale and irrevocable environmental destruction caused by humans; both occurred as a result of placing excessive faith in flawed science; both were driven by the relentless pursuit of corporate profit and a warped vision of national development; both were promoted and supported by a collusive relationship amongst national and local governments, bureaucracy, industry, the mainstream scientific community, and the media; both marginalised critical scientists; and both sacrificed the well-being of local residents, reflecting deep-seated discrimination against rural people and revealing the structure of dependence of the periphery on the core.90 Moreover, neither methyl mercury nor radiation can be detected using our five senses, and victims are obliged to be dependent on the government and the offending industry for the release of data that is crucial to their lives, data that is often subject to manipulation.91

Connectedness as a legacy of Japan’s modernity Seen from a different angle, the commonalities between Minamata and Fukushima can be summarised as a breakdown of connectedness at multiple levels: family (e.g. the impact of death or health impairment of a family member, loss of housing, land, and other possessions); work (i.e. loss thereof); food production (i.e. farming and fishing); traditional and local ways of life; and a sense of connectedness with nature, past and future, ancestors and descendants. Both disasters caused deep schisms in, and paralysis of, the affected communities. Minamata disease caused many rifts in the community.92 Some of these tensions depended on residents’ attitude towards Chisso, for example, whether or not they admitted to having Minamata disease, applied for certification as Minamata disease patients, or pursued compensation. The nuclear disaster in Fukushima has also caused often invisible rifts in the community and within families, depending on things such as one’s stance on nuclear energy, whether one should stay in Fukushima or not (especially between mothers with young children who wanted to leave and in-laws who wanted them to stay), whether to consume locally produced food or not, and whether to work for TEPCO or not.

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The breakdown of connectedness occurred, however, not only in sociological spheres, but also in biological dimensions. In the case of Minamata disease, connectedness in the nervous system in the brain was severed. A study by the University of Calgary showed how mercury disrupts the growth of neurons in the brain and how it severs the connectedness of the nervous system.93 Radiation, on the other hand, destroys the DNA itself and severs the connectedness of cells. A photo of the ‘muscles’ of Ouchi Hisahi, who died after a criticality incident in Tokaimura in 1999, shows how the cells in his body lost connectedness and turned into mush.94 If one of the characteristics of modernity is a weakening of connectedness, Minamata and Fukushima epitomize it to the extreme: They show how relentless pursuit of profit can destroy the very basis of life itself. Is it any wonder, then, that connectedness emerged as a legacy of both Minamata and Fukushima? The devastation of the 11 March triple disaster met with overwhelming sympathy, abundant aid, and offers of volunteer work from other parts of Japan and all around the world. Within the affected districts, people strove to revive the spirit of the community, for example, by efforts to salvage traditional festivals and seasonal events.95 The disaster created a sense of cohesion in Japan. At the end of 2011, the word ‘kizuna’ (絆 bond/connectedness) was chosen as the kanji character that best symbolised the year of disasters.96 Indeed, the triple disaster affected the people of Japan in profound ways. A public opinion poll conducted in 2012 by the Cabinet Office found that almost 80% of the 6,059 respondents indicated that, after the 2011 disaster, they came to a greater realisation of the importance of connectedness within society.97 In the case of Minamata, the word ‘moyai’ (舫 mooring boats) has become its legacy, although it took nearly 40 years for it to emerge as a key concept. The word was first used officially in 1994 in a speech by the then Minamata mayor, Yoshii Masazumi, who adopted it as a keyword to revive and rebuild the community of Minamata, which had been devastated by the industrial pollution. Ogata Masato, a Minamata fisherman and Minamata disease sufferer (whose life story is introduced in Chapter 1), however, was the first to propose the concept as a keyword for the future.98 According to Tsurumi Kazuko (whose life story is presented in Chapter 3), he is one of the ‘creative and persistent small leaders’ within the community with whom ‘the Minamata patients have been blessed’99 and one of the key persons in Minamata who can create new knowledge.100 Ogata writes: We have an expression, moyai, which I hold close to my heart. … It comes from the verb moyau, which means ‘to tie two boats together’, or ‘to moor a boat to a piling’. For instance, when we fished for sardines, two boats of the same size would drag a net between them. … If a storm should blow up while we were fishing, we would tie our boat together with another and head for port. This, too, is called moyau. The other boat didn’t necessarily belong to an acquaintance. … As we headed for port, we would talk about

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our fishing villages, how the fish were running, and so on. Moyai began as a fishing term, but it has been applied to other aspects of our daily lives. … It implies that a small group of people will go somewhere and also return together. Villagers enjoy going places together.101 The fact that connectedness emerged as the legacy of the two biggest environmental disasters in Japan’s modern history is the starting point of this book because, in the broadest sense, spirituality means connectedness.102 However, in Western academia spirituality is a concept heavily loaded with the taken-for-granted culture of Judaeo-Christianity. Instead of addressing the question of spirituality directly, what I attempt to do in this book is to explore the question of connectedness, focusing in particular on questions of life, soul, and nature, by examining the discourse on animism that emerged from Japan’s experience of modernity.

Minamata as method This book will draw on the discourse on connectedness in Minamata rather than in Fukushima. The first reason for this choice is that the nuclear disaster in Fukushima is still very much current and it could take decades before its deepest meaning is expressed by those who have been directly affected by it. The second reason is the fact that the Minamata incident occurred at the onset of Japan’s radical modernisation and the Fukushima occurred at the end of it, which marks a crucial difference between the two. As Beck points out, different phases of modernity – premodern, first-modern, and second-modern – have coexisted in the process of the modernisation of Japan.103 Minamata, in particular, presents a vantage point with which to survey this multifaceted modernity. The Minamata incident, which surfaced in the 1950s, threw the appearance of modernisation into high relief against a background of an almost premodern lifestyle of fishing villages where people followed more or less a subsistence style of living by catching fish and cultivating the land. Memories of a pre-modern lifestyle and culture provided a powerful reference point for Minamata sufferers to reflect on modernity as they were thrown into an increasingly modern style of living. For Fukushima, on the other hand, such memories would of course exist, but it is over 50 years further away compared to Minamata, and the lifestyle and culture of Fukushima residents have been saturated with modernity for more than half a century. The third reason for focusing on the Minamata incident is that it has been widely documented and studied by a number of professionals, including photographers (e.g. Eugene Smith), documentary film-makers (e.g. Tsuchimoto Noriaki), doctors (e.g. Harada Masazumi), writers (e.g. Ishimure Michiko), academics (e.g. Tsurumi Kazuko), and publishers (e.g. Fujiwara shoten). Their cumulative work, now termed ‘Minamata Studies’, provides a powerful reference point for critical social science in Japan and beyond. The fact that

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the Fukushima crisis is often likened to Minamata is an indication of the significance of Minamata in fostering a critical awareness of the way the ‘system’ has worked in Japan’s postwar history. There is, however, a reflective question that needs to be asked: With the critical knowledge gained from Minamata, why couldn’t the nuclear disaster have been prevented from happening? This question of course contains elements of presumption and unfairness. Its underlying assumptions are shaky: social scientists have only limited power within our professional boundaries; knowledge is not always reflected in practice; and the nuclear lobby is one of the most powerful in the world. Nonetheless, the question alerts us to an unpleasant premonition that no matter how well the current crisis is analysed regarding its underlying political, economic, social, institutional, and cultural structures within and beyond Japan, there might be another Minamata or another Fukushima to come in Japan, in China, or elsewhere in the world. Daring to ask this question leads us to an even more uncomfortable question of whether we might be facing some kind of limit to social science itself, that is, to the way we think, the way we look at things, and the way we conduct research. It confronts us with the possibility of a crisis of knowledge in social science. These are very much ‘postmodern’ questions. As Ronald Berger and Richard Quinney put it, if ‘postmodernism is about anything, it is about the fact that the world has changed in some unmistakable yet ill-defined and unfolding way, and that our conventional ways of thinking about social life may no longer suffice’.104 Nothing can perhaps describe better such epistemological and methodological uneasiness than Jean-François Lyotard’s notion of the postmodern condition of knowledge. The nuclear crisis in Japan is a quintessential ‘counter-example’ that shows that modernity could not fulfil its own promises.105 Science knowledge (i.e. the myth of safe nuclear energy) has collapsed, putting in turmoil the structures of power around it: the scientific community, universities, the media, bureaucracy, government, the nuclear industry, and other associated institutions. This seeping incredulity towards a metanarrative, in this case the fundamental premises of social science, is the very definition of the postmodern.106 The question is what the ‘little narrative’ can be that creates a dissonance or, to use Lyotard’s terminology, a ‘paralogy’ – a basis of a new kind of knowledge which produces not the known but the unknown – to widen our imagination and to open possibilities to include the ‘unknown’.107 What Lyotard calls a ‘little narrative’ represents the kind of knowledge that has been outside the legitimate sphere of (social) scientific knowledge. It is in pondering over this question that I see the depth of the legacy of Minamata. Minamata is not just a negative legacy of modernisation. It also has a positive legacy: the stories which show the resilience of the human spirit. These life stories of the sufferers record moments when their negativity turned into a positive, moments of self-transformation when they were awakened to a sense of connectedness with something close to the core of their selves: a connectedness to the sea and the land, fish and other creatures,

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family and the deceased, along with the cosmos and the universe. The positive legacy of Minamata is in its ‘soul narratives’ and in the discourse on nature, life, and the unseen, that is, a discourse on animism, that emerged from the sufferers’ experiences of modernity.

Framing animism John Clammer writes that animism is a term ‘that has almost entirely dropped out of anthropological discourse in the West’, but that in Japan and ‘possibly only in Japan … [it] is still widely used as a way of explaining the distinctiveness of the national culture and as a vehicle for constructing a model of Japanese society’.108 ‘Unlike classical Western sociological theories’, Clammer continues, Japan ‘explicitly locate[s] nature as part of the constitution of that society’.109 From around the time Clammer made these remarks, animism that had seemed ‘almost entirely obsolete’110 provoked extensive discussion and evolved into a ‘new animism’. The direct trigger was a seminal paper by Nurit Bird-David, ‘“Animism” Revisited’.111 More titles on animism appeared in the 2000s,112 and the 2013 publication of A Handbook of Contemporary Animism, edited by Graham Harvey, was a milestone of the development that has taken place in academic discourse on animism in recent years.113 This renewed interest in animism is significant, as it is not just an isolated surge of interest, but a reflection of much broader changes in modern society. Three trends are relevant in this regard. The first is the new spirituality movement discussed above; the second is the rise of a general scepticism about modernity, in particular about having the human–nature dichotomy as its premise; and the third, I argue, is the glowing, global popularity of animistic imageries in popular culture led by animation films by Miyazaki Hayao of Studio Ghibli,114 a popularity which is represented by the 2001 box office and Academy Award success of Spirited Away (see Chapter 4). After nearly two decades, there is still a great deal of diversity, disagreement, and debate regarding how to interpret, represent, or categorise animism: Is it is a philosophy, religion, epistemology, or ontology?115 Nonetheless, there seems to be general agreement as to what it refers to, and for that, the original definition of animism by Edward Tylor is still relevant. Tylor, a Victorian anthropologist, established the notion of animism in his 1871 book, Primitive Culture. He defines animism as a ‘Philosophy of Religion’, that is ‘the deep-lying doctrine of Spiritual Beings, which embodies the very essence of Spiritualistic as opposed to Materialistic philosophy’.116 He holds that the theory of animism has two components: (1) ‘souls of individual creatures, capable of continued existence after the destruction of the body’; and (2) ‘other spirits, upward to the rank of powerful deities’.117 They roughly, though not exclusively, correspond to animism as ‘a philosophy of nature at large … that all nature is possessed, pervaded, crowded, with spiritual beings’ and as ‘a philosophy of human life’, respectively.118

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As pointed out by Bird-David, the Tylorian notion of animism has survived with little revision.119 The Oxford English Dictionary, for instance, defines animism as ‘belief in the existence of a spiritual world, and of soul or spirit apart from matter; spiritualism as opposed to materialism’; ‘the attribution of life and personality (and sometimes soul) to inanimate objects and natural phenomena’; and ‘any of various theories postulating that an animating principle, as distinct from physical processes (chemical, mechanical, etc.), directs energy that moves living beings and governs their growth and evolution = vitalism’. Vitalism, on the other hand, is explained as ‘the doctrine or theory that the origin and phenomena of life are due to or produced by a vital principle, as distinct from a purely chemical or physical force’. A survey of the definitions of animism carried out by Bird-David lists similar definitions such as ‘the belief that inside ordinary visible, tangible bodies there is [a] normally invisible, normally intangible being: the soul’;120 ‘the belief that all life is produced by a spiritual force, or that all natural phenomena have souls’;121 or ‘the belief in the existence of a separable soul-entity, potentially distinct and apart from any concrete embodiment in a living individual or material organism’.122 What, then, are the key differences between Tylor’s (old) ‘animism’ and ‘new animism’? The first, simply put, is that new animism presents animism as a more positive notion, the most obvious being the critique and contestation of the colonial origins of the term.123 Typically, Tylor’s writing is saturated with such expressions as ‘the primitive’ and ‘rude savage’ as compared to ‘the civilised’ and ‘Christian’. Bird-David remarks that ‘Tylor’s theory had a deep and lasting influence on anthropological theory’ including on Émile Durkheim, who regarded the attribution of self to other than human entities as ‘the erroneous mental operation of a child’, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, who ‘did not question the authority of the Western objectivist view of reality, which accepted a priori the nature/society dualism’.124 New animism can be regarded as a movement to critique and jettison prejudice towards the ‘underdeveloped’, who are close to nature, a prejudice which is deep-seated in our civilisation. The second difference is that the discourse of new animism frames animism broadly as a concept that directly challenges the fundamental premises of modernity. This juxtaposition of animism against modernity is not surprising, since animism was positioned, as touched upon above, as the antithesis of modernity as seen by Weber’s notion of the ‘disenchantment’ of the modern world from the unseen world.125 What is new is that the hitherto contradictory relationship of animism with regard to modernity is now regarded as a powerful conceptual tool to clarify, as pointed out by Harvey, how ‘the project of modernity is ill-conceived and dangerously performed’.126 More specifically, modern premises such as the linear progress of evolution, anthropocentric views of the world, and the human–nature dichotomy have been illuminated using the notion of animism. In contrast to the old discourse that examined ‘animism in the modernist mirror’,127 the main concern of the new discourse is the critical examination of modernity in the animist mirror.

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This leads to the third difference between the old and new discourses on animism. According to Harvey, new animism is concerned with ‘learning how to be a good person in respectful relationships with other persons … [and] knowing how to behave appropriately towards persons, not all of whom are humans’.128 Harvey continues that new animism ‘attempts to understand worldviews and lifeways that are different in various ways from those typically inculcated and more or less taken for granted in Western modernity’.129 The presentation of animism by Bird-David as relational epistemology suggests the same expectation, although she may not be as explicit as Harvey.130 Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, who sees animism as ontology, considers it to be a tool for the continued decolonisation of the world.131 Whether it is presented as epistemology or ontology, there seems to be a common expectation that animism can transform the existing world to be less discriminatory and more sustainable, that is, better. Thus, the new discourse on animism has brought about significant changes to old animism in that it (1) endeavours to jettison the traces of colonial prejudice and pejorative; (2) frames animism as a critical tool to reflect on modernity; and (3) employs animism with the view of bringing about a better world. However, there are two significant gaps in the discourse on new animism. One is that the relationship between animism and modernity is largely discussed using ‘indigenous’ communities as a reference, that is, without adequate reference to the empirical experience of what animism means in a ‘fully developed’ modern society. The other is the reference to the pantheistic religious traditions of Asia for which ‘“postmodern” religiosity [of which new animism is part] turns out to be a familiar story’, as has been pointed out by Beck.132 Mark MacWilliams, for instance, points out in his review of Harvey’s 2005 Animism: Respecting the Living World that (1) what is missing there are Japanese Shinto and its kami (gods, spirits, or deities); (2) ‘studying Japanese animism overcomes the author’s unconscious dichotomy that is based on a hackneyed Western stereotype of the primitive and the modern, the indigenous and the Western’; and (3) ‘Shinto offers a corrective because it is not “archaic” (although it often styles itself to be)’ and because ‘in its modern guise, it is an indigenous historical construct, deeply implicated in the Japanese modernist effort to create a nation state in its ritual and politicized ideological role as state culture’.133 Although Japanese animism is referred to in Harvey’s 2014 edited tome, The Handbook of Contemporary Animism, it is only with a very specific focus.134 Indeed, reference to Japan is extremely relevant for the study of animism. To quote Clammer again, it is in Japan and ‘possibly only in Japan, that the concept of animism is still widely used as a way of explaining the distinctiveness of the national culture and as a vehicle for constructing a model of Japanese society, which, unlike classical Western sociological theories, explicitly locates nature as part of the constitution of that society’.135 Clammer argues that ‘many strands of deep ecology and so-called New Age thinking in the West have begun to offer a vision of society and of humanity’s place in the

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Introduction: A theoretical map

universe that is remarkably parallel to ideas that have wide intellectual currency in Japan’.136 He continues that the ‘increasing significance of ecological, feminist, and New Age thinking in effecting intellectual currents suggests that such ideas, long current in Japan, are … becoming more and more widely diffused’.137 Recent developments in the discourse of new animism further enhance the relevance of Japan that Clammer talks about. In other words, he suggests that animism in highly industrialised Japan is particularly significant, as it may provide ‘a new frame of reference for the world risk society [from] non-Western countries’, to use Beck’s words.138 As yet, however, references to Japan are almost non-existent in the discourse on new animism.139 This book attempts to incorporate the discourse on animism in contemporary Japan into that of new animism in Western academia. This, however, is easier said than done because the discourse on animism in Japan is extremely complex and also tricky due to its entanglement with the notion of ‘Japaneseness’, which comes with its own political and ideological twists. It is therefore necessary to map out the discourses on animism in Japan before clarifying how animism is framed for the purposes of this book.

Discourse on animism in Japan 1: Japanological discourse An influential portrayal of animism in Japan was presented in 1989 by philosopher Umehara Takeshi, the first Director-General of the governmentfunded International Research Center for Japanese Studies (commonly known as Nichibunken). His article ‘Animism Reconsidered’ was published as the very first article in Nihon Kenkyu [Japanese Studies], Nichibunken’s signature journal.140 The article is significant because of Umehara’s influence on politics through his close association with Nakasone Yasuhiro, Prime Minister of Japan from 1982 to 1987, who, for instance, adopted Umehara’s ideas in his 1986 policy speech.141 Umehara was also a leading ‘spiritual intellectual’ at that time, and his ideas had an impact on Japanese society as a whole.142 Umehara argues that ‘both Shinto and Japanese Buddhism are based on the principles of animism’;143 that animism is at the core of Shinto when elements of state Shinto are taken out;144 and that animism provides a foundation for Japanese Buddhism as epitomised by the notion of ‘so-moku kokudo shikkai jo-butsu’ (草木国土悉皆成仏) [the attainment of Buddhahood by grass, trees, and land].145 Animism is an indispensable worldview for humankind, Umehara maintains, and the ‘higher religions’ that have lost animism will face grave philosophical crises.146 Although not directly explained in his paper, Umehara’s concept of a higher religion is monotheism, most notably Christianity, which he suggests is at the root of environmental problems. Polytheistic animism is presented as a means to save the world which has been destroyed by monotheistic civilisations. This theme is amplified by Yasuda Yoshinori in Isshinkyo- no yami: Animism no fukken [The darkness of monotheism and the revival of animism], which reproduces Umehara’s ideas, albeit in a more forthright form. Yasuda writes:

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Christians live strategically. … But their crop-and-livestock farming has destroyed forests and exploited nature, and prosperity can no longer be expected. Just as rice-growing-fishery people were trapped by crop-andlivestock people, it is now time to set ‘a trap of animism’ in order to save the earth.147 Yasuda holds that Christians in Europe and North America are ‘crop-andlivestock’ people who are basically responsible for the destruction of the world’s forests while ‘rice-growing-fishery’ people in Asia are engaged with a sustainable lifestyle based on animism. In a more sophisticated tone, Umehara writes that being confronted with a nuclear crisis, climate change, and other environmental catastrophes, it is necessary to reflect fundamentally on human civilisation.148 He continues: Something is wrong, and the roots of that problem run deep. I think that the fearful history of humankind began when humans discarded animism as the common religion and when humans ceased to pay respect to the spirits of trees and the gods of nature and the universe.149 Umehara positions animism not only as the pantheistic antithesis of monotheism, but also as the antithesis of ‘Western civilisation’, ‘Western modernity’, and ‘European thought’. In ‘The civilization of the forest’, which is his more developed theory of animism in Japan with a particular focus on trees and forests, Umehara writes that he hopes ‘to discover in the cultural origin of Japan … a new value orientation that suits the post-Modern age’ because Western modernity ‘seems to have exhausted itself in nihilism, the obsessive pursuit of pleasure through economic growth and the destruction of nature’.150 He continues: In order to overcome the present-day crises of human civilization, we must return to the wisdom of the starting point … which regards all living beings as basically equal and regards life as a continuous eternal cycle of life and death. Since this basic thought is at the root of the development of our civilization, the earliest origins of religious belief in Japan’s past have a great deal to offer the future.151 Umehara does recognise that Japan is not unique in maintaining animistic traditions. Amongst others, he refers to Taoism and Confucianism in China, Hinduism in India, and shamanism in Korea.152 And his positioning of animism as the concept that may be able to redress the ills of modernity is not unique either, as I mentioned above in my discussion of new animism. He also states that he is not an advocate of state Shintoism and that he is not a ‘Yamatoist – the national racialists associated with Japan’s World War II chauvinism’.153

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Nonetheless, Umehara’s discourse on animism has been controversial in many respects. First, Umehara positions Japan (and its animistic tradition) outside of what he calls ‘European modernity/civilization’ and thus directs his critique towards forces external to Japan. This dualistic framing of Japan and its ‘other’ (the West), with superior features being presented as the characteristics of Japan, is typical of the theory of Japan or Japanology. This framing is essentially ‘reverse-Orientalism’. In fact, to use a nation-state as the unit of analysis and to use nature to explain its characteristics are typical of the national discourse on Japan.154 This approach tends to overlook internal diversity such as social class, regional differences, and other sources of power dynamics within Japan, as well as external similarities such as core–periphery relationships that exist across national borders. More specifically, an exploration of perceptions of nature in the Tokugawa era by Tessa Morris-Suzuki revealed that ‘it is far too simple to identify Japanese attitudes to nature with an animist respect for the spirit of trees’.155 Morris-Suzuki was referring to the ‘theory of forest civilization’ presented by Umehara and Yasuda.156 Sueki Fumihiko, an expert in Buddhism at Nichibunken, also cautions about promoting animism as Japan’s ancient or Buddhist tradition and to use it for self-righteous praise of Japan.157

Positioning ‘Japan’ I concur with these critiques of Japanological discourse on animism. Therefore, it is not the aim of this book to present a cultural discourse of animism in Japan, that is, to explain what Japanese culture is by using the concept of animism. The aim of this book is, rather, to explore how animism emerged as a result of the intellectual journeys of four key individuals who took the question of survival in modernity seriously, which is the furthest away one can get from presenting a national discourse. I am particularly interested in their thought processes, how each of them fused their experiences of super-modernity with their own cultural references (whatever they are), and how that enabled them to develop their notions of animism. I am using Japan as a frame of reference because of its potential distance from Western scholarship. The non-Western frame of reference does not have to be Japan, but, as I stated above, Japan presents a particularly strong vantage point from which to consider animism in the context of modernity. For some readers, the question of Japan or Japanese culture may persist throughout the book, and there may be a temptation to wrap everything that is unfamiliar from the Western point of view to be Japanese. However, this temptation needs to be resisted for two reasons. The first has to do with our comparative perspective. For instance, one of the cultural references the four intellectuals have drawn on to develop their notions of animism is a sense of connectedness with their ancestors and the deceased, and another is their sense of connectedness with nature. While there might be a temptation to regard these as distinct characteristics of Japanese culture when

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the West is used as the point of comparison, such distinctiveness is likely to be contested when the point of comparison is Korea, for instance, or any other society where indigenous cultural traditions remain strong. The problem is that, in our mainstream social science knowledge base, our knowledge of such cultures is systematically limited (as will be elaborated on in Chapter 3), and it is the habit of our own mind to see the distinctiveness of Japanese culture in the Western mirror. At the same time, the notion of what constitutes the West also becomes problematic. Clammer suggests that the kind of discourse on animism as presented in this book has a strong resonance with deep ecology and other ecological, feminist, and New Age thinking.158 As discussed above, what I present in this book is part of the discourse of new animism, and it may perhaps also resonate with post-humanist and post-colonialist discourses. In other words, the discourse on animism presented here would best be considered as one variant of critical-ecological discourse, or critical social theory,159 although it is beyond the scope of the present book to sort out the differences and commonalities between the strand presented in this book and all the other strands in this category. My point here is that the discourse on animism presented in this book should not be confined as the discourse on Japanese culture purely because the four intellectuals discussed are all Japanese. I contend that the significance of their discourse lies in their openness to the world and its potential for universal applicability, namely, in the form of their theoretical implications. The second reason we need to be cautious about what constitutes Japanese culture is that the cultural discourse tends to blind us to the diversity and the power struggles within a society. As will be clear in the following chapters, one of the underlying threads amongst the four intellectuals is that they developed their notions of animism as critiques of the modern institutional structure of the Japanese state. In other words, their discourses on animism emerged out of their efforts to distinguish two Japan(s): Japan as modern nation-state and grassroots Japan. The following chapters will clarify how grassroots discourse on animism emerged from the critique of modern projects pursued by the state. In the case of Ogata Masato (Chapter 1), he formulated the ‘life-world’ as a critique of and an alternative to ‘system society’; Ishimure Michiko (Chapter 2) presents her notion of ‘ancestor/parent of grass’ (kusa no oya 草の祖), the sense of connectedness with the vast continuum of life, as something to replace the notion of authorities as ‘parent figures’ (oyasama 祖様); Tsurumi Kazuko (Chapter 3) discerns that it is ‘folk Shinto’ rather than ideological and institutionalised Shinto that works as the discourse for a sustainable future; and Miyazaki Hayao (Chapter 4) was reassured by the notion of Japan as a part of the ‘broadleaf evergreen forest culture zone’ of Asia, which set his mind free from the notion of the nation-state of Japan with a history of aggression in war. Based on this positioning of Japan and Japanese culture, this book presents the grassroots discourse on animism that emerged in contemporary Japan, which will be discussed based on the following five basic points.

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Introduction: A theoretical map

Discourse on animism in Japan 2: Grassroots discourse Japan as a frame of reference (not as a unit of analysis): The first point is that Japan is used here as a frame of reference rather than as a unit of analysis, that is as a conceptual unit that needs to be explained. In other words, it is not my aim to describe Japanese culture by using the notion of animism or anything else for that matter. In that sense, my orientation is completely different from the literature called the Nihonjinron, the theory of Japaneseness, which contends, for instance, that Japanese society is characterised by groupism or vertical human relationships.160 Rather, I focus on a form of animism which exists at the grassroots level in Japan, which has found expression in the writings and artworks of the four intellectuals who have been particularly ‘tuned in’ to Japan’s grassroots traditions. In the words of Caster Jensen and Anders Blok, this book aims to ‘by-pass the twin perils of Orientalism and Occidentalism in the same move.161’ The views expressed in this book are not intended to be anti-Western or anti-Christian in any sense. It certainly does not follow the simplistic dichotomy of an ‘exploitative Western’ vs a ‘harmonious Eastern’ approach to nature,162 as most famously framed by Lynn White in ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’.163 Tsurumi Kazuko, the first Japanese sociologist to work extensively on animism (see Chapter 3), however, emphasises the fact that White proposed Saint Francis of Assisi, a medieval heretic, as the patron saint of ecologists. Tsurumi remarks that Saint Francis represented ‘an alternative Christian view’, and that there is nothing anti-Western in appreciating grassroots animism in Japan because there is a commonality between grassroots animism in Japan and the animism that was oppressed in pre-modern Europe.164 She argues that ‘just as Christianity destroyed “pagan animism” in the West, emperor ideology in the name of state Shintoism attempted to destroy grassroots animistic belief in Japan at the incipient stage of modernization’ (I will discuss this further below under the point ‘The politics of Shinto’ and in Chapter 3).165 Since White first posited his thesis in the 1960s, the new spirituality movement, including New Age, has created increasing interest in new animism and has further strengthened the commonality between a grassroots discourse on animism in Japan and the revision of animism in the West, moving further away from the simplistic binary of an ‘exploitative Western’ vs a ‘harmonious Eastern’ approach to nature. Table 0.1 presents a conceptual map of different discourses on animism. Reflecting the focus of this book, the areas included in the table are limited to Japan and the West. Folk Shinto (rather than institutionalised Shinto): It is necessary to clarify how Shinto is framed in this book, as it is most relevant to the consideration of the concept of animism in Japan. In order to do so, it is important to make a distinction between what Clammer calls ‘state Shinto’ and ‘shrine Shinto’ (or folk/popular Shinto) in the historical context of Meiji Japan. In the

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Table 0.1 Contrasting discourses on animism in Japan and the West

Mainstream Alternative

Japan

The West

Japanological or nationalistic discourse on animism and Shinto Local, folk, or grassroots discourse on animism and Shinto

Mainstream Christian (negation of animism) Gnostic/New Age/New animism

context of postwar Japan, where state Shinto has been officially abolished and the distinction between ‘state’ and ‘shrine’ Shinto no longer applies theoretically, I would like to use the term ‘institutionalised Shinto’ to refer to its more organised aspects of Shinto and ‘folk Shinto’ to refer to its less organised aspects in order to distinguish one from the other conceptually, although in reality it may not be always clear which one to apply for a particular shrine. The institutionalised aspects of Shinto are far more visible than folk Shinto both domestically and internationally, and have therefore been studied far more than folk aspects of Shinto. The Association of Shinto Shrines (Jinja Honcho-) lists some 80,000 shrines, including the Ise Grand Shrine, which is often described as the most important shrine in the country. The Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and Nihonshoki (The Chronicles of Japan) are used as key narratives (if not scriptures) which describe the legendary myths of the origin of Japan and the annals of the imperial family. Both are ancient texts compiled in the eighth century. Until the end of the Second World War, the institutionalised aspects of Shinto meant state Shinto, and they provided the war ideology for the nation-state of Japan that led to the destruction of vast numbers of lives. Shinto is still very much at the heart of the power structure of Japan, as indicated by repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine by Japanese prime ministers. ‘Nature worship’ is presented as the central spiritual belief of Shinto on the English webpage of the Association of Shinto Shrines.166 Folk Shinto, on the other hand, refers to the less institutionalised aspects of Shinto, which are much closer to the everyday life of ordinary people in rural Japan, as described by Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962), who ‘stressed the spiritual value of local traditions of worshipping local kami’.167 This local Shinto is far less tangible compared to the institutionalised Shinto, particularly when looked at from outside Japan. Thus, folk or popular (minzoku) Shinto ‘may well belong amongst the least understood religions in the world’168 because of its ‘amorphous, localized and diversified’ nature.169 The key parameters of folk Shinto that distinguish it from the more institutionalised and bureaucratic aspects of Shinto are a focus on the local rather than the national and a focus on numerous little kami in the local area (see Chapter 3 for further analysis on the two kinds of Shinto). Focus on the local (rather than the national): According to Clammer, folk Shinto (or ‘shrine Shinto’ in his terminology) is ‘intensely local’.170 Yamao Sansei, a farmer, poet, and philosopher and the author of Animizumu to iu

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Introduction: A theoretical map

kibo- [Hope called animism], agrees. He distinguishes go- (郷 as in kokyo- 故郷 hometown) from kuni (国) and suggests that animism goes with go- rather than kuni. He remarks that the character for ‘nation-state’ has a king (王) sitting in the middle of land surrounded by borders, and holds that the notion of nation-states has become obsolete in our borderless age. In contrast, Yamao asserts, the notion of ‘go-’ or ‘chiiki’ (region 地域) has the conceptual flexibility to transcend existing borders, and promises the possibility for greater and freer alliances with others.171 While being open to link up with others, key to the notion of go- is a sense of belonging often associated with a person’s place of birth, where they feel a spiritual connection to the land.172 The spiritual connection is to little kami (spirits, deities, or gods) written in katakana (カミ) rather than in kanji (神). Animism as ontology: As will become clear in the following pages, animism does not mean ‘nature worship’, a point emphatically made by Clammer.173 Also, while animism can be grasped at various levels (i.e. discourse, philosophy, epistemology, religion, as well as ontology), I agree with Clammer that it is most potent, theoretically and politically, when it is understood as ontology, as the theory or conception relating to the nature of being or existence. What, then, can animism mean ontologically in the context of Japan? Clammer addresses this question by focusing on Shinto, which he regards as a sophisticated example of animism.174 What, then, is the essence of Shinto, and, in particular, the essence of folk Shinto, which is highly relevant to the discussion in the following chapters? As mentioned above, Clammer explains that in contrast with (what he calls) ‘state Shinto-’, which aims to identify Japan as one entity, folk Shinto is ‘intensely local’.175 This is because ‘kami are very specific to a particular place’176 where land and its ecology are seen as a numinous entity, that is, where the land has a spiritual quality. He also explains that folk Shinto is ‘highly polytheistic [and] inherently pantheistic’,177 and that the boundaries between humans and nature are permeable because both are considered to be a manifestation of ‘Shinto’, ‘the Way (Tao in Chinese) of kami … the cosmic vitality generative of all beings, animate and inanimate’.178 This worldview is also found in some varieties of Japanese Buddhism, Clammer remarks.179 Indeed, Sueki180 argues that the idea of ‘the enlightenment of grass and trees’ (so-moku jo-butsu 草木成仏, a notion crucial for animism) was developed by Annen (841–915?), a Buddhist priest from the Tendai sect in Japan, which implies that it is not a characteristic of ‘Japanese Buddhism’ as a whole. Underlying this concept, Sueki explains, is the notion of shinnyo (真如 tathata), the ultimate nature of all things from which all things emerge, the energy that fills the infinite universe, which represents both nothingness and all beings (and thus has contradictions). Shinnyo is also the basis of the indistinctiveness between humans and nature, including the sentient and insentient (e.g. plants and minerals). Clammer argues that in the Japanese discourse on animism, there is:

Animism in contemporary Japan

27 a cosmology, a vitalistic model of the universe with deep roots in folk Shintomodified by certain strands of Buddhism, especially the very Japanese theory of the ultimate or potential Buddhahood of all things – not only people, but also animals, plants, and so-called inanimate objects.181 So, how does Clammer’s view differ from the ideological discourse of animism used by Umehara, who remarked that ‘both Shinto and Japanese Buddhism are based on the principle of animism’, as I mentioned above? According to Clammer, it all comes down to politics, which constitutes the final axis of the discussion in this book. Politics of animism: Clammer, in his seminal paper ‘The Politics of Animism’, argues that: animism has profound political implications: it contains a model of human-nature relationships beyond the sociological categories of the state; it is extremely difficult to codify or to convert into any easily administrable theological system; and when it is linked with expressions such as shamanism it can become subversive, a form of power residing in implicit knowledge, a counter-discourse … and indeed a way of undermining the categories of conventional science.182 The appropriation of folk Shinto into state Shinto by the Meiji government presents a case in point. The Meiji government nationalised folk Shinto, if not completely then substantially, in order to (1) use Shinto for the national project of ‘modernization without westernization’183 and to (2) defuse potential threats from folk Shinto (I will present more on this issue in Chapter 3).184 Folk Shinto was threatening because it represented everything that went against the government’s objective to modernise and bureaucratise Japan. Clammer suggests four reasons for this. First, the intensely localised nature of kami, which were firmly connected to the people, the environment, and the spirituality of a particular place and its ecology, can become the basis for resistance. Second, the elusive nature of kami, that is, its being polytheistic and pantheistic with no images or icons or any established texts (or scriptures) and its being, some argue, even ‘beyond language’ – meaning folk Shinto can only be comprehended by direct encounters with kami – make it difficult to systematise into a doctrine that can be easily adopted by the nation-state. Third, animism (as the essence of folk Shinto) means to ‘continually keep open the channels to a metaphysical and ontological reality’,185 which implies a sense of self that is directly channelled to this ontological world, bypassing a formulation of the self that is desired by a nation-state, one in which the self is predicated, mind and body, at the will of the government. Fourth, animism is embodied as an ‘experiential, active and everyday relationship to creatures and things in nature’ 186 rather than as the pursuit of truth in a highly abstract form used by established religion and national doctrine.

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Clammer’s thesis of the politics of animism (or folk Shinto), together with the four other points discussed above, constitutes the theoretical framework of grassroots animism presented in this book. Apart from its general theoretical significance, the politics of animism is critical for this book because Minamata, which is framed as the central ‘method’ of this book, simply cannot be discussed without understanding its political economy. The political economy of the Minamata incident, on the other hand, has now been sufficiently documented, analysed, and articulated, but a deeper meaning of the Minamata incident, which has been formulated as a positive heritage, has not. Following Tsurumi Kazuko, I argue that its positive heritage is a (new) discourse on animism (see Chapter 3). Clammer’s argument, which I drew on to construct the framework of animism for this book, has its own limitations. The strength of his analysis of the politics of animism stems from the fact that he illustrates it using concrete terms, in the context of Japanese history, rather than just using abstract terms. This is a substantial step forward in the quest for a new paradigm for the Anthropocene because there seems a general paucity in the frame of reference for imagining an alternative world, especially in the West. The problem of Latour’s theory, for instance, is that it ‘has not experimented enough with characterizing the multiplicity of … nature-culture outside the Western orbit’.187 Clammer’s argument, however, is still highly abstract. What I attempt to do in this volume is to put even more ‘flesh’ on the framework of animism constructed above. In order to do so, I need to clarify yet another approach adopted in this book: the use of life stories, or what Lyotard called ‘little narratives’.

Life stories as method Lyotard explains that narrative has existed outside of, or in competition and conflict with, scientific knowledge.188 Unlike scientific knowledge, narrative knowledge is more closely related to the ‘knowers’ and to their internal equilibrium and conviviality;189 it does not give priority to the question of its own legitimation, nor is it subject to argumentation and proof;190 and it is ‘the quintessential form of imaginative invention’191 and can function as ‘paralogy’, a creation of meaning that emerges from the movement against established ways of reasoning, a basis for a new kind of knowledge, which produces not the known but the unknown.192 Underlying this notion of little narrative is the notion of a ‘self ’. Lyotard writes: A self does not amount to much, but no self is an island; each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever before. Young or old, man or woman, rich or poor, a person is always located at ‘nodal points’ of specific communication circuits, however tiny these may be.193

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According to Lyotard, the most fundamental source of power for ‘even the least privileged’194 is the fact that each ‘self’ is always a part of ‘language games’, that is, a web of communication which Lyotard regards as the minimum relationship required for society to exist. ‘Narrative, narrative analysis, stories, and storytelling’ or ‘storytelling sociology’ is very much part of social science over 30 years on from Lyotard’s publication of The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. 195 Much research has been conducted on life stories in other fields such as narrative psychology or narratology, including some papers addressing the relationship between spirituality and life’s turning points.196 A particular focus of this book is on the nexus between an individual and the broader social structure of modern society, where the topic of animism is felt to be most relevant. The narrative approach allows a phenomenological approach – that is, it can illuminate the subconscious as experienced from the first-person point of view. It enables us to interpret subjective experiences, including experiences of the unseen world, of which animism is a part. The theoretical and methodological orientation used in this book can be regarded as postmodern in three senses. First, it presents a critical evaluation of modernity, illuminating various aspects of modernity including some fundamental and taken-for-granted premises, conditions, and institutional arrangements that constitute everyday life. Second, it focuses on the main concerns of postmodern, post-materialist society: the question of existence or ‘being’, rather than that of possessions or ‘having’.197 As Alberto Melucci points out, in a post-materialist society ‘the right to existence or, rather, to a more meaningful existence’ becomes important and new rights, needs, demands, and powers emerge in ‘crucial areas of human life – in such matters as birth, death and sickness’.198 These are the areas where spirituality tends to become relevant. Third, as has been discussed above, the book casts a reflective gaze upon the paradigm of social science, in particular its inadequacy or reluctance to grant discursive space for spirituality. My aim in this book is to look at the world from a different perspective, one which Lyotard calls ‘postmodern’.199 By focusing on Japan’s modern history, and, in particular, on Minamata, by being theoretically inspired by the concept of animism in order to explore the relationships between modernity and spirituality as well as those between humans and nature, and with the aim of canvassing a new kind of modernity, the broad topic pursued in the following chapters is life (inochi). My aim is to address the question of the ‘prioritisation of life over economy’, which is the most fundamental concern of citizens in post-triple-disaster, post-Fukushima Japan.

The ‘data’ and the structure of the book In order to explore and interpret animism in contemporary Japan, this book focuses on the life stories of four intellectuals who have taken up animism as their life projects: Minamata fisherman and philosopher Ogata Masato,

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writer Ishimure Michiko, sociologist Tsurumi Kazuko, and animation film director Miyazaki Hayao. They were selected because they ‘fit the bill’ for Lyotard’s theory of postmodernity, in that they enable us to investigate the possibility of creating new knowledge outside scientific knowledge, to create what Lyotard calls ‘paralogy’, a discourse that moves against an established way of reasoning, which can form a basis for a new kind of knowledge and ‘the unknown’ and which can enable us to stretch our imagination to the phenomenological aspects of life, the unseen world. In the following chapters, I will weave their four narratives around the theme of animism, making it a ‘nodal point’ to connect them, to borrow Lyotard’s terminology. And this discourse on animism, I hope, will enable us to expand the horizons of our knowledge base in the social sciences. All four people are ‘mavericks’ who have done something new in their respective field (i.e. civil movement, literature, sociology, popular culture), and all are urged on by their strong sense of self. Their powerful narratives present ‘the quintessential form of imaginative invention’, to quote Lyotard again. The following is a brief introduction to each individual and the chapters about them. Ogata Masato is a Minamata fisherman who has long been involved with the Minamata disease incident, first as a victim, then as an activist, and finally as a philosopher, although he may not use the term to describe himself. He is the least privileged of the four individuals socially, economically, and physically as a Minamata disease sufferer, and yet he has been recognised by leading scholars in Japan as the most creative leader within the Minamata community who can create new knowledge.200 He is included in this volume because the new knowledge he created, knowledge that I call the philosophy of life-world, is, I argue, postmodern animism. It emerged as a grassroots response to super-modernity in postwar Japan, which is epitomised by the Minamata disease incident. Chapter 1: Life-world analyses how Ogata’s philosophy of life-world was developed in the course of his life trajectory. Based on original interview materials, as well as on his two autobiographies, Rowing the Eternal Sea201 and Chisso wa watashi de atta [Chisso was I (Chisso within) ],202 it introduces Ogata’s powerful critique of modernity and his discourse on life, nature, and soul. Ishimure Michiko is a Minamata writer and one of the most renowned literary figures in contemporary Japan; she became especially influential after the triple disaster of 2011. Often referred to as an environmental novelist or the Rachel Carson of Japan, she is best known for her signature piece Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow, which illustrates the plight and beauty of the people inflicted with Minamata disease in the midst of Japan’s rapid economic growth. Ishimure is included in this volume because animism is the central theme of her literary work. In fact, Ogata and Ishimure are twin advocates for the animism that arose as a grassroots response to Minamata disease. While Ogata presents the philosophy of life-world (or animism) using the language of social science, Ishimure illustrates the world of animism in her stories that touches the heart and soul of the reader. She does so while presenting a radical critique of modernity. Ogata and

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Ishimure thus have a strong complementary relationship in presenting their discourses on animism. Chapter 2: Stories of soul explores the work of Ishimure with a particular focus on her perception of animism and soul. It also describes what I call the ‘Ishimure Michiko phenomenon’, a substantial increase in the recognition of her work in post-industrial, post-growth, and post-triple-disaster Japan. By drawing on original interview materials and published resources, the chapter illustrates the world of animism in the literary work of Ishimure and focuses in particular on how she addresses the question of soul in human–nature interactions. Tsurumi Kazuko is a sociologist who attempted to locate animism at the centre of the sociological imagination without falling into the trap of the theory of Japaneseness (Nihonjinron). In doing so, she has challenged the very foundation of sociology, or, more broadly, the paradigm of social-scientific knowledge that was established with the Weberian ‘disenchantment of the world’ and the Cartesian human–nature dichotomy as its fundamental premises. She thus problematised the paradigm of modernity, despite being trained as a sociologist at the pinnacle of modernisation theory in America in the 1960s. Her work is important for this volume because she has ‘translated’ the Minamata discourse on animism into the language of sociology, clarifying its position in the broader context of sociological theories as well as of the historical and scholarly contexts of Japan. Like that of the other three intellectuals examined in this book, her work on animism developed as an integral part of her life as a sociologist who lived and worked on the boundary between the East and the West. Chapter 3: Animism for the sociological imagination examines the life and work of Tsurumi. It explores the notion of animism she articulated and positioned with regard to her study of folklorist Yanagita Kunio and Japan’s first ecologist Minakata Kumagusu. Her theory of endogenous development, which has animism at its core, is discussed. In addition, by drawing on Tsurumi’s work on Minakata, the chapter elaborates on the politics of animism – that is, the relationship between animism at the core of Japan’s national ideology (institutionalised Shinto) and animism as a grassroots spiritual heritage (folk Shinto). Miyazaki Hayao, a celebrated animation film director, locates animism at the core of his philosophy, which constitutes the foundation of many of his stories. Miyazaki is important for this book because he and Studio Ghibli have inspired the world with images of animism through their films, and this animism seems to be a part of their global appeal. Instead of focusing only on the analysis of his films, I discuss where he is coming from: the reason why he made animism the foundation of his work, and how it developed in the trajectory of his life. Chapter 4: Animating the life-world discusses the significance of animism in the work of Miyazaki. By analysing Miyazaki’s anime, manga, and other materials published in Japanese as well as in English, the chapter clarifies in what sense animism is central in his work. A particular focus is the manga version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, an epic story of over 1,000 pages about human–nature interactions set in a

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distant future. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of Miyazaki’s animism in a way that has never been done before – putting it in the broader context of contemporary Japan. These four chapters are divided into two parts. Part I: Animism as a grassroots response to a socio-ecological disaster contains the chapters on Ogata Masato and Ishimure Michiko, and draws on original interviews I conducted with them, as well as on published materials. Part II: Inspiring modernity with animism contains the chapters on Tsurumi Kazuko and Miyazaki Hayao. Neither of them is from Minamata, but their work is very much influenced by Minamata, especially that of Tsurumi. Part II is based on the analysis of existing literature and other materials, many of which are only available in Japanese. Conclusion: Postmodern animism for a new modernity weaves together the themes that have emerged in Chapters 1 to 4. It will clarify how a discourse on animism as presented in this book can contribute to building a new kind of social-scientific knowledge, where a different mode of the human–nature relationship and the question of soul/spirituality are addressed. Epilogue: The re-enchanted world of post-Fukushima Japan provides descriptions of post-Fukushima development in Japan – development which shows the heightened relevance of animism in a country that experienced a devastating natural and human-made catastrophe in 2011.

Notes 1 This Introduction contains some materials first published in Shoko Yoneyama 2012, ‘Life-world: Beyond Fukushima and Minamata’, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol.10, issue 42, no.2, which were reproduced with some modifications in Brian Earl (ed.) 2013, Japan’s ‘Abandoned People’ in the Wake of Fukushima, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Course Reader, no.6, pp.84–110; and in Asian Perspective, vol.37, no.4 (Oct–Dec 2013), pp.567–592. They also were included in a more developed form in Shoko Yoneyama 2017, ‘Animism: A grassroots response to socioenvironmental crisis in Japan’, in Tessa MorrisSuzuki & Eun Jeong Soh (eds), New Worlds from Below: Informal Life Politics and Grassroots Action in Twenty-First-Century Northeast Asia, ANU Press, Canberra, pp.99–130. Permissions to reproduce these materials have been obtained from Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Asian Perspective, and ANU Press. 2 Atsuki Hiyama, Chiyo Nobara, Seira Kinjo, Wataru Taira, Shinichi Gima, Akira Tanahara, & Joji Otaki 2012, ‘The biological impacts of the Fukushima nuclear accident on the pale grass blue butterfly’, Scientific Reports (Nature), vol.2, no.570. 3 Kiyoshi Kurosawa 2012, ‘Message from the Chairman’, in The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC), The Official Report of the Fukushima NAIIC: Executive Summary, The National Diet of Japan, Tokyo, p.9. 4 Ulrich Beck 2011, ‘Fukushima, aruiwa sekai risuku shakai ni okeru nihon no mirai’ [Fukushima, or the future of Japan in the world risk society], trans. Ito Midori, Sekai, July, pp.68–73. 5 Ulrich Beck 1999, World Risk Society, Polity, Cambridge.

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6 Gavan McCormack 1996, The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence (first edition), ME Sharpe, New York, p.5. 7 Komiyama Hiroshi 2007, ‘Kadai senshinkoku Nihon [A frontrunner country in contemporary challenges]’, Chu-o-ko-ron, Tokyo. Translation of this phrase is courtesy of Simon Avenell. 8 ibid. 9 Oguma Eiji 2016, ‘Nami ga yosere ba iwa wa shizumu: Fukushima gentatsu jikogo ni okeru shakai undo no shakaigaku-teki bunseki’ [Rocks sink when waves come: A sociological analysis of social movement after the Fukushima nuclear accident], Gendai Shiso- [Review of today’s thought], vol.44, no.7, March, pp.206–233. 10 Life as in ‘life and death’, not as in ‘everyday life’. 11 Clive Hamilton, Christophe Bonneuil, & Françoìs Gemenne 2015, ‘Thinking the Anthropocene’, in Clive Hamilton, Christophe Bonneuil, & François Gemenne (eds) The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch, Routledge, London & New York, pp.1–14 (citation on p.3). 12 ibid., p.3. 13 ibid., p.6. 14 Philippe Descola & Gìsli Pálsson (eds) 1996, Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives, Routledge, London & New York; Bruno Latour 1993, We Have Never Been Modern, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. See also Alf Hornborg 2015, ‘The political ecology of the technocene’, in Hamilton et al. The Anthropocene, pp.57–69. 15 Hamilton et al., ‘Thinking the Anthropocene’, p.4. 16 ibid. 17 ibid. 18 Roy Ellen 1996, ‘The cognitive geometry of nature’, in Descola & Pálsson, Nature and Society, pp.103–124 (citation on p.111). 19 Hamilton et al., ‘Thinking the Anthropocene’, p.6. 20 See, for instance, Jane Bennett 2001, The Enchantment of Modern Life, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. 21 Nakazawa Shinichi 2015, ‘Futatsu no “shizen”, gendai Shiso- no shintenkan’ [Two ‘natures’: A new turn in contemporary thought], Gendai Shiso- [Review of today’s thought], vol.43, no.1, pp.35–41. 22 Gilbert Cruz 2010, ‘Top 10 Environmental Disasters’, Time, 3 May, viewed 24 June 2017. 23 Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) 2012, Press Release of 24 May: ‘To-hokuchiho taiheiyo--oki jishin no eikyo- ni yoru Fukushima daiichi genshiryoku hatsudensho no jiko ni tomonau taiki oyobi kaiyo- e no ho-shasen busshitsu no ho-sharyono suitei ni tsuite (Heisei 24 nen 5 gatsu genzai ni okeru hyo-ka)’ [Regarding the estimate of the release of radioactive substances into the atmosphere and the ocean associated with the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Electric Power Plant caused by the earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tohoku: An assessment as at May 2012], viewed 29 May 2012, . 24 ibid. 25 NHK News Web 2012, ‘To-den 90-kyo- bekureru ho-sha o happyo-’ [TEPCO announced the emission of 900 quadrillion (90x1016) becquerels of radioactive substance] 24 May, viewed 29 May 2012. 26 Andreas Stohl, Petra Seibert, Gerhard Wotawa, Delia Arnold, John F Burkhart, Sabine Eckhardt, Carlos Tapia, Arturo Vargas, & Teppei J Yasunari 2012, ‘Xenon-133 and caesium-137 releases into the atmosphere from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant: Determination of the source term, atmospheric dispersion, and deposition’, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, vol.12, issue 5, pp.2313–2343.

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27 Geoff Brumfiel 2011, ‘Fallout forensics hike radiation toll’, Nature, vol.478, pp.435–436, viewed 29 May 2012. 28 Pascal Bailly du Bois, Philippe Laguionie, Dominique Boust, Irène Korsakissok, Damien Didier, & Bruno Fievet 2012, ‘Estimation of marine source-term following Fukushima Dai-ichi accident’, Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, vol.114, December, pp.2–9. 29 Anthony Giddens 1991, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA. 30 Beck, World Risk Society. 31 Zygmunt Bauman 2000, Liquid Modernity, Polity, Cambridge, & Malden, MA. 32 Ulrich Beck 2011, ‘Kojinka no tayo-sei’ [Diversification of individualisation], trans. Ito Midori, in Ulrich Beck, Suzuki Munenori, & Ito Midori (eds) Risukuka suru nihon shakai [Japanese society that becomes a risk], Iwanami shoten, Tokyo, pp.15–36 (citation on p.21). 33 Beck, World Risk Society, p.9. 34 Ethics Commission for a Safe Energy Supply 2011, ‘Germany’s energy transition – A collective project for the future’. Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Germany. 35 Kieran Flanagan 2007, ‘Introduction’, in Kieran Flanagan & Peter Jupp (eds), A Sociology of Spirituality, Ashgate, Hampshire, UK, pp.1–22 (citation on p.1). 36 ibid. 37 Ulrich Beck [2008] 2010, A God of One’s Own, Polity, Cambridge, p.2 (original published in German). 38 Peter Berger 1969, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural, Doubleday, New York, p.2. 39 Eva Hamberg 2009, ‘Unchurched spirituality’, in Peter Clarke (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp.742–757 (citation on p.746). 40 Flanagan, ‘Introduction’, p.1. 41 Talcott Parsons [1930] 1974, ‘Translator’s note’, Chapter IV, Endnote 19, in Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons, Unwin University Books, London (citation on p.222). 42 Berger, Angels, p.4. 43 Peter Berger 1967, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, Doubleday, Garden City, NY. 44 Berger, Angels, pp.ix–xi. 45 ibid., p.7. 46 Thomas Luckmann 1967, The Invisible Religion: The Problem of Religion in Modern Society, Macmillan, New York. 47 Peter Berger and Charles T Mathewes 2006, ‘An interview with Peter Berger’, The Hedgehog Review, Spring & Summer, pp.152–161 (citation on p.152). 48 Shimazono Susumu 1999, ‘“New age movement” or “new spirituality movements and culture”?’, Social Compass, vol.46, issue 2, pp.121–133; Shimazono Susumu 2007, Spirichuaritı- no ko-ryu- [The rise of spirituality], Iwanami shoten, Tokyo. 49 Ito Masayuki 2004, ‘Atarashii supirichuaru bunka no seisei to hatten’ [The formation and development of a new spiritual culture], in Ito Masayuki, Kajio Naoki, & Yumiyama Tatsuya (eds), Supirichuaritı- no shakaigaku [The sociology of spirituality], Sekaishisosha, Tokyo, pp.22–33 (citation on p.25). 50 Beck, A God of One’s Own, p.27. 51 ibid. 52 Ronald Inglehart & Wayne Baker 2000, ‘Modernization, cultural change, and the persistence of traditional values’, American Sociological Review, vol.65, February, pp.19–51 (citation on pp.47–48). 53 ibid., p.48.

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54 ibid., p.47. 55 e.g. Paul Heelas & Linda Woodhead 2005, The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion Is Giving Way to Spirituality, Blackwell, Oxford. 56 Peter Clarke 2009, The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York. 57 Michele Dillon 2003, Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge & New York. 58 Heelas & Woodhead, The Spiritual Revolution. 59 David Tacey 2004, The Spirituality Revolution: The Emergence of Contemporary Spirituality, Routledge, London & New York. 60 Flanagan & Jupp, A Sociology of Spirituality. 61 Beck, A God of One’s Own, p.49. 62 Berger, Angels, p.10. 63 Shimazono Susumu 1996, Seishin sekai no yukue [New spirituality movements in the global society], Tokyodo shuppan, Tokyo. 64 Ronald Inglehart 1997, Modernization and Postmodernization, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, p.86. 65 ibid., p.333. 66 The analysis was conducted by the author using ‘World Values Survey Online Data Analysis’, viewed 27 May 2017, . 67 See Cabinet Office, the Government of Japan 2016, ‘Overview of the Public Opinion Survey of the Life of the People’, p.18, viewed 17 June 2017, . 68 For internal divergence, see the summary of the above survey: ‘Chosa kekka no gaiyo-’ [The summary of results], viewed 17 June 2017, . 69 Imada Takatoshi 2001, Imi no bunmeigaku josetsu [A theory of the civilisation of meaning], Tokyo University Press, Tokyo, p.158. 70 Shimazono, Seishin, pp.244–270. 71 Yoshioka Hiroshi 2005, ‘Forming a nuclear regime and introducing commercial reactors’, in Nakayama Shigeru (ed.) A Social History of Science and Technology in Contemporary Japan, Trans Pacific Press, Melbourne, pp.80–103. 72 Simon Avenell 2017, Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, p.8. 73 ibid., p.2. 74 Sho-ji Hikaru & Miyamoto Ken’ichi 1964, Osorubeki Ko-gai [Fearsome pollution], Iwanami shoten, Tokyo. 75 Cruz, ‘Top 10 environmental disasters’. 76 Ishimure Michiko & Tada Tomio 2008, Kotodama [Soul of language], Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo, p.187. 77 Asahi Shimbun 2012, ‘Minamata-byo- kyu-saisaku, 6-man 6-sennin shinsei, so-tei 2-bai’ [Minamata disease relief measure, 66 thousand applications, double the estimate], 31 August. 78 Kankyo--sho- so-go-kankyo- seisaku-kyoku kankyo- hoken-bu tokushu shippei-byotaisaku-shitsu [Ministry of the Environment Comprehensive Environmental Policy Bureau, Environmental Health Department, Specific Illness Section] 2010, ‘Ko-gai kenko- higai no hosho--to- ni kansuru ho-ritsu no hi-nintei kanja-su- (Minamata-byo- shinsei shori jyo-kyo-)’ [The number of cases recognised legally in relation to the compensation for health impairment caused by pollution: The number of applications processed for Minamata disease] (as at end of March 2010), viewed 28 May 2017, . 79 Timothy George 2012, ‘Fukushima in light of Minamata’, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol.10, issue 11, no.5; Timothy George 2001, Minamata: Pollution

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80 81 82 83 84 85

86 87 88 89 90 91

92 93 94 95 96 97

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Introduction: A theoretical map and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp.264–265; Harada Masazumi & Ishimure Michiko 2012, ‘Minamata-byo- owaran yo’ [Minamata disease will never end], Asahi Shimbun, 13 June. Takaoka Shigeru 2011, ‘Minamata kara Fukushima e no kyo-kun’ [Lessons from Minamata to Fukushima], Shinryo- Kenkyu- [Diagnosis research] no.470, August. Robert Guy 2012, ‘It’s official, China is No.2’, The Australian Financial Review, 15 February. Fukushima Prefecture 2015, Fukushima kara kengai e no hinan jyo-kyo- [The evacuation from Fukushima to other prefectures], viewed on 31 December 2015. Fukushima Minpo 2014, ‘Shimbun kyo-kai sho- honshi “Genpatujiko kanrenshi”’ [We received the Newspaper Association Award for our report on ‘the deaths associated with the nuclear accident’], 14 September. Asahi Shimbun 2017, ‘Ko-jo-sen-gan aratani futari’ [Two more cases of thyroid cancer], 24 October, p.37. Adam Broinowski 2017, ‘Informal labour, local citizens and the Tokyo Electric Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Crisis: Responses to neoliberal disaster management’, in Morris-Suzuki & Soh (eds) New Worlds from Below, pp.131–166. See especially p.147. Yomiuri Online 2011, ‘Ushi 3zen to, buta 3man biki, genpatsu 20kiro ken ni – gashi ka’ [3,000 cows and 30,000 pigs in the 20 kilometre zone – death by starvation suspected], 19 April. Fukushima Minpo 2011, ‘Anrakushi shobun no kachiku 3,422’ [3,422 farm animals euthanised], 31 August. Hiyama et al. ‘Pale grass blue butterfly’; Timothy Mousseau & Anders Møller 2014, ‘Genetic and ecological studies of animals in Chernobyl and Fukushima’, Journal of Heredity, vol.105, no.5. The National Diet of Japan, The Official Report of the Fukushima NAIIC: Executive Summary, p.16. Tokyo Shimbun 2011, ‘Harada Masazumi ishi ni kiku – Tensai dewa naku jinsai’ [Interview with Dr Harada Masazumi: It’s not a natural disaster but a human-made disaster], 8 September. George, ‘Fukushima in light of Minamata’; Aileen Smith 2012, ‘Anti-nuclear activist sees commonalities between Minamata and Fukushima’, The Mainichi Daily News, 4 March; See also Aileen Mioko Smith 2012, ‘Post-Fukushima realities and Japan’s energy future’, Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 10, issue 2, no.33, 13 August. Kurihara Akira 2000, Sho-gen Minamata-byo- [Attesting to Minamata disease] Iwanami shinsho, Tokyo, pp.10–11. FL Lorscheider, CCW Leong, & NI Syed, n.d., Brain neuron degenerations via mercury, video, YouTube, viewed 24 May 2017. NHK 2001, ‘Hibaku chiryo- 83 nichi no kiroku – To-kaimura rinkai jiko’ [83 days of medical treatment for the victims of the To-kaimura criticality incident], NHK Special television program To-kaimura rinkaijiko, YouTube, viewed 24 May 2017. Yoneyama, ‘Animism’. The kanji was chosen in the annual poll for the kanji character conducted by Japan’s Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation. BBC News Asia 2011, ‘Japanese public choose “kizuna” as kanji of 2011’, viewed 27 May 2017. Respondents were over 20 years of age and were randomly selected from 350 randomly selected cities, towns, and villages in Japan. Cabinet Office of Japan 2012, ‘Higashi nihon daishinsai-go no ishiki ni tsuite’ [On the perceptions after the Great East Japan Earthquake]’, in Shakai ishiki ni kansuru yoron cho-sa [Survey on social awareness], 2 April, viewed 27 May 2017, . Interview with Ogata Masato, 16 January 2012, Minamata.

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99 George, Minamata, p.284. 100 Tsurumi Kazuko 1998, Tsurumi Kazuko Mandara VI: Minamata, animizumu, ecorojí [Tsurumi Kazuko Mandala VI Minamata: An approach to animism and ecology], Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo, p.39. 101 Oiwa Keibo & Ogata Masato 2001, Rowing the Eternal Sea: The Story of a Minamata Fisherman, trans. Karen Colligan-Taylor, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, p.173. 102 Marian de Souza, Leslie J Francis, James O’Higgins-Norman, & Daniel Scott 2009, ‘General introduction’, in Marian de Souza, Leslie J Francis, James O’Higgins-Norman, & Daniel Scott (eds) International Handbook of Education for Spirituality, Care and Wellbeing, Springer, Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London, & New York, vol.1, pp.1–5 (citation on p.1). 103 Ulrich Beck 2011, ‘Postscript: Individualizing Japan and beyond: Comment on comments’, in Ulrich Beck, Suzuki Munenori, & Ito Midori (eds) Risukuka suru nihonshakai [Japanese society that becomes a risk] Iwanami shoten, Tokyo, pp.246–274 (citation on p.252). 104 Ronald Berger & Richard Quinney 2005, ‘The narrative turn in social inquiry’, in Ronald Berger & Richard Quinney (eds) Storytelling Sociology: Narrative as Story Inquiry, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO (citation on p.3). 105 Jean-François Lyotard 1985, ‘Note on the meaning of post-’, in Thomas Docherty (ed.) Postmodernism: A Reader, Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York, pp.47–50. 106 Jean-François Lyotard 1979, The Postmodern Condition, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, p.xxxiv. 107 ibid., pp.60–67. 108 John Clammer 2004, ‘The politics of animism’, in John Clammer, Sylvie Poirier, & Eric Schwimmer (eds) Figured Worlds: Ontological Obstacles in Intercultural Relations, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, pp.83–109 (citation on p.83). 109 ibid. 110 Graham Harvey [2013] 2015, ‘Introduction’, in Graham Harvey (ed.), The Handbook of Contemporary Animism, Routledge, London & New York, pp.1–16 (citation on p.11). 111 Nurit Bird-David 1999, ‘“Animism” revisited: Personhood, environment, and relational epistemology’, Current Anthropology, vol.40, supplement, February, pp.S67–S91. 112 For instance, Graham Harvey 2005, Animism: Respecting the Living World, Hurst & Co., London; Istvan Praet 2014, Animism and the Question of Life, Routledge, London & New York; and Kaj Århem & Guidos Sprenger 2016, Animism in Southeast Asia, Routledge, London & New York. 113 See above, n. 110. 114 See Eriko Ogihara-Schuck 2014, Miyazaki’s Animism Abroad, McFarland & Co., Jefferson, NC. 115 Harvey, The Handbook of Contemporary Animism. See above, n. 110. 116 Edward Tylor 1871, Primitive Culture (seventh edition), John Murray, London, 2 vols. (citation is from vol.1, p.388). 117 ibid., vol.1, p.390. 118 ibid., vol.2, p.185. 119 Bird-David, ‘“Animism” revisited’. 120 Marvin Harris 1983, Cultural Anthropology, Harper & Row, New York, p.186, quoted in Bird-David, ‘“Animism” revisited’, p.S67. 121 Webster’s New World Dictionary 1989, as quoted by Bird-David, ‘“Animism” revisited’, p.S67. 122 Julius Gould & William Kolb (eds) 1965, The Dictionary of the Social Sciences, as quoted by Bird-David, ‘“Animism” revisited’, p.S67.

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123 See, for instance, Bird-David, ‘“Animism” revisited’; Harvey, ‘Introduction’; and Robert Segal 2013, ‘Animism by Tylor’, in Harvey, The Handbook of Contemporary Animism, pp.53–62. 124 All citations in this sentence are from Bird-David, ‘“Animism” revisited’, p.S70. 125 Parsons, Protestant Ethic, p.222. 126 Harvey, Animism: Respecting the Living World, p.xii. 127 Bird-David, ‘“Animism” revisited’, p.S69. 128 Harvey, Animism: Respecting the Living World, p.xi. 129 ibid. 130 Bird-David, ‘“Animism” revisited’. 131 Bruno Latour 2009, ‘Perspectivism: “Type” or “bomb”?’, Anthropology Today, vol.25, no.2, pp.1–2. 132 Beck, A God of One’s Own, p.27. 133 Mark MacWilliams 2008, ‘Book review: Animism: Respecting the living world’, Religious Studies Review, vol.34, no.4, p.265. 134 Casey Brienza 2015, ‘Objects of otaku affection: Animism, anime fandom, and the gods of … consumerism?’, in Harvey, The Handbook of Contemporary Animism, pp.479–490. 135 Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’, p.83. 136 ibid. 137 Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’, p.84. 138 Beck, World Risk Society, p.3; Beck, ‘Postscript’, p.252. 139 MacWilliams, ‘Book review’. 140 Shimazono, Seishin sekai, pp.252–257. 141 Sueki Fumihiko 2015, So-moku jo-butsu no shiso- [The philosophy on the enlightenment of grass and trees], Sangha, Tokyo. 142 Shimazono, Seishin sekai. 143 Umehara Takeshi 1989, ‘Anismizumu saiko-’ [Animism reconsidered], Nihon Kenkyu [Japanese Studies], vol.1, pp.13–23 (citation on p.13). 144 ibid., p.15 & p.18. 145 ibid., p.19. 146 ibid., p.13. 147 Yasuda Yoshinori 2006, Isshin-kyo- no yami: Animizumu no fukken [The darkness of monotheism: The revival of animism], Chikuma shoten, Tokyo, p.60. 148 Umehara, ‘Anismizumu saiko-’, p.22. 149 ibid. 150 Umehara Takeshi 1999, ‘The civilization of the forest’, New Perspectives Quarterly, Special Issue, pp.40–48 (citation on p.41) 151 ibid., p.41. 152 Umehara, ‘Anismizumu saiko-’, p.22; Umehara, ‘The civilization of the forest’, p.46. 153 Umehara, ‘The civilization of the forest’, p.47. 154 Margaret Sleeboom 2004, Academic Nations in China and Japan: Framed in Concepts of Nature, Culture and the Universal, RoutledgeCurzon, London & New York. 155 Tessa Morris-Suzuki 1991, ‘Concepts of nature and technology in pre-industrial Japan’, East Asian History, vol. 1, June, Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, pp.81–97 (citation from p.96). 156 Umehara, ‘The civilization of the forest’; Yasuda, Isshin-kyo- no yami. 157 Sueki, Enlightenment of grass. 158 Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’, pp.83–84. 159 John Clammer 2018, ‘Nature, culture and the debate with modernity: Critical social theory in Japan’, in Ananta Kumar Giri (ed.), Social Theory and Asian Dialogues, Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore, pp.289–315.

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160 For a critique of Nihonjinron, see, for instance, Yoshio Sugimoto [1997] 2010, An Introduction to Japanese Society (third edition), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 161 Caster Jensen & Anders Blok 2013, ‘Techno-animism in Japan: Shinto cosmograms, actor-network theory, and the enabling powers of non-human agencies’, Theory, Culture and Society, vol.30, no.2, pp.84–115 (citation on p.109). 162 Morris-Suzuki, ‘Concepts of nature’. 163 Lynn White, Jr 1967, ‘The historical roots of our ecological crisis’, Science, vol.155, pp.1203–1207. 164 Tsurumi Kazuko, Mandara VI, p.214 & p.231. 165 Tsurumi Kazuko 1992, ‘Animism and science’, Institute of International Relations (IIR) Research Paper A-58, Sophia University, Tokyo, p.4. 166 Jinja Honcho- homepage 2014, viewed 7 January 2017, . A point made by John Breen at my seminar delivered at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken). Seminar title: ‘Animism for modernity: Lessons from Minamata for the post-Fukushima world’, Evening Seminar Series, 5 December 2013. 167 John Breen & Mark Teenwen 2010, A New History of Shinto, Wiley and Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex, UK. 168 Jensen & Blok, ‘Techno-animism’. 169 John Clammer 2001, Japan and its Others, Trans Pacific Press, Melbourne (citation on p.218ff). 170 Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’, p.95. 171 Yamao Sansei 2000, Animizumu to iu kibo- [Animism as hope], Yaso--sha, Ishigaki, Okinawa, pp.322–323. 172 Yamao, Animizumu to iu kibo-, p.79. 173 Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’, p.102. 174 Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’. 175 ibid., p.95. 176 ibid. 177 ibid., p.93. 178 ibid., p.104. 179 ibid., p.100. 180 Sueki Fumihiko 2015, So-moku jo-butsu no shiso- [The philosophy on the enlightenment of grass and trees], Sangha, Tokyo. 181 ibid., p.98. 182 ibid., p.84. 183 ibid., p.89. 184 ibid., p.101. 185 ibid., p.102. 186 ibid., p. 87. 187 Jensen & Blok, ‘Techno-animism’, p.95. 188 Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, p.7. 189 ibid. 190 ibid., p.27 191 ibid., p.60 192 ibid. 193 ibid., p.15 194 ibid. 195 Ronald Berger & Richard Quinney 2005, Storytelling Sociology: Narrative as Story Inquiry, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO. 196 Yamada Yoko 2000, ‘Jinse o monogataru koto no imi’ [The meaning of storytelling], in Yamada Yoko (ed.) Jinsei o monogataru [Telling life stories], Minerva, Tokyo; Dan

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197 198 199 200 201 202

Introduction: A theoretical map McAdams 2005, The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By, Oxford University Press, New York. Imai Takatoshi 2001, Imi no bunmeigaku josetsu: Sono saki no kindai [Introduction to the theory of civilisation of meaning: Beyond modernity], Tokyo University Press, Tokyo, pp.158–159. Alberto Melucci 1989, Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, p.178. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, pp.11–17. Timothy George, Minamata, p.284: Tsurumi, Mandara VI, pp.38–39. Oiwa & Masato, Rowing the Eternal Sea. Ogata Masato 2001, Chisso wa watashi de atta [Chisso was I (Chisso within)], Ashi shobo-, Fukuoka.

Part I

Animism as a grassroots response to a socio-ecological disaster

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Life-world A critique of modernity by Minamata fisherman Ogata Masato1

A grassroots philosopher In the winter of 2012, I visited Minamata for the first time. I was struck first by the beauty of the Shiranui Sea,2 then by the vast expanse of water, some 15 kilometres of it, between Meshima, where the family of Ogata Masato (緒方正人) lived, and Hyakken Port, where organic mercury compounds were discharged from a factory belonging to Japan’s leading chemical company, Chisso. I could not help wondering what sort of pollution it took to kill, deform, and incapacitate tens of thousands of people in and around this vast inland sea. Ogata is a Minamata fisherman. His father died from acute Minamata disease in 1959. His mother, eight of his siblings, and their children were officially recognised as Minamata disease patients under the extremely stringent certification criteria of the government.3 Like most families in Minamata, three generations of the Ogatas so far have been inflicted with neurological disorders caused by the methyl mercury in seafood, mercury that poured into the sea for 36 years from 1932 to 1968.4 Masato himself suffers from the disease. Ogata Masato is a man with a strong presence. No sooner had I met him than he began to talk about the Minamata incident with incredible clarity. His words were powerful. Beyond his local accent, there was something in his language that I felt had not been conveyed in his books. It was as if his voice was breathing life into the ideas I had read in his books. The word ‘tamashii’ (‘soul’ 魂) came to my mind. Historian Irokawa Daikichi called Ogata a ‘most creative and persistent leader within the community’ with whom the Minamata patients have been blessed,5 and sociologist Tsurumi Kazuko (see Chapter 3) regarded him as one of the key persons in Minamata, a person who can create new knowledge.6 Ogata’s autobiography and philosophy have been published in two volumes – Rowing the Eternal Sea: The Story of a Minamata Fisherman 7 and Chisso wa watashi de atta [Chisso within,8 or literally, Chisso was I].9 For more than half a century, ever since he lost his father at the age of six, Ogata has relentlessly searched for answers to the questions with which he ‘wanted to confront society’: ‘What do we mean by “progress and civilization”?

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Life-world: A critique of modernity by Ogata Masato

What is “modernization”? What does it mean to be human?’10 They are fundamental questions that few dare to ask, and they often drove Ogata into deep isolation and loneliness.11 In the post-Fukushima era, however, where key structures of our advanced industrialised civilisation are crumbling – as indicated not only by the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, but also by other issues such as global financial crises, global warming, ever-widening polarisation between rich and poor around the world, and terrorism – the questions Ogata has contemplated for decades are extremely relevant to us. Clearly, these crises are beyond a simple institutional fix, and they all demand a critical re-evaluation of our fundamental assumptions about modernity, including how we conceptualise humanity. Ogata’s philosophy provides a radical reference point for exploring the question of humanity and modernity at this particular point in human history.

The price of life Ogata Masato was born in 1953, three years before the 1956 ‘official recognition’ of Minamata disease, as the youngest and twentieth child of Ogata Fukumatsu, an owner of fishing boats and leader of the local fishermen (amimoto). When Masato was a child, 30 to 40 people lived and worked at his house, including some from Korea, together with other workers who commuted to his house daily.12 The vibrant family life of the Ogatas collapsed suddenly with the unexpected death of Fukumatsu and the succeeding outbreak of Minamata disease among other family members and neighbours. Shortly after Fukumatsu’s death in 1959, the level of organic mercury compounds in Masato’s hair was recorded as 182 parts per million (ppm): This was a time when a healthy Japanese person averaged one to five ppm.13 Masato applied for official certification to be recognised as a Minamata disease patient in 1974 and dedicated himself to being a key activist on the Minamata Disease Certification Applicants’ Council, a group which has been central to the Minamata movement. He became its president in 1981.14 In the early 1980s, however, ‘the [Minamata] movement had shifted from the streets to the courts’, says Ogata.15 Here, he is referring to the change associated with what Simon Avenell calls the establishment of the ‘green leviathan’, ‘a dedicated and highly sophisticated environmental bureaucracy’16 created through ‘substantive legal and legislative innovation’,17 and supported by ‘the wave of regulation and institutional reforms on … the local, the national and the judicial [levels]’18 as well as ‘hundreds of bureaucrats nationwide’.19 This gigantic system of bureaucracy was established as a result of the environmental consciousness that emerged in Japanese society after it witnessed the devastation caused by industrial pollution in the 1950s.20 The creation of the ‘green leviathan’ peaked in 1970, when anti-pollution laws were passed, and this was followed by the 1971 launch of the Environmental Agency, which later became the Ministry of the Environment.

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The development of the ‘green leviathan’ ensured that Japan ‘stood at the forefront of environmental policymaking and administration worldwide’21 in the early 1970s, and provided the foundation for the litigation cases that took place in the late 1960s, the so-called ‘Big Four’ (methyl-mercury poisoning in Minamata, air pollution in Yokkaichi city, cadmium poisoning in Toyama, and another case of methyl-mercury poisoning in Niigata), which led to monumental verdicts in favour of the plaintiffs from 1971 to 1973.22 Yet, at the same time, it meant environmental issues were increasingly being solved through bureaucratic means resulting in a ‘gradual shift in control of the environmental agenda from civil society to the state’.23 This is what Ogata means when he says that ‘the movement had shifted from the streets to the courts’. After that, Ogata recalls: ‘Whatever we did, wherever we went, whomever we dealt with, the only common language was money, and unless we could translate everything into this language, it was as if we could no longer communicate’.24 From then on, the question of money has continued to haunt him. Ogata explains today: The biggest problem I had was why everything was decided by money. There has been a massive devaluation of compensation. The first compensation [in 1973] ranged from 16 to 18 million yen per patient, but in 1995, it was 2.6 million, and then, 2.1 million. The amount went down. This is the case for the lung disease lawsuit (jinpai sosho- 塵肺訴訟) and lawsuits over druginduced suffering (yakugai sosho- 薬害訴訟) as well. It was as if life is traded in markets and was devalued in the 40th (1995) and 50th markets [counting from the outbreak of Minamata disease]. With the compensation being slashed like this, the biggest problem is the very fact that the existence of life itself (本来的生命存在) is calculated and converted into a commercial value. The government sees compensation as a ‘cost’. It is the same for TEPCO25 in relation to the nuclear disaster. (Interview, 15 January 2012, Minamata; unless otherwise specified, ‘interview’ in this chapter means the interview conducted with the same details) Ogata questions the basic assumption of compensation, which is that the ‘price of life’ (命の値段) can be determined. He argues that the emphasis on compensation is an indication that the Minamata movement has been swallowed by the system. It was not just about money though; a highly specialised language and culture of compensation started to dominate the Minamata movement. Ogata explains: Lawyers and activists approached us. I do not deny them. I understand their good intentions to help sufferers get medical support or living allowances. But not all has been good. … They come with jargon, legal and administrative terminology, as well as concepts, such as human rights, which are all external to us. At one time, I felt that I had to speak with such jargon and that to do so was to be at the leading edge. But the

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Life-world: A critique of modernity by Ogata Masato gap between using such language and my own sense of self got bigger and bigger, and I felt I was drifting farther and farther away from my original intentions. (Interview)

More specifically, Ogata describes the change thus: The first Minamata lawsuit was a fight. Suing Chisso was a momentous decision, as the company existed in the same city. Those who took part in the lawsuit had relatives and neighbours who were working for the company, but they had no choice but to sue. Not even half of the patients took part in the court case. Those who did knew very well that they would be alienated from relatives and other townspeople. They held rallies and put up posters, literally exposing themselves, their names, and their faces. In the second and the third lawsuits, however, no faces or names were to be shown. At most, the names and faces of only a couple of individuals, the leader and the vice-leader, became public. Other people appeared just as numbers. So, for instance, when a case began, statements would be collected from patients in the court, but only from one or two patients, 15 minutes each. No matter how many years the case continued, that was it, as far as the patients’ statements were concerned. The lawyers took total control; there was no input from the patients. Lawyers themselves treated patients just as observers. (Interview) George gives a detailed description of how direct negotiations were possible in the early 1970s, for example, just after the Kumamoto District Court judged that there was corporate negligence and liability on the part of Chisso. At that time, the delegates of the Minamata disease sufferers negotiated directly and literally faceto-face with the Chisso’s president and the Environmental Agency director.26 As Ogata points out above, that sort of human interaction became outside the norm after the ‘green leviathan’ became fully established. For Ogata, the implication of the system was far more profound than just losing control over the process and mode of litigation. He considers that it was the system that led to a crisis of subjectivity (主体性の危機). According to him, in the system lawyers treated patients simply as observers: The process in which each sufferer worries, thinks, and makes decisions has been removed. As a result, each patient’s identity, subjectivity and independence (主体性) was being lost. They just waited for the final outcome of the case. And the supporters and lawyers were satisfied with this. (Interview) The crisis of subjectivity went far beyond each individual sufferer. Ogata argues that it led to the depoliticisation, individualisation, and fragmentation of the Minamata problem, and that it also worked to suppress critical thinking:

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In this process of compensation, the structure of the problem, its underlying moral and ideological issues, are not questioned. Everything is centred on profit. The patients group becomes a pressure group or a special interest group. This trend is the same regarding the discriminated buraku communities and local residents’ campaigns. (Interview) In other words, the system of compensation diverted attention away from political, structural, and ethical matters to purely economic matters, and, as Ogata adds, ‘once the victims were certified and received compensation they would cease fighting … [and their] story would be erased from the public mind’.27 Thus, the compensation eventually had the same silencing effect as the condolence money paid to sufferers by Chisso in 1959, that is, 300,000 yen (about $830 at 1959 rates) for each death caused by the disease and 100,000 yen ($278) for each person still living, and after receiving this money patients were prohibited from ‘any further demand for compensation even if it should be determined that the disease was caused by company-produced effluents’.28 There are differences between compensation and condolence money, of course. The guilt of Chisso and the local and national governments was affirmed in the court cases, but both payments functioned to prevent sufferers from raising key questions, which in turn prevented them from keeping the issue alive in the mind of the public. Both worked to suppress social change, the kind of change that might have helped to prevent future disasters, such as the nuclear accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant in 2011 as well as the criticality incident at JCO’s To-kaimura Fuel Plant in 1997, to name but two.

If not money, what? For Ogata, his scepticism about money, especially in its relationship to life, led to an even more difficult question: ‘If not money, what?’29 The answer he gives today is: The original meaning of ‘nintei’ (certification 認定), I think, is to ‘mitomeru’ (certify 認める) a person’s existence. In the final analysis, the question is whether or not the person’s existence is cherished (存在が愛されているか) in an equal dialogical relationship in which you ask a question and get a response (受け答えの関係). What sufferers want essentially is proof that they are cared for. But such matters as certification of patients and environmental pollution are turned into a question of criteria. If the existence of sufferers is cherished, we wouldn’t have been left alone to suffer to begin with.… My father died within two months of the onset of his illness. When I think about what my deceased father would have wanted to say, I think that it would be ‘I’m human!’ (おらぁ人間ぞぉ). He wouldn’t have wanted to be certified as a Minamata disease patient! Definitely not! (Interview; emphasis added)

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Life-world: A critique of modernity by Ogata Masato

In the early 1980s, when Ogata was deeply involved as the leader of the Minamata movement in the battle to win compensation, however, he was still far away from these realisations. Recalling his situation at that time, Ogata writes: Did this mean that the Minamata disease victims could be purchased and silenced with yen, and that the movement itself was about nothing more than money? It seemed that no one wanted to address the more important questions. But the problem was that not even I could clearly identify those issues. I began to have doubts. If I wasn’t in the movement for money, was I in it to avenge my father’s death? What would happen after I had realised that revenge? Was it just an illusion to entertain the thought that I was putting the interest of others above my own? How could I pretend to be altruistic when I was making my own family suffer? Did the end justify the means?30 Ogata did not have answers to any of these questions at that time, and with a profound sense of alienation he made a decision in 1985 to quit the Certification Applicants’ Council and leave the Minamata movement. Neither his comrades in the movement nor his family appreciated these questions or understood his position.31 With his own health deteriorating, due to Minamata disease, Ogata had a nervous breakdown: Everything was focused within, on the questions I couldn’t even ask, on the search for something I couldn’t even identify. I had nothing to lean on; I couldn’t see ahead. I went crazy.32 In his autobiography, Rowing the Eternal Sea, Ogata candidly discusses the period when he ‘went crazy’. It started in September 1985, shortly after he quit the Minamata movement, and lasted for three months. Those three months felt like 30 years, Ogata writes that he had extreme insomnia, difficulties eating and speaking, and recurrent thoughts of suicide – all while being haunted by incessant flashbacks of his life.33 He writes: I had no consciousness of losing my mind; I was simply intent on thinking, on searching. I was obsessed with a question: Why, in the last analysis, do people always fall for money? If not money, what? … I was always lost in thought, but regardless of the topic, one phrase kept surfacing like a refrain: If not money, what? … What concerned me most were connections – links that would connect me to the world. Having cut all normal ties, it would be up to me to establish new ones.34 Before being able to establish new connections, Ogata had to set himself free from the things that tied him down. He writes:

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It was early October, sometime before the nights turn cool. It must have been about 11:30 p.m. Suddenly, I was overcome with revulsion for my television. I grabbed the TV, pushed my wife aside, and went out the door, muttering something like, ‘I’ve got to get rid of this’. I hurled the television into the front garden and screamed, ‘You beast! How dare you break into my house and order us around. Go there! Buy this! Dress like that! Telling all kinds of lies, spewing out all kinds of bullshit! I know who you are!’ I grabbed one of the decorative rocks in the garden and smashed the screen. ‘Now look at you’, I said with satisfaction. … I did not stop with the television. I couldn’t tolerate being surrounded by machines. I would deliberately run the car off onto rocky hillsides, smashing up the body. … It was as if I had awakened one day to find that machines were pressing in on us from all sides. I needed to draw a clear line between people and these mechanical objects. Either I would destroy them, or they would destroy me. I felt that I was regaining my sanity; others thought my mind was slipping more all the time.35 What exactly was it that Ogata was rejecting so violently? He says that it was the sense of being pushed around by modern objects and that he felt the modern ‘dictatorial’ machines represented a one-way relationship that was an antithesis to the dialogical relationship that he valued most. In the process of ‘going crazy’, Ogata experienced a metamorphosis, where he cast off the disagreeable elements associated with modernity, elements which eroded his sense of self. When Ogata ‘came out of the madness’ in December of that year, he withdrew his application to be certified as a Minamata patient, an application that he saw as an unstoppable trajectory to a world dominated by money. Ogata’s breakdown was a turning point that led him to find a new paradigm in his life: the paradigm of connectedness, which is best designated as ‘life-world’ (いのちの世界).36

A journey to the life-world The connectedness with self At the beginning of his nervous breakdown, the question of money (‘If not money, what?’) was the focus of Ogata’s thinking. However, it was ultimately the pursuit of his own self that spurred him on. He writes: ‘Up to a point, I could have changed my mind. With a simple apology to council members I could have returned to my old life. But somehow I had enough strength to keep plodding alone’.37 Looking back, with the hindsight of today, Ogata elaborates: I think that my mental activity had reached a critical point then. I had been thinking about Minamata and the system society. My mother and my wife told me not to ‘burst’ (爆発する), as it would be too dangerous. After all, I was just about to turn 32. In that sense, I think that there was

50

Life-world: A critique of modernity by Ogata Masato an option of choosing not to explode. I could have pursued the question only halfway, withdrew my views, and compromised with my comrades. Such an impulse was there, as well as the impulse to take my own life. I made a choice among various enticements. I chose to go all the way with the question. If I had not, I would have lost all interest in life, become slack spirited, like the final stages of a drug addict, following a life with layers of compromises, without a spine, like a half-dead person; or I could have blown myself up. (Interview)

Pursuing the question of money for Ogata meant to find what it meant to be himself, to be human, in a world where the ‘price of life’ can be determined without any respect for the existence of life itself. Pursuing his thoughts involved a strong risk of ‘bursting’ – that is, going crazy – but for him it was a question that had to be answered in order for him to live on. Underlying his persistence was his notion that ‘to think in order to respond to the question (課題に対応する) is the essential responsibility of being human’.38 For Ogata, thinking constituted the basis of selfhood. He applies this idea not only to himself but to other patients as well. He explains: I think that the most important thing is the life of each individual patient, their own internal struggle, and whether they have fully engaged with their own difficulties. I am most interested in whether they live with anguish, whether they live it out throughout their life, whether they can stand alone and have shutaisei (主体性 subjectivity, ability to think and act independently). (Interview) Ogata’s habit of intense thinking was something he inherited from his father, Ogata Fukumatsu, who was a strong, strict, and stubborn man, who was much respected by other locals. Although he was a man of humble origins, Fukumatsu worked extremely hard and became a boss in the net fishing industry. He was ‘a man of few words, but what he did say was full of meaning’.39 ‘He was awesome’.40 Masato was Fukumatsu’s favourite child and was always at his side, either in his lap or right next to him 20 hours a day.41 Ogata says that he can remember his father’s daily schedule as if it were yesterday.42 Most importantly, Ogata considers that the essence of his father was ‘to think’. He recalls: He would drink shochu, a local wine distilled from sweet potatoes, five times a day, one teacup at a time. … He awakened very early – about three in the morning. That’s when our day would begin. … I seldom saw my father sleep. Whenever I woke up to pee, he was always awake. He would be sitting by the irori, our sunken hearth, absorbed in thought. He was always thinking – not just about tomorrow and the next day but ten years ahead, or perhaps even further. Every night he sat like that, next to the fire.43

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At the time when Ogata had ‘nothing to lean on’ during his breakdown, he started to look back on his childhood to find what exactly had been lost to the Minamata incident.45 He went through what he calls ‘the memory of life’ (命の記憶).46 While his mind was flooded with incessant flashbacks, he traced back and scanned the memories of his childhood. He reviewed the time spent with his father hundreds of times, scene by scene, recalling his father’s words and his own feelings. And one day during his reminiscing, he was confronted with a question about Chisso: What if he had been working for Chisso?47 The question turned Ogata’s life upside down. Being confronted with the question, Ogata was not sure what he would have done. He writes in Chisso wa watashi de atta [Chisso within, or Chisso was I]: 44

If I had been in a social environment dictated by money, that is, in Chisso, which was so extremely and irresistibly profitable, where the more we produced the more we sold, would I have been able to shrug off the onslaught of the pressure to produce more? I can’t find any reason to believe that I would. I can’t find an absolute ground to stop the production. I was really scared for the first time with the thought that I might have done the same thing as the perpetrators.48 At the same time, he realised that he had been actually part of the system in the historical sense by virtue of the very fact that he had lived in a society where companies such as Chisso played a significant role. Ogata states: What Chisso represented is a question we must ask ourselves today. This may sound abrupt but I think that Chisso might have been another me, myself. … The age we live in is a period driven by ‘affluence’, such as money, industries, and convenience. Our everyday life is part of a large and complex system which is extremely difficult to get out of. We are very much dominated by the values of the era that caused Minamata disease. In the past 40 years, I myself bought a car and started to drive, and at home we have a television and a fridge, and the boat I use for work is made of plastic. Many things in my home are made of materials from chemical factories like Chisso’s. Fifty years ago, most of the PVC (polyvinyl chloride) used for water pipes was made by Chisso. More recently, they make LCs (liquid crystals). We are very much in a ‘Chisso-ish’ (チッソ的) society. If we narrow our thinking to only Minamata disease, Chisso is responsible. However, in a historical sense, we are already ‘another Chisso’. This society which has pursued ‘modernisation’ and ‘affluence’ has been ourselves, has it not? A big question seems to me to be how we can break ourselves free from our own spell and liberate ourselves.49 The idea that he was another Chisso constituted a major turning point in Ogata’s life. His position turned around like a revolving Kabuki stage, from the safety of being a victim, a sufferer, a patient, and a plaintiff who pursues

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the responsibility of others, to someone who shares the responsibility as a human being who lives in the modern world of which the offender is an integral part. Although Ogata found this realisation scary, it also brought him a profound sense of liberation from the deep-seated grudge he held against Chisso and others that had tortured him for over a quarter of a century. For Ogata, to be freed from the debilitating resentment and bitterness against those who killed his father and harmed other family members was an inevitable step in the process of regaining a sense of himself. He says: I do not talk about Minamata disease as a sufferer. I do not live as a Minamata disease patient. I have only one wish: to live as an individual, to regain the position of being an individual, a person (「個」に帰りたい).50 He writes: It seems important for each patient to return to their individual ‘self ’. In a sense, patients have become part of various institutions, being called, for instance, ‘plaintiff no. X’ or one of the others in ‘the representative of the plaintiff and others’. I think it is important for each of us to return to our own ‘self ’. From there, each patient, including myself, needs to identify a place where we can search for the salvation of our own souls. What is important, then, is where each person returns to. … I think what the people are longing for is, in a word, salvation of the soul. It was the path I myself had been looking for.51 It is noteworthy that for Ogata to return to one’s own self means to identify a place where one can search for the salvation of one’s own soul. But what sort of place is he talking about here? Where does he think salvation of the soul can take place? In order to answer these questions, I need to discuss the next major shift in his life. Ogata’s realisation that he is ‘another Chisso’ led to an even more fundamental shift in his thinking. Basically, he repositioned himself from a place within human society to a place within a broader system of the ‘life-world’ (inochi no sekai いのちの世界, seimei sekai 生命世界). He said to me emphatically: ‘Then my eyes opened to nature. I was awakened to the life of nature. That was it!’ (Interview). The connectedness with nature It was not just humans who suffered and died in the Minamata incident. Vast numbers of other creatures, including fish, cats, birds, and domestic pigs died,52 and rich ecosystems such as tidal zones were destroyed.53 These ‘other lives’ have rarely been part of the mainstream Minamata discourse except for heart-breaking descriptions of the cats affected by the mercury poisoning and the role they played in the medical experiments used to identify the cause of the ‘illness’.54

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Ogata points out that it is the same with regard to the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. The damage inflicted by humans upon other living things is rarely discussed, and even if it is mentioned it is primarily viewed as ‘trouble’: the trouble caused by a loss of commercial value, the danger we face as a result of contaminated food, or the nuisance associated with life that needs to be ‘destroyed’. As mentioned in the Introduction, it has been reported that almost 3,000 cows, 30,000 pigs, and 600,000 chickens as well as numerous pets were left to starve to death in the nuclear exclusion zone in Fukushima.55 A recent international study found that there was ‘a negative consequence of radiation for birds immediately after the accident on 11 March’.56 Random genetic mutations amongst butterflies have also been reported,57 and the impact upon marine life is immeasurable. After shifting his viewpoint from that of a victim of industrial pollution to that of someone who is a part of the industrial civilisation that caused it, Ogata began to think about the responsibility of humans towards other living things. He writes: [Compensation] does not mean anything to the sea. It means nothing to fish or cats. The truth is that compensation does not mean anything to the dead either. So how can we take responsibility? I think that it is by being aware of the tsumi (‘sin’ 罪) of having poisoned the sea, by facing the fact itself. I myself am confronted with the question of responsibility.58 Ogata’s sense of responsibility as a human being came with a sense of loss of connectedness with the life-world.59 He ponders: When I looked at Chisso as the offender, I thought that I had nothing to do with it. I thought that it was just a company, with power in the system. But when I began to perceive myself as ‘another Chisso’, I experienced a sense of crisis that I myself was moving away from the connectedness of life.60 The connectedness was lost, not only through the Minamata disease incident, but in the larger process of modernisation, where, for example, coastlines were concreted with roads, beaches were reclaimed from the sea, and everyday shopping came to mean a visit to a supermarket by car. Ogata points out that people who were born after the mid-1950s, when Japan’s high economic growth period began, have very few first-hand experiences of a different lifestyle where people grew vegetables at the back of their houses and caught fish in the sea, which were often to be shared with others in the neighbourhood. He writes that his is the last generation to actually experience a lifestyle that is deeply connected to nature and the people in their community.61 In the case of Ogata, what blinded him to the presence of nature in front of him was also the complete devotion to his fight against Chisso and the government, his campaign to pursue their responsibility. When he had a nervous

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breakdown, there was a moment when he was suddenly thrown back into the other, ‘new’ space of nature, which he regards as his ‘soul-imbuing’ (tamashiire 魂入れ) experience.62 He writes: I feel that I was salvaged by the great power of nature. The fact that I had played in the sea since I was little, that I played with fish, that I was brought up surrounded by the grass and the trees – if I had not had these experiences, I am not sure I could have survived the stage of madness. … I feel that I was supported by childhood memories, by the grass and the trees, fish and birds, and the sound of the wind.63 Being reconnected to nature led to some mysterious experiences: I was beginning to see that everything is interrelated. … Grass, trees, birds, the sea, fish, human gestures, and words – expressions of nature to which I had grown indifferent – all seemed to offer subtle hints. … I was drawn to the hills. When I spoke to the trees, they would answer. Of course, they didn’t use human words. It was more like the voice of the wind, explaining to me in a different way what it meant to be alive. I was participating in a communion of living spirits, in an exchange of feelings unencumbered by words. Once when I was walking near my father’s grave, I heard the sound of water deep in the ground. This happened on a day when someone happened to be drilling for water in my neighbourhood. I asked him to drill in the area where I heard the water. My family was pretty sceptical. Most of the water in our area has very high salt content, and dozens of people have tried to drill for water, all unsuccessfully. I was so confident, though, that the drilling team decided to take my advice. After drilling for fifty meters, they went through a rock formation and encountered an underground stream. It was wonderful water. I don’t know exactly how I heard the water. It was a kind of innate communication.64 This experience of being connected with nature formed the basis of Ogata’s philosophy, which can be summarised as that of the life-world. Although Ogata does not use the word animism, his philosophy is a contemporary version of animism. Tsurumi Kazuko points out that the animistic view of nature constituted a foundation for Minamata fishermen to restore the ‘health’ of both humans and nature affected by mercury poisoning.65 The animistic tradition of Minamata is epitomised by the word gotagai, a word from the Minamata dialect which means ‘we’re all in this together’. It is a word used to describe the sense of interconnectedness of all life within nature. Ogata continues: [Gotagai] doesn’t mean simply that we humans rely upon each other for our existence but that plants and animals are also partners in this life. Gotagai includes the sea, the mountains, everything. Human beings are part of the circle of gotagai; we owe our existence to the vast web of interrelationships that constitute life.66

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The image we see here is not of humans controlling other living things from above, but something humble, a vision of humans as being on an equal basis with other life forms, and constituting part of a complex and mutually supporting web of life. At the core of Ogata’s philosophy of the life-world is a ‘reverence for, and a sense of humility towards, all life’,67 which, Ogata holds, reflects the practice of the lost world of fishing villages in Minamata. He recalls: [In the lost world of Minamata fishermen] we caught lots of fish every day, and we lived on them. We were nurtured by the fish and the sea. A few times a year, we would wring a chicken’s neck and eat it, and every few years we would also catch a mountain rabbit to eat. We lived by killing creatures. There was a sense that we were given our life by taking other creatures’ lives. In this way, I think people knew the depth of the sin of killing.68 Respect for life is a universal value that all would agree on, but I gained a glimpse of the depth of what Ogata means by his words ‘reverence for life’ and ‘the depth of the sin of killing’ on the two occasions I visited him in Minamata. The first was in 2012, and it was in relation to a newspaper report that the number of suicides had exceeded 30,000 per year for the past 14 years,69 and the other, in 2013, was in relation to report that a one-day-old baby girl had been found abandoned at the front door of an infant home.70 I was astonished to see the depth of regret and indignation he expressed on both occasions. Ogata said: ‘I couldn’t help but feel extremely disappointed and frustrated’ (本当にもう悔しくて悔しくて) about the fact that so many people felt they had to take their own lives. He was not judgemental of those who committed suicide. Rather, he was lamenting the social system that cornered people, and this includes the insurance system which entices them to kill themselves in order to relieve their family from financial burdens.71 His response to these social issues was so strong, that it showed me the depth of his belief in the sanctity of life. This experience helped me to understand better what Ogata refers to as the three characteristics of the Minamata disease incident. The first is that many in the fishing villages kept eating fish even after a causal link between the local fish and the ‘strange disease’ was suspected. The second is that, even after children were born with Minamata disease, people continued to have children, raising them with love and care, and calling them ‘takara-go’ (宝子), which means ‘treasure child’. The third is that they never threatened to kill anyone even after they themselves were ‘poisoned, crippled and killed, in [the] tens of thousands’.72 It is hard to comprehend why the villagers kept eating potentially contaminated fish and kept giving birth despite the strong possibility that the children would be born with severe disabilities. Ogata explains that they (i.e. ‘fisherfolk’) were ‘incapable of doubting any form of life’ and ‘placed complete faith in life and received it with reverence and gratitude’ because they felt that ‘Ebisu, the god of the sea, was sharing this bounty’ with them.73

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Ebisu is one of the Seven Gods of Good Fortune, and the only one who originated in Japan, whereas the others are from India and China. Ebisu is the god who brings good fortune from the sea, and is often enshrined in an altar in fishermen’s homes. Ogata explains: Ebisu is the most important god among fisher folk. We offer him shochu without fail each day. Some days we pour it over his statue, and sometimes we place it before him in a cup. When you begin building a boat, when you let out a new net for the first time, when you start a new fishing season, you pray to Ebisu. Even when you have a drink of shochu on the boat, you first toast Ebisu, to show your respect. They say that even a boat has a ‘boat spirit’. There is a special spot in a boat where one of the boards has been hollowed out, and this is where an image representing this spirit is placed. We pray to the boat spirit to protect us from harm, and we pray to the ocean that we may take a lot of fish. We don’t have to speak out loud. If we simply utter the name ‘Ebisu-san’, with a prayer in our hearts, that’s enough. Just intoning his name is strangely calming.74 Ogata continues with examples of how the centrality of Ebisu in the fishing community provided the foundation of environmental ethics and sustainable practices amongst fisherman: Fishermen try to avoid dropping metal objects, like nuts and bolts, into the water. This is what Ebisu hates most. Another thing he detests is pickled plums [umeboshi]. They say that when you drop these things it takes the ocean seven years to push them back to the shore. We believe that Ebisu is a god who was once banished to sea in the form of a leech-child. A leech has no arms or legs, so it has to pick up everything with its mouth. That’s why it takes seven years. It’s a lot of work to impose on this god. If you substitute plastic objects and factory effluent for metal objects and pickled plums, you can apply the concept to environmental problems we face today. Imagine how long it would take Ebisu to get rid of them! There probably isn’t anyone born five years later than my generation who has even heard of this old wisdom.75 As Ogata says, there is a legend that Ebisu was originally known as ‘Leech Child’, the very first child born from the two central deities (kami) in Japan’s creation myth, Izanagi and Izanami. ‘Leech Child’ was deformed and was set adrift in a boat. After being found and cared for by humans, he became Ebisu, the god of bountiful fortune in fishing as well as in business. Ogata’s description illustrates that Ebisu had been at the core of everyday life and work of fisherfolk up until the mid-1950s, the time of his childhood. This was before the outbreak of Minamata disease and also before the dawn of Japan’s high economic growth period.

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It is notable that the deity Ebisu, who has a serious physical disability, was placed at the centre of the everyday life of fisherfolk. The image of the disabled leech, Ebisu, pushing a bolt or an umeboshi seed with his mouth for seven years to get it to the shore is almost comical and poignant. The fact that not only (human-made) metal objects, but also the natural umeboshi seed, often consumed with lunch (either in an onigiri rice ball, or bento lunchbox), which people would easily be tempted to spit out into the sea, might be an indication of fishermen’s respect for the sea. Whether it is a metal object or umeboshi seeds, the image of a labouring leech deity would certainly have been a powerful basis for the ‘environmental’ ethics for those working at sea. Ogata depicts the lost world of his pre-Minamata-disease fishing village as a ‘spiritual community’: The spiritual community is like an old-fashioned country stew, in which each person has a different face, physique, character, and age. Some would be disabled. But regardless of their characteristics, all would have valuable roles to play. No one would be dispensable. In such a society there would be no discrimination. To acknowledge each other’s differences is to acknowledge our essential equality.76 Minamata, however, has also been a place where discrimination against sufferers has been strong and, as discussed above, many rifts occurred in the community. In reality, Ogata’s old village had biases and it discriminated against the socially and physically weak. Ogata writes that his father used to welcome intellectually disabled people to his house – people who otherwise would have nowhere to go – to protect them from being bullied.77 Rather than highlighting the discrimination, however, Ogata’s emphasis is on the fact that his father cherished such people. Likewise, the phrase ‘treasure children’, used to refer to congenital Minamata disease sufferers, many of whom were (are) in wheelchairs with severe disabilities, reflects not just a reverence and acceptance of their existence but a deep affection for them as human beings. These images give us a hint of what Ogata means by ‘cherishing the very existence of life’ (存在そのものを愛する) in this world. It carries a strong sense of respect for all life, regardless of physique, health, and ability. Ogata’s notion of a ‘spiritual community’ is best understood as a prayer. And in this prayer, he uses the word ‘moyau’ (‘to moor boats’) to say ‘moyatte kaeroo’ (‘Let us moor together to return’).78 He writes: Was not the crux of the Minamata struggle a call from the spiritual world of Minamata fishermen and victims? It seems to me that the heart of the Minamata question lies in their call to live together in a world where all life is revered and connected.79 This is the essence of Ogata’s philosophy of the life-world: to regain the sense of living together in a spiritual world where life is revered and connected.

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Ogata’s life-world resonates well with the image of ‘biohistory’ conceptualised by biologist Nakamura Keiko, which illustrates the history and diversity of life, which came into being over the course of a 4-billion-year period.80 Nakamura, who was one of the keynote speakers at the 50th anniversary of the official acknowledgement of Minamata disease, stated that all living beings share the same origin (genome), and that humans are just one of the diverse species which share the same history of development over 3.8 billion years, and that human beings are in nature (not outside it). Nakamura also stressed the importance of regaining our sense of being part of the web of life (生き物としての感覚をとり もどす).81 Nakamura’s call to regain our sense as living beings resonates with Ogata’s idea of regaining the memory of living things. According to Ogata: In the age of ‘modernity’, we standardised, institutionalised and mechanised many things in the name of modernisation. In the process, we transformed the once bountiful sea around Minamata into reclaimed land82 because it was polluted by mercury. But perhaps it was not just the sea we buried. We have perhaps created a system of concealment to continue institutional and mechanical burying. It is like we have created a ‘false memory system’ (偽りの記憶装置). By doing so, we have perhaps moved away from the essence of life, and the memory of this essence of life. I cannot help but feel that various social problems we face today happen because we have lost the ‘memory of life’ (命の記憶).83 Ogata’s Minamata discourse has thus developed into a powerful critique of modernity from the standpoint of the life-world represented by the (lost) world of the fishing villages in Minamata. His critique addresses the change in our perceptions and senses, what Nakamura refers to as the loss of ‘the sense of being living things’, or what Ogata refers to as the loss of our ‘memory of life’, that has been shared for billions of years with other forms of life. Ogata’s philosophy is a call to regain our sense of connectedness with the vast diversity of life in our world. In order to understand his notion of the life-world, however, it is necessary to discuss yet another layer of connectedness, that is, connectedness at the level of the soul. This is the deepest dimension of his Minamata discourse that challenges the epistemology of mainstream social science. The connectedness with ‘soul’ (tamashii) Further pondering the meaning of the Minamata disease incident, Ogata writes: The Minamata disease incident has left a question that cannot be dealt with as a political issue. Actually, it is the biggest and most fundamental question, and it is a question that cannot be transformed into a question of policies or institutions. It is the question of the tamashii [soul 魂].84

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The question of soul is difficult to address in the language of social science. It is a question that belongs in the realm of what Lyotard calls ‘paralogy’, a new kind of knowledge which produces not the known but the unknown. Paralogy widens the imagination and opens it to the possibilities of new ‘unknown’ knowledge. Lyotard argues that the possibility of paralogy lies in ‘little narrative(s)’, like the story of Ogata Masato. Beck, on the other hand, points out that the ‘enrichment of the soul’ through the spiritual quest for a ‘god of one’s own’ has been one of the strong trends in spiritual culture since the 1960s.85 Ogata’s discourse on the soul is thus not totally alien in the context of social science. Ogata writes: I feel that we need to express what soul is more substantively and in a way that is easier to understand. I have been thinking lately how we can convey what soul is, and what we can say about the soul. … Previously, I stated that it is another name for life, but in a way I think it can also be called ‘the stamp of humanity’ (ningen no akashi 人間の証). Especially after the war, various things have been modernised and mechanised so they can be integrated into the system society (システム社会). This has devoured the soul, but the soul is the basis for the connectedness amongst people, between humans and other living things, and between humans and the sea, rivers, and mountains. … I think that the promise of being human is to sense life (命を感覚する) and to manage life (命を司る). Humans exist with this duty. We can never be mechanised and institutionalised.86 Ogata’s critique of modernity in the deepest sense is that modernisation (including mechanisation) has ‘devoured the soul’, and has thus destroyed our connectedness with the rest of life. For him, the soul is the essence of life that enables humans to be connected with other things, animate and inanimate, the deceased, and the lives yet to be born. He considers it the duty of humans to use this sense of connectedness to preserve and maintain the life-world. His notion of soul is something like the energy that connects people with the seen and the unseen, which altogether constitutes the whole of the life-world. Ogata refers to his three months of breakdown as a ‘soul warp’ (魂のワープ) as well as ‘madness’ (狂い).87 As discussed above, after breaking all ties with the compensation movement he was obsessed with the need to get rid of money and looked frantically for new ways to connect with the world.88 One day, he came to realise that all the events so far in his life were connected and that he was also connected to everything around him, which is a textbook definition of spirituality.89 He also had a sense of connectedness with the deceased. He writes: The most important lesson, perhaps, was learning that interconnection includes links to the past, to the deceased. In modern society we no longer feel any connection with the dead. But in fact, our souls are always connected. During my nervous breakdown I was always conscious of their presence – not as tangible beings but as a spiritual essence, alive

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Life-world: A critique of modernity by Ogata Masato in my heart. This is hard to explain, but I am sure that there must be many other people who have had similar experiences.90

Ogata talks about a childhood memory of his father trying to transfer his soul to him, his son: When my father was still well he would rub his forehead on my own, softly chanting, ‘pass on, pass on’. He was transmitting a bit of his soul to me. He must have thought that it would give me strength when I needed it. I believe it is because I spent six years in this way with my father that I have had the strength to survive some pretty hard times.91 In fact, during his nervous breakdown there came a moment when he called out: ‘Dad, I received your soul!’.92 It was the moment he found himself again: He felt firmly connected to the soul of his father. Ogata’s discourse on the soul, though, is not just about spirituality as a personal quest for healing and the meaning of life. It also has a strong political connotation. He sees the soul as a source of power and strength, especially in the case of indigenous people whose cultural heritage has been denied and squashed. He states: People today may think this transmission of souls is strange, but in the past it was a common ritual. Many indigenous peoples believe they have been able to survive precisely because their ancestors transferred their souls from generation to generation. … Although traditional peoples may lament the death of loved ones, they believe that they will always be connected to their ancestors through their common soul. They believe that all things, including their own lives and death, are indivisibly linked.93 He then continues on to say that there is also pressure to forget: Society whispers in our ear, ‘It’s all over. Forget it’. The Minamata disease incident is only one example. Society loves to find some sense of closure for all these issues and seal them away forever. But we cannot let it happen. … It is this very kind of resistance that makes spiritual transmission possible.94 The pressure to forget was there from the beginning of the Minamata incident. George points out that as early as the Taisho Period (1912–1926), more than 30 years before Minamata disease was officially recognised, Chisso had made ‘sympathy payments (mimaikin)’ to fishermen on the condition that the Minamata Fishing Cooperative would ‘never again lodge complaints’ against Chisso.95 Chisso was demanding that, once the payments had been made, the problem be forgotten once and for all. In reality, though, compensation has always been at the core of the Minamata incident, and it was out of necessity. The surviving patients and their families needed the compensation in order to live.

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Nonetheless, it is undeniable that whether it be a sympathy payment or lawful compensation, it comes with a pressure to forget, and this has continued, apparently, for nearly 100 years. In this sense, money and ‘memory of life’ are almost opposing relationships. Here we return to Ogata’s initial question: ‘If not money, what?’ We now know Ogata’s answer to the question: If not money, soul. Ogata writes that he wanted Chisso and others responsible for the incident to apologise in a way that involved their soul. If they could not do it, he continues, the real victims of the Minamata incident would be the offenders themselves. He also realises that he too is an offender in relation to other living things whose lives have been harmed by industrial civilisation. His response is to recognise the tsumi (sin) he carries as an individual and to apologise at the level of the soul, and find a place in his own mind where he can find the salvation of his soul.96

The development of the concept of the life-world Life-world: Life, nature, soul, and self Ogata talks about the soul a lot, but what exactly is the relationship between the soul and his other key concepts: self, nature, and life? How are they located in his philosophy of the life-world? In the beginning, before he quit the Minamata compensation/certification movement (as opposed to the Minamata movement itself), Ogata did not even think about the nature he saw around him. He, as an individual, existed completely independent of the natural environment around him, hardly seeing its relevance to his life. This was the case despite him being a fisherman (Stage I). After he left the movement and started focusing intently on himself during the early stages of his nervous breakdown, he became more aware of the presence of ‘soul’ in his mind (Stage II). As the intensity of his thinking progressed during his breakdown, there came a stage where he felt that he was firmly connected to the deceased, which is when he said, ‘Dad, I received your soul!’ (Stage III). But nature was still not connected to his sense of self. Towards the end of his three-month breakdown, he had a ‘Big Bang of life’ moment when he suddenly became aware of his connectedness to nature, with the soul as the common medium (Stage IV). He felt that his soul was equal to the life that lived in him, that lived also in nature around him. This can be summarised as: soul = life = nature. Self and nature are firmly connected by this soul-life entity. And when he feels connected with nature, the dialogue between self and nature occurs through this deeper channel of soul-life, not as a dialogue between two unrelated entities, which is how he felt before the breakdown. Stage IV illustrates Ogata’s notion of the life-world. Figure 1.1 illustrates how the notion of the life-world was developed as a result of Ogata’s personal and intellectual journey. It also shows the relationship between self, nature, and the soul as they were perceived by Ogata at different stages of his life. There is a limit, though, as to how much one can schematise Ogata’s ontological life-world in a two-dimensional space like this. The diagram of the life-world should therefore be considered as a conceptual

I

SELF

NATURE

II

SELF SOUL

NATURE

SELF

III

SOUL

NATURE

Soul of the Deceased

Big Bang of Life

IV

SELF

NATURE

Seen

CT

= L IFE-WORLD

SELF IS CON N E

Unseen World

Living

E D TO NATURE = S O U L

= Quesons

= Stone statue

(SOUL)

(LIFE) Figure 1.1 Life-world

Not Living (Deceased & yet to be born)

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map which is open to flexible interpretation. For instance, the demarcation between living and non-living, which is indicated by the broken line, should perhaps be envisaged as two sides of a coin rather than as two disparate worlds as suggested there, or even as the relationship between the three-dimensional everyday world and the intangible fourth or fifth dimensions. While acknowledging such limitations, I would like to use the diagram to continue our exploration of Ogata’s notion of the life-world in order to clarify further, in particular, the relationship between life, soul, nature, and self. Ogata’s account of life provides a clue for understanding the relationships amongst the key concepts of his life-world: self, nature, and soul. In my interview with him, he explained: It seems to me that there are two aspects of life. One is tangible life which comes with a shape, smell, form, etc. The other is an often unrecognised aspect of life, that is, the working of life (inochi no hataraki いのちの働き), which I think is more essential than tangible life. Even after death, the deceased influence living people. I think that it represents the working of life. (Telephone interview, 25 August 2012 from Sydney to Minamata; emphasis added) The tangible life, ‘which comes with a shape, smell, form’, is indicated in Figure 1.1 by the outer strip, sandwiched by two lines labelled as ‘life’ and ‘soul’. The intangible life, or the essence of life, which Ogata refers to as the working of life that goes beyond the life–death boundary, or beyond the physicality of ‘tangible life’, sounds very much like what he also calls soul. In fact, Ogata states elsewhere that ‘soul is another name for life’.97 In the quotation above, although Ogata refers to the working of the life of the deceased which can influence living people, his notion of intangible life covers the more impersonal and universal ‘working of life’, as expressed in the statement below: It is like life is living in you (いのちがあなたを生きている). (Interview, 25 January 2013 in Minamata) Here, Ogata’s notion of ‘life’ is less bound by the ‘life’ of a particular person or people. His sense of interconnectedness with nature, discussed above, suggests that by ‘intangible life’ he means a vital force which is common to all living things, which has existed for millions of years without being broken, which from its very beginning has been ‘lived’ in all sorts of manifestations, and which will continue living on forever. This notion of life as an intangible ‘life force’ is indicated in Figure 1.1 by the space marked as ‘soul’, the inner (indented) circle. It includes not only animate but also inanimate entities in nature such as rivers and mountains which cannot be separated from life. This inner space represents the essence of Ogata’s notion of the life-world. To be connected to this world ontologically, I contend, is animism.

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Stone statues for dialogue For Ogata, the most important thing about the life-world is the sense of dialogue (taiwasei 対話性) with it. He told me: I feel a sense of dialogue in each individual working of life. For instance, birds singing, the sound of the wind, the sound of waves, all things in the universe. … The relationality of the dialogue is felt as a sense of mercy from nature, a sense of ease of being watched over, or a sense of existence, which I think is something we all want. … When I went crazy in 1985, I felt that I was pulled back to nature. I felt loved by nature … felt at ease. … It’s like playing in an infinite world. To die is like our soul, or life, finishing playing in this world. So, I don’t worry about what happens after that. [When I feel connected to the life-world] it feels as if my time becomes longer and passes more peacefully. (Interview, 25 January 2013 in Minamata) Ogata actively pursued maintaining the dialogue with the life-world by founding The Association for the Original Vow (Hongan no kai 本願の会) in 1994 together with Ishimure Michiko (see Chapter 2) and 16 Minamata disease sufferers. The Hongan means the ‘original vow’, namely, ‘the deepest wish, or most fervent prayer’.98 One of the main activities of the Association is to carve small stone statues of Buddha and other deities, nobotoke (野仏), and to enshrine them on the reclaimed land where the pollution was the heaviest. Buried underneath it are 2,500 oil drums containing ‘polluted fish’ contaminated with highly concentrated methyl mercury. The drums hold the lives of fish which were first poisoned and then caught and buried alive there. For Ogata, the landfill symbolises the ‘genzai’ (‘original sin’ 原罪) of human beings.99 The stone statues represent apologies and prayers to all life – human and nonhuman alike – that were harmed and killed by the Minamata incident. The statement Ogata read out at the establishment of the Association includes the following comment: In previous times, souls were connected in many layers with karmic force (縁 en/enishi), and various life-forms were given life and coexisted in Minamata in the world of the Shiranui Sea. Industrial civilisation invaded beyond a critical level and kept ruthlessly destroying the vow of soul. Soul is another name for life. We, as human beings who own civilisation, must confess our tsumi (sin 罪) of invading the eternal sanctity of life and offer apologies.100 As touched upon above, the statement clearly tells us that ‘soul is another name for life’. And it goes on to say that the national government not only tried to evade responsibility but pressured people to bury the memory by converting the issue into a legal, financial, and institutional matter. In view of this, Ogata continues in the statement:

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Rather, we accept that ‘Minamata disease cannot be finished’. Together, we listen to the cry of the souls that sank in the bitter sea, and maintain a dialogue with them to take their pain as our own pain. To do so is to pray and to maintain our life as human beings. This is our way of conveying the meaning of Minamata to future generations, so that we can bring back soul, which is our earnest vow. The reclaimed land of Minamata is the place where mourning and grieving souls meet. The very least we could do is to enshrine nobotokesama (or tamashii ishi 魂石 soul stone), cherish them endlessly, and pray for them with lifelong devotion. We would like to meet these souls, beyond both social boundaries and the boundaries created by the Minamata disease incident, with our meeting mediated by the nobotoke-sama. This is our deepest wish, our Original Vow. Minamata is the epitome of Japan as modern civilisation. From the place of Minamata, we call from the bottom of our hearts for the return of soul.101 Ogata’s statement indicates that the Association has many layers of interrelated purposes: (1) to recognise the tsumi (sin) of polluting nature and killing life and to apologise for it as human beings; (2) to meet the souls of the deceased and maintain a dialogue with them, in order to attain salvation for the deceased souls as well as the salvation of our own souls; (3) to meet other people without prejudice so as to convey the legacy of Minamata; (4) to connect with future generations by keeping embers of the legacy of Minamata alive; and ultimately (5) to regain connectedness with the soul (or life-world) that has been lost in modernity. Stone statues play a key role in providing a place where people can meet and pray, but they are the medium through which apologies, prayers, and thoughts are sent to the deceased souls in the unseen world, to the life-world. The stone statue in Figure 1.1 which sits between the worlds of the living and non-living provides a channel between them. It symbolises the dialogue point between us as living life and the intangible life-world. Memory of life Importantly, Ogata adds that the prayers are not just from us, the living, to the souls of the deceased; it can also be the other way around. He writes that the ‘Original Vow’ means to pray to exist together as life and that the prayer is also directed at us (watashitachi ni kakerareta negai 私たちにかけ られた願い), that something else is also praying so that we can exist together as life.102 With this, his discourse of the life-world, or animism, takes another step away from the realm of social science, and moves into challenging ontological territory. Here, I would like to revisit what Ogata says about his time of madness in more detail.

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Despite being a life-threatening experience, Ogata regards his time of ‘madness’ as an extremely valuable and necessary experience. He writes that in the course of his three-month madness he decided that it was ‘no ordinary illness’.103 The end came suddenly one afternoon; he was just waking up from a nap when a haiku phrase, ‘Open your eyes from a nap to find the real world’, jumped into his head.104 Ogata was amazed at the enormous number of things he had been shown while in his crazy state, and it made him wonder why it happened to him.105 He elaborated on this in his discussion with me: This may sound a little too simplistic, but I think it is like an election: If you don’t stand, you cannot get elected. If you don’t make a certain choice, you won’t be selected. I wasn’t aware of this when I went crazy. The only thing I can say is that I was confronted with the question: Do you really want to know the truth? I felt enormous pressure to get rid of any malice, desire, and personal motive in my search for the answer. The questioning went on forever, and it was like I was being tested. But in the end, I felt like I had been approved of by a great power. I couldn’t express it other than to say that I went crazy. Even today, there is no other way to express it. But I felt later that it might have been a kind of correction – a correction by the body or the universe, the manifestation of a healing power we have, arising from the biological memory of life (身体的な 生命の記憶). Today, society is full of convenient lures which make our life pass with tremendous speed. It feels as if our biological memory of life detests this speed. I doubt that I can express what I went through with words. It was something belonging to a different dimension. It felt like something beyond words, an ultimate expression. It feels as if I underwent a ritual that I had to go through at some stage in my life. I think in the past people knew instinctively that they were given permission to live in a world where all life was connected. The life of each person was a manifestation of LIFE and was connected to various other lives. They lived out their life. … When I was engaged in the Minamata movement, I was convinced that I was living on my own, but when that sense collapsed, I realised I was actually permitted to live, and that I am connected to many other living entities. I was born here, live here, and want to live my life out here. … When I went completely mad, I was given a good thrashing and was shown a new world, and that world, I felt, was an infinite world (無量の世界). I experienced bliss (冥加とはこ のことだと感じました). (Interview, 16 January 2012)106 He says the objective of his life is to find out more about the infinite world, and for him it means to continue thinking about it: From time to time people ask, ‘Ogata-san, why did you withdraw your application for certification and quit the patient movement?’ In a word, it is because I have chosen an endless path. It means that I made up my

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mind to commit myself to think about the Minamata disease incident as my own problem as long as I live, without putting an end to it with a political solution. I have selected an eternal path. It means that I need to continue thinking about it and to keep being questioned. 107 What does he mean by ‘keep being questioned’, though? Being asked questions As discussed earlier, Ogata takes ‘thinking’ extremely seriously. He regards it as the basis for subjectivity and autonomy, and maintains that responding to the innate call is an essential responsibility of human beings. Concerning the relationship between thinking and the soul, Ogata writes: I think we are asked a question by the question of what the soul is (魂 はなんぞやという問いに問われている). It seems to me that the soul has a tendency to ask a question, to be asked a question, and to continue thinking. The soul has this tendency to move (運動性). This tendency of the soul to move suggests that there is life behind it. In that sense, I think that the soul is another name of life.108 In the previous two quotations, Ogata talks about not only his asking of a question, but also about something asking him a question. This immediately leads us to ask, what is this ‘something’? Ogata said: ‘We are asked a question by the question of what the soul is’. Obviously, he is taking for granted the existence of a question (of what the soul is, in this case) ‘outside himself’, and he also sees a logical relationship between his original question and the question that comes to him in response to his original question. He seems to be saying that his soul connects him to the question (which occurs in his mind) by moving between ‘himself ’ and the ‘external’ question. As discussed above, Ogata considers his inner self – the ‘self ’ that poses questions – as subjectivity (主体性). He envisages the soul as a medium or energy that connects his subjectivity with the ‘something’ that throws the questions (back) at him so as to enable him to continue thinking. Ogata does not give a name to the entity, the ‘something,’ which projects the questions to him. Whatever the ‘something’ is, the point in Ogata’s Minamata discourse is that the soul connects him with it, and he calls the energy which the soul uses to create this connection ‘life’. As seen in the previous section, Ogata’s quest began with the onset of his ‘nervous breakdown’ about which he states clearly: ‘What concerned me most were connections – links that would connect me to the world’.109 His quest began with a more immediate question: ‘If not money, what?’110 Pursuing this question took Ogata to the next big question: ‘What if he had been working for Chisso?’, ultimately leading him to a paradigmatic shift in his position regarding Chisso from the ‘victim’ to the ‘liable’, from a ‘sense of grudge’ to

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‘responsibility’, and, with it, a sense of liberation. This was the process of Chisso, Ogata’s ultimate enemy, the ‘other’, being taken in, into his life. Previously, he had believed that he had nothing to do with the contamination, but then he realised that he was ‘on the same boat’, as it were, in a broad historical sense. It was a process in which he found his own subjectivity in the context of modernity, being connected to the historicity of the time, as well as what he had considered to be the ultimate ‘other’. His first paradigmatic shift thus happened by establishing a dialogical relationship (対話的関係) between his own subjectivity and the ‘other’ (Chisso), being ‘guided’ by those two key questions. Ogata’s first repositioning of his selfhood led him to a second paradigmatic shift, and this time it was with regard to nature. Before his nervous breakdown, nature was completely out of his mind and he did not think about it. He was totally absorbed by and devoted to thinking about political matters in the human world: what he calls ‘system society’ (システム社会), a composite of the legal and institutional systems that support modern society.111 By noticing ‘Chisso within’, however, his eyes opened to nature; he was ‘awakened to the life of nature’, and he noticed what he could not see earlier. ‘Life-world’ emerged in his consciousness as the ‘other’ of ‘system society’. With this realisation, Ogata found a new footing for himself as someone who stands on the overlapping space of both ‘system society’ and the ‘life-world’. This discovery gave Ogata the will to continue living, something which would have been difficult had he only belonged to ‘system society’ (i.e. on Chisso’s side). As he transcended the dichotomy of self vs Chisso by establishing a dialogical relationship between them, Ogata again found the ‘other’ (the lifeworld) with which he could hold a dialogical relationship, and that enabled him to live, to let himself live. Ogata’s encounter with the life-world raised yet another question about how humans can, or should, take responsibility for the destruction of life and nature. This question, together with the question of how ‘we can break ourselves free from our own spell and liberate ourselves’ led him to the ultimate ‘other’: the ‘other (unseen) world’ as against ‘this (seen) world’. Here again, Ogata stepped outside the existing boundary, and this time it was outside the boundary of the seen world, and he experienced a sense of being connected to all things: not only all living things, but all he has done, seen, and heard in his life, including words and gestures, his father’s soul, as well as the souls of other deceased people. There is a consistent pattern between Ogata’s post-compensation-movement life and his philosophy, and that is raising a question that enables him to notice the ‘other’ (i.e. Chisso/nature/unseen world), holding a dialogical relationship with the ‘other’, and finally integrating it into his thinking by establishing a new sense of connectedness. As discussed earlier, Ogata believes that ‘to think, in order to respond to a question is the essential responsibility of being human’, and that ‘in the final analysis, the question is whether or not the person’s existence is cherished in an equal dialogical relationship where you can ask a question and get a response’.

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In his view, ‘we are asked a question by the question of what soul is’. He also says that ‘the soul has the tendency to ask questions, to accept questions, and to continue thinking’, and that ‘the soul is another name for life’. He explained to me that it is as if ‘your soul (or life) is living within you (your life)’ (命があなたを生きている),112 and that the soul does the thinking and questioning and can maintain a logical relationship and be connected with the life-world because a soul is like energy that connects you to that world. Ogata envisages the soul as an entity that not only connects his subjectivity (inner self) with bigger questions, but is in and of itself the basis of other connectedness. In other words, in his philosophy of the life-world, which I call animism, the soul is the very essence that enables humans to have a sense of connectedness with other beings. He says that we have a duty to use this sense of connectedness to preserve and maintain the ‘life-world’. He also feels the role of Minamata was to point out the significance of the soul for both humans and nature, to free ourselves from the unsustainable rut of modernity, and to bring about a new kind of world where life is revered and cared for. He writes: I think the question Minamata disease poses to people … [is] essentially the meaning of life. It was the incident which destroyed a world where we could catch lots of fish, octopuses, shellfish, and prawns from the sea in front of us, collect bracken, tsuwabuki, 113 and ferns from the mountains behind us, and harvest vegetables from the fields where insects were hovering around us and birds were soaring above.114 In the past, we were made to live in this world and we had a variety of practices that helped us to feel the connections. Each one of us was connected as a living thing with various other lives. We lived it out.115 When I was involved with the Minamata movement, I thought, deep in my heart, that I was living on my own (自分の力で生きている). But when that sense crumbled, I realised that I live, and am allowed to live (実は生かされて生きている), by being connected to various other living things (さまざまな命と繋がって生きている).116 He concludes with the statement quoted above: Was not the crux of the Minamata struggle a call from the spiritual world (精神世界からの呼びかけ) of Minamata fishermen and victims? It seems to me that the heart of the Minamata question lies in their call to live together in a world where life is revered and connected (命の連なる世界 に一緒に生きていこうという呼びかけ).117 Minamata is the epitome of modernity, and Ogata Masato is calling from the bottom of his heart for ‘the return of soul’118 in a world where he feels people’s souls are being increasingly devoured.

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What will the implications of Ogata’s philosophy of the life-world be on the ‘real world’, that is, on the reality of our highly materialistic late-modern society? Is such a notion compatible with the everyday life of an advanced industrialised society? Or is his philosophy possible only by pursuing a hermit-like hikikomori (lit. “pulling inwards”) life, denouncing aspirations, comforts, and a sense of progress, all of which are part of modern living? Asking these questions leads us back to the original question of how the dichotomy between ‘life’ (inochi) and the economy can be faced at this point in modern history? Is it ultimately a matter of either-or?119

Where do you put your soul? The life-world or the system society? To quote Ogata again: ‘How [can we] break ourselves free from our own spell of materialism and also liberate ourselves’ from the spell of the ‘system society’ which is driven by the pursuit of affluence? Ogata asks. He does not suggest that we should give up living in the system society in order to live in the life-world. Rather, he sees the relationship between the two as like ‘right foot and left foot’. Both feet are indispensable for walking, and the ‘system society’ and ‘life-world’ are both indispensable for life. The question is how to live within this potentially contradictory dual structure: We need to think about how to live with the dual structure. In the global, capitalist market economy, we are controlled by a view of the world which is dominated by the economy and we cannot escape from it. It is a world regulated by clock time, and we feel as if everything is controlled by the overwhelming power of the economy and politics. But precisely because of this, I think it is necessary to have our own time in ‘cosmic time’, in order to relax and refresh, and find and regain a sense of our true selves. I think that each person is like a small universe and that it is possible for each of us to find our own way, existentially, to connect to the cosmic time, where life is eternal. It seems to me that living this duality provides a very important hint for us to remain and regulate ourselves as humans. To put it differently, we work in the system society to earn our living, and we inhabit the life-world to live our life. It’s like doing two-sword fencing, or having two different, top and bottom, streams of wind, or a double helix structure in one’s life. (Telephone interview, 25 August 2012, from Sydney to Minamata) For Ogata, being able to recognise this duality meant understanding that he himself was part of the ‘Chisso-ish’ society and also to recognise that he was ‘another Chisso’. Ogata emphasises, however, the importance of knowing where each of us ‘stands’, that is, ‘where you put your centre of gravity’ (重心) and ‘where you put your soul’. (Interview, 25 August 2012):

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Sadly, I myself cannot escape from the money economy or the economic system. I use my mobile phone, and my boat is equipped with GPS, for instance. Although I cannot escape from the system, I am still resisting stubbornly. What is it that I am defying? There is only one point ultimately. It is where you put your ‘trust’ (どこに信を置くか). In the end, it is the question of where you place your trust: in the system society or the life-world. (Interview, 16 January 2012) For Ogata, the life-world presents an absolute and ethical frame of reference in which he, as a human being, feels a sense of responsibility to nature even though he is in fact living in the system society. In this sense, Ogata’s notion of the life-world may sound somewhat similar to what Victor Turner120 calls the ‘centre’ or what Inger Birkeland121 calls the ‘north’ in their work on pilgrimages: an inner space which constitutes a separate ‘place to be’ independent of socially constructed morals and values. Ogata’s life-world is no doubt his ‘place to be’, and it provides him with an absolute ethical frame of reference. The significance of his thoughts, however, goes far beyond his personal sphere, beyond the spiritual quest for his own god, or centre, or north, which may be interpreted as a postmodern quest for spirituality, as so argued by Beck.122 Instead, Ogata presents a philosophy which can be a foundation for environmental ethics that addresses human responsibility in relation to nature at this particular point in modern history when our globalising world faces the lifethreatening reality of a world risk society. How does he envisage the future direction of society more specifically? In response to this question, he talked about natural energy. Natural energy According to Ogata, the tension between the life-world and our system society is a problem of the relationship between nature and industrial civilisation.123 With the triple disaster (i.e. earthquake, tsunami, nuclear accident) in 2011, this tension came to a head, but, he remarks, there has been ‘a historical push’ (時代の 後押し) to redress the problem. Today, Ogata believes we can reduce the tension further by shifting towards green energy. He says: I think it is possible to change the existing paradox between economy and life to make them more compatible. If people look back 50 or 100 years from now, it will probably be clear that we have been going through a stage of evolution, a type of new industrial revolution. Previously, ‘economy’ meant manufacturing and industry, but it has gradually changed. Starting about 20 years ago, environmental businesses became part of the economy. Eco-tourism, for instance, uses the environment to attract tourists. And now we have reached a stage where we cannot sustain ourselves without maintaining a balance with nature. We cannot avoid the realisation that the tipping-point is near. This is not just in relation to the

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Life-world: A critique of modernity by Ogata Masato nuclear crisis. It is also the case with global warming, depletion of the ozone layer, water pollution, kosa (airborne sand from China’s spreading deserts), and photochemical smog, etc. With these global issues, maintaining a balance with nature has become an economic question. Previously, the economy and nature were conceived of separately, but now nature has become the first thing to consider in relation to the economy. (Interview, 25 August 2012)

Natural energy, Ogata says, increases the compatibility of the life-world and the system society. He is particularly enthusiastic about solar energy because it can do little conceivable harm to humans: in his words, there are ‘no worries about pollution’. He also sees the positive impact it might have on local autonomy: The nuclear accident has threatened life in a broad area, not only in Fukushima. As it is an issue directly related to survival, sovereignty should be with local residents, and not with the central government. Decisions about the matter of life should be made by the local people themselves. (Interview, 25 August 2012) Ogata, however, also has an apprehension about the system society that is supported by alternative energy. He says: In my neighbourhood, contracts have been signed to build two mega-solar power stations. One is on reclaimed land that was left idle after many factories moved overseas. The other is pasture that used to be a cattle farm. Because agriculture is not economically sustainable, rice paddies, mountains, and fields have been neglected and allowed to go wild. Building solar power stations usually means just putting solar panels on land that has the least value. Now, it feels as if nature is being integrated into the commodity economy (商品価値化 する) in a different way. Increasingly, nature, mountains, and the sea are being looked at through economic lenses, and it feels as if our sense of awe of nature is weakening (畏怖の念が弱体化). Maybe it can’t be helped, but I fear that our reverence towards nature is fading away. … I am a fisherman and I see myself as a kind of ‘thief’ who ‘takes’ from nature. In a sense, fishermen and farmers are all thieves. That’s precisely why it’s important to treat nature with dignity and respect (仁義を通す). (Interview, 25 August 2012) He implies that the same thinking should apply to renewable energy. If the greater commodification of nature indeed leads to a diminished sense of awe, there is perhaps more reason to treat nature more mindfully with dignity and respect. In Ogata’s philosophy, this means feeling connected with the lifeworld and having a sense of responsibility towards it. This suggests that no matter how compatible the system society becomes with the life-world, the raison d’être of the life-world is to provide ethical and spiritual dimensions that are not covered by the system society.

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In fact, the duality of the ‘life-world’ and ‘system society’ does not mean that they simply coexist. As discussed above, dialogue – or a dialogical relationship (対話 的関係) – is the key to his philosophy. For Ogata, it is such a dialogue that makes humans human. The life-world is like a sounding board (i.e. the ‘other’) with which individuals can hold inner dialogues, raise existential questions, and seek ethical references in order to live more meaningfully in a highly industrialised, late-modern world. At the same time, the life-world is not just an abstract spiritual world. It is nature that exists in the tangible world as birds, fish, grass, trees, rocks, water, wind, sunlight, etc. The unease Ogata expresses about the diminishing sense of awe towards nature is a cautionary note from the life-world, a composite of spirituality and nature, about the commercialisation of nature.

Postmodern animism and the lacuna of social science Ogata’s philosophy of the life-world is, more than anything else, a critique of modernity because he questions two fundamental premises of modernity. One is the dominance of money-centred social values, and the other is secularism, that is, the exclusion of anything related to the soul and spirituality. There are three interrelated levels of incongruity between modernity and spirituality. The first is empirical: There is a sense, to quote Ogata again, that modernisation and mechanisation have ‘devoured the soul’ and removed it from everyday life. To put it differently, modernity ‘de-spiritualises’ a culture and so it is felt in our modern life.124 The second incongruity is historical: As discussed in the Introduction, one of the key features of modernity has been the pursuit of freedom from the often-alienating power of religious institutions. And the third is epistemological: We do not yet have an adequate framework with which to address spirituality in the social sciences. Social science in general, and sociology in particular, is a product of modernity and has operated with secularism as its basic assumption, pushing spiritual matters aside. Its frame of reference and methodology have been limited to what Ogata calls the system society. The other ‘reality’ of the unseen world,125 that is, Ogata’s life-world, has been excluded from sociology theoretically, methodologically, and epistemologically. Thus, there has been little space in the social sciences to discuss animism, a concept that integrates spirituality in nature, in the context of our own highly industrialised civilisation. Even in anthropology, animism has been kept outside the mainstream academic discourse until recently, as discussed in the Introduction. Postmodernism has offered some impetus for breaking through this limitation of social science. More than anything else, it has presented a critique of modernity. For Lyotard, in particular, incredulity towards a metanarrative – in this case taking secularism as a fundamental premise of social science – is the very definition of the postmodern.126 His method of the ‘little narrative’ enables us to produce a new kind of knowledge, which

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opens up our imagination to the unknown, something which has been outside the epistemological boundaries of existing knowledge.127 Ogata’s life story is a little narrative with which he, Ogata, ‘wanted to confront society’.128 What sort of Pandora’s Box has Ogata’s narrative opened? I argue that it is a new paradigm of social science, which includes within its ontological and epistemological framework two aspects hitherto largely ignored: spirituality and nature. Ogata presented these in his philosophy of the life-world, a philosophy which I consider to be ‘postmodern animism’. It is postmodern, first, because, unlike the conventional understanding of animism, which is often understood to be a ‘primitive’ belief of pre-literate cultures, Ogata’s philosophy would not have been constructed without his experience of rapidly modernising Japan. His critical re-evaluation of modernity, based on first-hand experience, does not fit the conventional image of animism, but is a key ingredient of postmodern animism. Ogata’s narrative is postmodern, second, in the sense that his search for subjectivity was the principal force of his quest. Pursuit of selfhood is very much a postmodern quest.129 Third, as discussed above, this pursuit, for Ogata, meant the search for connectedness. Enriching one’s soul by looking for one’s own ‘god’ has been a definite trend in the postmodern world.130 Animism as an intangible cultural heritage of Minamata was able to meet Ogata’s needs, even though it had been fading in importance in contemporary Japan. In summary, Ogata’s philosophy of the life-world emerged from the fusion of three elements: modernity, Ogata’s own pursuit of selfhood and spirituality, and the intangible cultural heritage of animism he found in Minamata. It is a philosophy born on the frontline, where modernity and indigenous animism collided, that came to be articulated by Ogata Masato, who played the role of mediating ‘shaman’ and connected the two.131

Notes 1 This chapter contains materials published in Shoko Yoneyama 2012, ‘Life-world: Beyond Fukushima and Minamata’, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol.10, issue 42, no.2, which were reproduced with some modifications in Brian Earl (ed.) 2013, Japan’s ‘Abandoned People’ in the Wake of Fukushima, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Course Reader, no.6, pp.84–110; and in Asian Perspective, vol.37, no.4 (Oct–Dec 2013), pp.567–592. They also were included in a more developed form in Shoko Yoneyama 2017, ‘Animism: A grassroots response to socioenvironmental crisis in Japan’, in Tessa Morris-Suzuki & Eun Jeong Soh (eds), New Worlds from Below: Informal Life Politics and Grassroots Action in Twenty-First-Century Northeast Asia, ANU Press, Canberra, pp.99–130. Permissions to reproduce these materials have been obtained from Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Asian Perspective, and ANU Press. 2 The Shiranui Sea is the inland sea into which the effluent containing organic mercury compounds was discharged by Japan’s leading chemical company, Chisso, in the 1950s and the 1960s. 3 Oiwa Keibo & Ogata Masato 2001, Rowing the Eternal Sea, trans. Karen Colligan-Taylor, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, p.58. 4 Ishimure Michiko & Tada Tomio 2008, Kotodama [Soul of language], Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo, p.187.

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5 Timothy George 2001, Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, p.284. 6 Tsurumi Kazuko [1997] 1998, Tsurumi Kazuko Mandara VI: Minamata, animizumu, ecorojı- [Tsurumi Kazuko Mandala VI Minamata: An approach to animism and ecology], Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo, pp.38–39. 7 Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing. 8 Translation of the phrase by Karen Colligan-Taylor; see Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.146. 9 Ogata Masato 2001, Chisso wa watashi de atta [Chisso was I (Chisso within)], Ashi shobo-, Fukuoka. All quotations from this book have been translated by me. 10 Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.138. 11 ibid., p.113. 12 ibid., p.28. 13 ibid., p.58. 14 Ogata Masato & Tsuji Shinichi 1996, Tokoyo no fune o kogite [Rowing the eternal sea], Seori shobo-, Tokyo (citation on p.235). 15 Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.88. 16 Simon Avenell 2012, ‘Japan’s long environmental sixties and the birth of a green leviathan’, Japanese Studies, vol.32, no.3, pp.423–444 (citation on p.426). 17 Ibid., p.426. 18 ibid., p.436. 19 ibid., p.423. 20 ibid., p.425. In this article, Avenell argues that this environmental consciousness formed in what he calls ‘Japan’s long environmental sixties (1959–1973)’. 21 ibid., p.440. 22 George, Minamata, pp.174–176. 23 Ibid., p.438. 24 ibid., p.93. 25 Tokyo Electric Power Company. 26 George, Minamata, pp.241–257. 27 Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.92. 28 Jun Ui 1992, ‘Minamata disease’, in Jun Ui (ed) Industrial Pollution in Japan, United Nations University Press, Tokyo, pp.103–132 (citation on p.113). 29 Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.98. 30 ibid., p.92. 31 ibid., p.96. 32 ibid. 33 Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, pp.95–102. 34 ibid., p.98 (emphasis added). 35 ibid. 36 Ogata does not specifically use the term ‘life-world’ as a keyword for expressing his philosophy, but it is consistently implied in his words. I gleaned the phrase from one of his tanka-poems which he copied, and also autographed, into my copy of his book, Chisso wa watashi de atta [Chisso was I]. ‘Life-world’ therefore is his phrase, and I have identified it as a key concept of his philosophy. 37 Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.97. 38 Interview, 15 January 2012. 39 Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.32. 40 ibid., p.31. 41 ibid., p.29. 42 ibid., p.31. 43 ibid., pp.31–32. 44 ibid., p.96. 45 Ogata, Chisso, pp.42 & 194.

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58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

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Life-world: A critique of modernity by Ogata Masato ibid., p.60. ibid., pp.194–195. ibid., p.44. ibid., p.49 (emphasis added). ibid., p.71. ibid., p.69. ibid., p.66. Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.164. Except the work of some Minamata residents: Ogata Masato, Ishimure Michiko, and Sugimoto Eiko. Yomiuri Shimbun, 19 April 2011. Anders Møller, Atsushi Hagiwara, Shin Matsui, Satoe Kasahara, Kencho Kawatsu, Isao Nishiumi, Hiroyuki Suzuki, Kasuki Ueda, & Timothy Mousseau 2012, ‘Abundance of birds in Fukushima as judged from Chernobyl’, Environmental Pollution, vol.164 (May) p.36. Atsuki Hiyama, Chiyo Nohara, Seira Kinjo, Wataru Taira, Shinichi Gima, Akira Tanahara, & Joji Otaki 2012, ‘The biological impacts of the Fukushima nuclear accident on the pale grass blue butterfly’, Scientific Reports (Nature), vol.2, no.570. Ogata, Chisso, p.68. ibid., pp.64–65. ibid., p.66. ibid., pp.64–65. ibid., p.174 ibid. Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.99. Tsurumi, Mandala VI, p.230. Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.164. ibid. Ogata, Chisso, p.62. Asahi Shimbun 2012, ‘Jisatsu 14-nen renzoku 3-man nin cho-’ [Suicide cases over 30,000 for 14 consecutive years] 11 January, p.39 (Tokyo edition). Asahi Shimbun 2013, ‘Nyu-jiin ni joji okizari’ [A baby girl left at infant home], 25 January, p.29 (Seibu edition). Ogata, Chisso, pp.146–147. Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, pp.162–163. ibid. ibid., pp.36–37. ibid., p.37. ibid., p.172. Ogata, Chisso, p.10. Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.173. Ogata, Chisso, p.63. The image of ‘Biohistory’ can be seen at the homepage of BRH JT Biohistory Research Hall, where Nakamura is the director: . Nakamura Keiko 2007, ‘Seimei kagaku: Ikimono kankaku de kangaeru’ [Bioscience: To think about it with senses of a living creature], in Saito Yasuhiko (ed.) So-seiki o mukaeta Minamata: Mirai e no teigen [Minamata that entered a genesis: A proposal for the future], The Executive Committee for the 50th Anniversary of the Official Recognition of Minamata Disease, Minamata, pp.110–119. This was done as a solution to the pollution caused by the organic mercury compounds. Ogata, Chisso, p.63.

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ibid., p.67. Ulrich Beck 2008, A God of One’s Own, Polity, Cambridge, p.27. Ogata, Chisso, pp.192–193 (emphasis added). Ogata & Tsuji, Tokoyo, p.120. Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.98. Marian de Souza, Leslie J Francis, James O’Higgins-Norman, & Daniel Scott 2009, ‘General introduction’, in Marian de Souza, Leslie J Francis, James O’Higgins-Norman, & Daniel Scott (eds) International Handbook of Education for Spirituality, Care and Wellbeing, Springer, Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London, & New York, vol.1, pp.1–5 (citation on p.1). Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.100. ibid., p.156. Ogata, Chisso, p.67. Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.156. ibid. George, Minamata, p.72. Ogata, Chisso, p.69. Ogata & Tsuji, Tokoyo, p.228. Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.122. ibid. Ogata & Tsuji, Tokoyo, p.228 (emphasis added). ibid., pp.228–229 (emphasis added). Ogata, Chisso, p.136. Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.99. ibid., p.102. ibid. Ogata, Chisso, p.75. ibid., pp.157–158 (emphasis added). ibid., p.158. Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.98. ibid. Ogata, Chisso, p.48. Interview with Ogata, 25 August 2012. Farfugium japonicum. Its leaves look like shiny fuki, but it is not fuki and it has small yellow flowers in autumn. It is evergreen and often seen in Japanese gardens, next to stones. Ogata, Chisso, p.74. ibid. ibid., p.75. ibid., p.63. Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, pp.228–229. I owe Mark Selden these series of questions, who suggested that I should conduct an additional interview of Ogata Masato focusing on these points, which I did in August 2012. Victor Turner 1973, ‘The centre out there: The pilgrim’s goal’, History of Religion, vol.12, no.3, pp.191–230. Inger Birkeland 2005, Making Place, Making Self: Travel, Subjectivity, and Sexual Difference, Ashgate, London. Beck, A God of One’s Own. Interview with Ogata Masato, 25 August 2012. Kieran Flanagan 2007, ‘Introduction’, in Kieran Flanagan & Peter Jupp (eds) A Sociology of Spirituality, Ashgate, Farnham, UK, p.1. Peter Berger 1969, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural, Doubleday, New York, p.2.

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126 Jean-François Lyotard 1979, The Postmodern Condition, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, p.xxxiv. 127 ibid., pp.60–67. 128 Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.138. 129 Shimazono Susumu 1996, Seishin sekai no yukue [New spirituality movements in the global society], Tokyodo- shuppan, Tokyo; Beck, A God of One’s Own. 130 Beck, God of One’s Own, p.27. 131 Oiwa Keibo (Tsuji Shinichi) 2001 ‘Epilogue’, in Oiwa & Ogata, Rowing, p.185.

2

Stories of soul Animistic cosmology by Ishimure Michiko1

A grassroots writer For a number of years, I have observed changes in my students when they read Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow. This story, a signature piece by Ishimure Michiko (石牟礼道子 1927–2018), illustrates both the plight and the beauty of the life of people affected by Minamata disease. Ishimure is often referred to as an environmental novelist or the Rachel Carson of Japan, and was a key member of the Minamata disease movement all her adult life. Ishimure’s powerful story continues to touch profoundly my students’ hearts and inspires them to engage with learning on a different level: They begin to think about social issues not just intellectually but at a deeper level. It is as if her story has infused ‘soul’ into their learning. It was with this message that I went to visit Ishimure in Kumamoto on 16 January 2012. She was in her mid-80s at that time and was working on the final volume of the Complete Works of Ishimure Michiko (Tokyo: Fujiwara shoten), a monumental collection of 18 volumes. I briefly introduced myself, thanked her for the inspiration her work had generated in my students, and hesitantly told her the purpose of my visit: ‘Would you please share with me your view of what soul is?’ The fact that it was the only question I had made me nervous: What if she was not willing to respond to my question? But she did. After all, soul is the central theme of her work. Using the most beautiful form of honorifics for all the people she was referring to, Ishimure replied to my query as if weaving a web. I will therefore present her response in full in this chapter, supplementing it with quotations from her published works. This chapter focuses on Ishimure’s notion of soul in order to pursue further the ‘problem consciousness’ raised by Ogata in response to Minamata disease. Namely, the incident has left a fundamental question that cannot be dealt with at a political or an institutional level: How can we address the question of soul when it tends to be devoured by modernity? 2 Like Ogata, Ishimure’s work is fundamentally a critique of modernity, and like him life, soul, and nature are at the core of her work. Unlike Ogata, who uses the term ‘life-world’, Ishimure uses the term ‘animism’ and positions it clearly at the centre of her work. She writes:

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Stories of soul: Animistic cosmology by Ishimure Michiko With what sort of human character should we describe the immoral behaviour of modern industry that exacted and continues to exact harm on our natural features [fu-do 風土] and on the very foundation of life that exists there [soko ni ikiru seimei no kongen そこに生きる生命の根源] in the remote villages of Minamata? It surely was another form of the ruthless exploitation by monopolistic capitalism. Yet, simply to point that out will be insufficient. Living spirits and dead spirits hover over my hometown without being able to attain Buddhahood. I consider the words of these spirits as the pristine language of their social class. I therefore must become a shaman for modernity by fusing my notion of animism and pre-animism.3

There are two reasons why this passage is extremely important. One is that Ishimure is not limiting her discussion to the damage done to humans by modern industry. Her perspective is not anthropocentric. Instead, she refers also to the harm done to the ‘natural features’ (i.e. the natural environment: mountains, rivers, the sea, etc.) and to ‘the very foundation of life [生命] that exists there’. What she means by ‘the very foundation of life’ will be further clarified in the course of this chapter, but I take it to mean the connectedness of all living things in Minamata that have continued to exist for thousands of years, forming a life-world (a composite entity where life = nature = soul: See Chapter 1). The second reason why this passage is important is as follows: The Minamata disease incident was, for sure, an example of the exploitation of vulnerable people by monopolistic capitalism, but Ishimure wants to do more than just point that out. What she wants to do instead is to use the language of the spirits or souls of the sufferers (deceased and living), a language which she associates with a particular ‘social class’ that is at the bottom of society. In order to do this, Ishimure is saying, she uses the concepts of animism and works like a shaman. In other words, Ishimure is indicating that she intends to translate the language of the spirits or souls like a shaman by using animism as the medium which with to accomplish the task. For the purposes of my book, this is a very important point because Ishimure is positioning her work in contrast to ‘normal’ discourse on the Minamata disease incident, which frames it as exploitation by monopolistic capitalism, as a political, economic, historic, and institutional issue. She does not deny it is exploitation, of course, but she is saying that explanation is ‘not sufficient’, as the question of soul, which she considers to be the language of the local people, who are from the bottom social class, is missing. On this point, Ishimure’s position is exactly the same as Ogata’s: The Minamata disease incident has left a most fundamental question that cannot be dealt with as a political or institutional issue, that is, how to address the question of soul when it tends to be devoured by modernity. She also shares Ogata’s point about the differences in language: First, there is the language used in social science (to address the political, economic, legal, and institutional aspects of the incident), and second, there is the language of the Minamata

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disease sufferers, which is the language of their ‘social class’, the language of the periphery, the local, and the poor, but it is also a language that is full of life and soul or spirit, and it is perhaps a language that is at one with nature. And in the passage above, Ishimure proclaims that the purpose of her work as a Minamata writer is to show her readers the world of the Minamata language/soul/spirit by using animism as a key concept. This focus on the language of spirit, or soul, the framing of animism as an intermediary method, and her role as a shaman who interprets the language of spirit or soul is exactly how I will frame her work in this chapter.4 Although Ishimure does not use the word ‘animism’ often, an animistic theme runs through her literary work, providing a background for the stories of people involved with Minamata disease. Before exploring the relationship between animism and the question of soul, I would first like to use some quotations from Ishimure’s work to illustrate the animistic world that encapsulates her literature, and then discuss the significance of her work in the context of ‘post-3.11’ Japan, which was devastated by the earthquake, the tsunami, and the nuclear crisis of 11 March 2011.

An animistic world to pine for Animism permeates Ishimure’s depiction of Minamata, especially in the village’s pre-modern pre-pollution times, as depicted in Tsubaki no uni no ki [Story of the Sea of Camellias 椿の海の記] and Kamigami no mura [Villages of the gods 神々の村]. Villages of the Gods begins with a description of wells which are scattered along the edge of the Shiranui (不知火) Sea, an inland sea bordered by Kagoshima, Kumamoto, Saga, and Nagasaki prefectures. Shiranui literally means ‘mysterious lights’, and refers to numerous unknown lights sighted occasionally on the night of the new moon in the seventh month of the lunar calendar. The lights can stretch several kilometres on the horizon where sea and land meet. It is probably an atmospheric optical phenomenon, but in past times it awed the locals, who believed they were the lights of ryushin (龍神), the dragon kami. This is the sea Ishimure calls the ‘sea of camellias’, as its coastline is framed by the flowers of old camellia trees from winter to early summer, ‘adding a sense of life to this sea with such a mysterious name’.5 The inland sea also embraces the Amakusa (天草) Islands, where Ishimure was born. Amakusa literally means ‘heaven’s grass’, which, I will argue below, has significant meaning in Ishimure’s work. In this autobiographical work, Ishimure calls the sea of camellias ‘my sea/this sea of mine’ (自分の海). It is where she was born, raised, lives, and perhaps will return to after she dies. She also sees it as a broader ‘mother place’ (母なるところ) for all life, ‘emitting a transparent fragrance to the sky without stirring an inch’.6 As pointed out by Livia Monnet, this does not ‘signify actual ownership, but a loving, respectful, spiritual relation to the sea’, the sea which was considered sacred by the locals.7

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The wells she described are an essential part of this scenery, environment, and life. The wells are depicted as indispensable elements of the animistic world that waned when the sea was poisoned by methyl mercury. In Villages of the Gods, Ishimure writes: Bountiful wells dotting the edge of the sea were indispensable for the fishers. Wells in the villages were made of stone walls and cobblestones that had been lovingly chiselled by masons in Amakusa. At such village wells, women would gather together and wash rice and barley to cook. They did so carefully, trying not to waste a single grain, showing their respect for rice-sama (okome-sama お米さま). Wells were sacred places. Far-away wells that were hard to access by road could be easily reached by boat people. Fishers believed that funadama-sama (船霊さま), the guardian deity of boats, which dwells at the prow, knew all the waterways. Village wells were almost always located at places where camellias and other evergreens grew thick. Trees would collect water for the underground springs, and the springs in turn would later nourish the trees. Time immemorial dwelled in the springs and in the trees. Each well had its own kami (deity/spirit/god カミ); mountains had a kami; ships had a kami; rocks had a kami; rice paddies had a kami; the sea had a kami; rivers had a kami; each kami dwelled in its own place and had a unique and lovable character.8 This excerpt suggests the ubiquitous presence of or connection with kami, even in a grain of rice, or a natural feature such as stone or water, or human-made objects such as boats. This held true as well as for broader geographical elements of nature such as mountains and rivers. Ishimure clearly illustrates how the everyday lives of Minamata fisherfolk were sustained by a strong relationship with kami. Ishimure’s description of the animistic world around the sea is matched with that of the mountains, which were connected to the sea by the rice fields and rivers. The distance between the coast and mountains can be very short in this region, with the edge of the mountains often falling into the sea. This was the world where Ishimure played as a little girl, as described in The Sea of Camellias in another autobiographical narrative: We couldn’t see yamawaros (山童 child-like mountain spirits), but they were hiding between the gigantic trunks of pine trees, in the dark bush of endless layers of mountain-peach leaves, or between branches of goumi trees. We were naturally awed by and always attracted to them. In front of a hokora (small shrine 祠), the biggest pine tree in the mountain stood torn and twisted after being hit by kaminari-sama (lightning 雷), clearly showing that it was a divine space. In the rainy season, children didn’t mind at all being covered by misty rain in the mountains, as their souls were drawn to the large variety of fruits to be found there. It was just like ‘those mountain persons’ (yama no anohito tachi

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山のあのひとたち), the monkeys, tanukis (raccoons), foxes, and yamawaros, who were also attracted by the fruits of the saseppo and kwakwara trees, and by wild grapes. I always hear my half-mad grandma, Omoka-sama, whispering in my ear: ‘What grows in the mountains belongs to those persons in the mountains. Even if you go there to get them, you mustn’t grab them. They belong to such persons as crow-women (karasu-jo カラス女), rabbit-women (usagi-jo 兎女), and fox-women (kitsune-jo 狐女). So, if you want them, you have to receive them humbly from these persons’. I spent a lot of time in this other world which was still unadulterated by humans.9 It is notable that Ishimure refers to animals in the mountain as ‘persons’ or ‘women’. Her distinction between humans and animals is blurred. Assigning personhood to nonhuman entities is an important characteristic of animism, as pointed out by Graham Harvey,10 and I adopted this practice in my translation above. Likewise, the category between humans and kami is blurred. In this pre-pollution era of the Shiranui Sea, people, nature (including animals), and kami coexisted closely and intermingled with each other. Ishimure continues: When people wanted to have a kami for their rice field, they would find a suitable stone, pour lots of sho-chu- (potato wine) onto it, and thus imbue a soul into the stone. The villages were protected by spontaneous kami such as these. The little kami in fact were also people themselves. 11 Similarly, the boundary between animals and kami is blurred in the world of animism. As pointed out by Monnet, what happens there is not only ‘interspecies/multispecies/human–nonhuman co-becoming and mutual transformation’, but also the interconnectedness and inter-being between animals and kami. 12 Ishimure writes: If you go further on from Funazu, you reach the village of Taguchi, which is also called Tonton-mura (Drum village) where I live. In this village, numerous yamagami-sama (mountain kami 山神) used to be enshrined, including in Akiha-mountain and other nameless hills which are no more than little elevations of the ground. Yamagami-sama were the guardian spirits of the mountain, and could be old monkeys or giant serpents, but these persons (このひとたち) were generally thought of as manifestations of yamawaros [child-like mountain spirits 山童]. Villages revered various kami of wells and kami of kitchens, and they were the worlds of yamawaros and gawataro-s [child-like river spirits 川 太郎]. So, the road around Umawari-no-tomo used to be bustling with these vernacular kami and funadama-san [deity of boats 船霊] who would pass at night making a bell-like cry, ‘chichi, chichi’.13

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Here again, Ishimure calls monkeys and serpents ‘these persons’, assigning personhood to nonhumans. This colourful imagery of a long bank along the coastline of Minamata (Umawari-no-tomo) bustling with local kami reminds me of a scene in the animation film by Miyazaki Hayao, Spirited Away, where hundreds of gods of all shapes and sizes arrive on boats and disembark onto the shore, before heading to the bathhouse in the unseen world.14 Being literary works, Ishimure’s illustrations of animism are creative – even those presented as autobiographical narratives. As creative writing, Ishimure’s illustrations of the animistic world can be considered to be ‘imagery’ as framed by Monnet.15 Her words provide a strong imagery and emotional access to the world of animism which is invisible and may be hard to imagine for those who are unfamiliar with this intangible cultural heritage. Monnet also points out that Ishimure’s work, especially her presentation of animistic–Buddhist cosmology, has a healing effect.16 This is a point made by others as well,17 and it is consistent with my own observation of the impact her writing evoked in my students. In other words, the significance of Ishimure’s work is not only literary, but also sociological. In order to pursue this point, I will discuss a trend in Japan that I call the ‘Ishimure Michiko phenomenon’, a trend that I believe indicates the sociological significance of her work, which is the fact that it accommodates the increasing needs of postmodern, post-materialist, post-disaster, world-risk-society Japan.

The Ishimure Michiko phenomenon Kugai Jo-do [Paradise in the sea of sorrow] was first published in 1969, but Ishimure was long marginalised as a literary figure.18 Since the 1990s though, there has been a substantial increase in the recognition of and the interest in her work in Japan, creating a snowball effect and resulting in what might be called the ‘Ishimure Michiko phenomenon’. The change is indicated clearly by the number of times her name has appeared in the Asahi newspaper as shown in Figure 2.1. This data was collected using the Kikuzo II database of both the Eastern and Western Japan editions of the newspaper. Another strong indicator of the Ishimure Michiko phenomenon is the succession of awards she has received. In 1993, she received the Murasaki Shikibu Literary Award, with commendations by Umehara Takeshi, then director of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, and Setouchi Jakusho-, a renowned writer. This award connected Ishimure for the first time officially with the mainstream literary world in Japan.20 She then received a 2001 Asahi Award, together with Miyazaki Hayao (Chapter 4) and others, which was followed by a 2002 Minister of Education and Science Award for the Promotion of Art, a 2013 Avon Award for Women, and the 32nd Hanatsubaki Award for Contemporary Poetry by Shiseido and the prestigious 8th Goto- Shinpei Award in 2014. The recognition of Ishimure’s work took different forms as well. Her longterm friendship with sociologist Tsurumi Kazuko (Chapter 3), a grandchild of Meiji statesman Goto- Shinpei, led to a chance to talk in length with Empress Michiko at Tsurumi’s memorial service, which subsequently led to a visit by

Figure 2.1 The ‘Ishimure Michiko Phenomenon’: Ishimure Michiko in mainstream Japanese media (1970–2014)19

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Stories of soul: Animistic cosmology by Ishimure Michiko

the Heisei Emperor and Empress to Minamata in 2013. For the first time since the outbreak of Minamata disease in the 1950s, a Japanese emperor visited Minamata, and following Ishimure’s request, the royal couple met congenital Minamata disease sufferers who were then in their fifties.21 The Asahi newspaper twice reported the role Ishimure played in the royal visit, in such a way that generated a sense of reconciliation and healing between Minamata sufferers and the imperial family.22 There seem to be three intertwined factors standing behind the Ishimure Michiko phenomenon. The first is the steady publication of her works and the books about her as indicated, at least partially, by the histogram in Figure 2.1.23 In addition to publishing literary works, Ishimure produced numerous collections of poems, picture books, and essays, the latter including a column in the Asahi newspaper called Chotto Shinkokyu- [Taking a big breath], which lasted from 1999 to 2005. The second factor explaining the Ishimure Michiko phenomenon is the development of the Minamata movement itself, in which Ogata (Chapter 1) and Ishimure, with others, have been key players. The first big spike in the frequency of her being mentioned in the Asahi newspaper (shown in Figure 2.1) coincides with the 1996 Minamata Tokyo Exhibition that was held to mark the fortieth anniversary of the official recognition of Minamata disease. One of the key features of the exhibition was an old, barely seaworthy fishing sailboat, the Nichi-getsu maru [Sun-moon boat 日月丸], which Ogata sailed from Minamata to Tokyo ‘in order to push the poison back to the capital’.24 During the exhibition, the boat was displayed on a site close to Shinagawa Station in Tokyo. The exhibition also included the display of some 500 portraits of deceased Minamata disease patients. The photographs were collected by documentary film-maker Tsuchimoto Noriaki and his wife, who compiled their own list of the victims as the official data was kept confidential and only accessible to Chisso. Tsuchimoto wrote to relatives, asking for permission to copy private photos, and then visited willing families one by one to make a copy of the portraits that were often hanging in the room with Buddhist altar in their family homes.25 With this collection of portraits of victims, it became possible for the first time in history to see en masse the faces and names of people who died from Minamata disease even though it represented less than half of the 1,200 certified Minamata disease patients who had died. The Tokyo Exhibition also included documentary films, photos and art exhibits, panel discussions, and lectures, and it attracted nearly 30,000 people.26 This exhibition heralded a new era, whereby Minamata became connected at a new level to wider Japanese society. For example, the Minamata Forum, a Tokyobased non-profit organisation which organised the Tokyo Exhibition, has been invited to show the exhibition at 23 other venues since the original event in 1993, and it had attracted over 130,000 visitors by 2015.27 In May 2016, a special memorial lecture series to mark the 60th anniversary of the official recognition of Minamata disease, which was held by the Minamata Forum at the University of Tokyo, was attended by nearly 2,400 people including 90 volunteers.28

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At the same time, key players of the Minamata movement began to express themselves in different ways after the mid-1990s. Ogata’s two books were published in 1996 and 2001, the latter being Chisso was I, which I discussed above.29 Ishimure’s ‘Noh’ play was performed in Tokyo, Kumamoto, and Minamata in the early 2000s. The 50th anniversary in 2006 of the official recognition of Minamata disease was titled ‘Minamata for New Genesis’, reframing the Minamata incident as a historical experience with a significant message for the future. Minamata Studies, as a field of study, was established in the 2000s by Harada Masazumi, a physician who had devoted his entire working life to the care of Minamata disease patients. Kumamoto Gakuen University, where Harada taught, became the mecca of Minamata Studies, and the five-volume Minamata Gaku Ko-gi [The Minamata Studies lectures 水 俣学講義] was published between 2004 and 2012. The Minamata incident thus entered a new phase in the mid-1990s, and the Minamata movement began to flourish. In Ogata’s words, Minamata is now no longer a ‘movement’ but an ‘expression’.30 Through these developments, Minamata disease has become firmly established as a reference point for civil society Japan. The work of Ishimure Michiko was the key for connecting Minamata to society at large, and the Ishimure Michiko phenomenon is an indication of the strength of that connectedness. The third factor behind the Ishimure Michiko phenomenon is a broader social change in Japanese society. As discussed in the Introduction, there has been a major change in values in Japan since the 1980s: So-called ‘post-materialist values’ have become stronger, and there has been an increasing interest in nonmaterialist, spiritual matters as indicated by such surveys as the World Values Survey and a Japanese Government survey on materialistic/non-materialistic values.31 Japan has been very much part of the rise of the ‘new spiritual culture’ in advanced societies, which surfaced in Japan as the rise of interest in ‘mind/heart world’.32 The word ‘supirichuaru’ (‘spiritual’ スピリチュアル) became a buzzword in the 2000s, and played a pivotal role in the discourse of the new spirituality culture. A linguistic study of supirichuaritı- (spirituality スピリチュアリティ) as a loanword found that the word ‘spirit’ has been translated as tamashii (soul 魂), kokoro (heart こころ or 心), or inochi (life いのち or 命), suggesting the close interrelationship between the notions of ‘soul and spirit’ and ‘life’ in Japan.33 This broad value change that began in the 1980s has been amplified by a major shift in Japanese society since around 1990 that pushed people to reflect on the meaning of prosperity in a society that had reached its growth plateau. It started with the 1989 death of the Sho-wa Emperor, Hirohito, who symbolically represented the ‘postwar’ development as well as Japan’s war history. This was followed by the bursting in 1990 of an economic bubble, the collapse of an excessively speculative money economy based on the construction industry, which was the mainstay of Japan’s economy in the 1980s. In 1995, when Japan became a post-industrial society, that is, when the labour force in the service industry exceeded that of the manufacturing industry, Japanese society was awash with incidents that pushed its citizens to

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ask existential questions: the Hanshin–Awaji earthquake in Kobe, the terrorist sarin gas attack by the Aum Supreme Sect in the subway near the government district of Tokyo, and a series of horrendous crimes committed by youth, starting with the decapitation of a boy by a 14-year-old ‘school killer’ in Kobe, all of which happened in 1995.34 The level of anxiety in society was amplified further by economic stagnation, which led to a major policy shift towards casualisation of the workforce that also took place in 1995. It was the time when neo-liberalism spread in Japan as part of broader global trend, resulting in ever-increasing socio-economic polarisation, which translated, at the level of everyday life for instance, into an increasing prevalence of bullying amongst students and adults at large.35 The Ishimure Michiko phenomenon occurred against this backdrop of growing scepticism of economic development, broad value changes in postindustrial and postmodern Japan, and an increasing need to respond to existential questions. It was also in this context of the same, or even tougher, socio-economic climate that people in Japan were confronted with the triple disaster in March of 2011. Ishimure was no exception. The nuclear accident in Fukushima in particular provoked her sense of mission and raised the significance of her work to a new height. A documentary film on Ishimure Michiko, which was released in 2013, Hana no okudo e [Towards the paradise of flowers 花の憶土へ]: Ishimure Michiko’s Last Message, opens with an introductory statement: Ishimure Michiko has kept questioning the ‘poison of modern civilisation’. In post-3.11 Japan, she extends her questions to the destiny of the earth.36 Sociologist Mita Munesuke, an emeritus professor at Tokyo University, captured the relevance of Ishimure’s work by saying that Minamata disease represents: nothing but the malady of Japan’s capitalism as a whole. And if the collapse of the ‘life-world’ constitutes the malady of the modern world as a whole, the essence of Ishimure Michiko’s work is that it provides spiritual medicine that heals the body and the soul of the modern world. 37 The Ishimure Michiko phenomenon is an indication that Japanese society was in need of ‘spiritual medicine’ as an antidote to its ‘super-modernity’, in the words of Antonio Negri.38 Similar to Ogata, Ishimure, in her grassroots response to Minamata, the first major socio-environmental crisis in postwar Japan, writes about a world where life, soul, and nature are all integrated into one entity – the world of animism. The Ishimure Michiko phenomenon suggests that even before the triple disaster there was an increasing interest in the relationship between modernity and animism. Given the strength of the interest in Ishimure’s work, it is not surprising that her death in 2018 at the age of 90 was reported with the utmost respect and reverence. As well as having an announcement about her passing on the

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front page, all major newspapers published in-depth articles about her life and work. On the day of her memorial service, well over 1,000 people gathered in Tokyo to pay tribute, many of them unable to find seats. Ogata Masato gave the first speech, followed by ten other renowned speakers from various fields, including literature, art, academia, media, and civil society. The main organiser was the Minamata Forum, which collaborated with 16 other organisations including major newspaper companies and publishers. They were also supported by 15 other citizens’ groups.39 Empress Michiko donated a floral tribute, which was reported widely on television as well as in other news media even though her attendance at the service was ‘unofficial’.40 The memorial service marked the end of one phase of the Ishimure Michiko phenomenon. I argue, however, that her work will become even more significant as society seeks a new vision for a post-anthropocentric world. Now that I have outlined the world of animism in Ishimure’s literature, and explained the sociological significance of her writing in post-materialist and postdisaster Japan, let me return to the original question with which I started this chapter – the question of soul – the question which I posed to Ishimure in 2012.

‘You don’t have a soul, perhaps?’ As with the case of Ogata, who asserts that the most fundamental question we need to address today is what soul (tamashii 魂) is, soul has been one of the main themes of Ishimure’s literature. In response to my question of what soul is, she began to talk about the Nichi-getsu maru (Sun-moon boat), the traditional wooden fishing boat that Ogata sailed from Minamata to Tokyo for the 1996 Minamata Tokyo Exhibition. Ishimure named the boat, and it represents one of the highlights of their shared biography. Ishimure explained to me the significance of soul in relation to the boat: We had a send-off party for the Nichi-getsu maru, and I said that ‘this boat is to bring the souls to Tokyo’. Others felt the same. Yet everyone was also very worried that it was a coffin ship that might sink and be unable to come back: Ogata-san might die. I heard that his wife begged him not to go as did other relatives. But he told his wife that he would sail east all the way to Tokyo to appeal to people about Minamata. When she said that it might cost him his life, he said that he would take the souls to Tokyo in exchange for his life (いのちと引き換えに行くとじゃ). With this, she decided that she should let him go. Ogata-san thus set off, prepared to die. I wanted to be on the boat, but couldn’t for physical reasons, so I went along the coast following the boat. When we finally met the activist-supporters in Tokyo, we told them that we had brought souls from Minamata with us. To this, some of them responded by saying: ‘You always talk about soul, but what is it? We cannot see it or touch it, and we don’t understand what you mean by soul’. I was really taken aback by this response. (Interview 16 January 2012 in Kumamoto)

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This must have been an important encounter for Ishimure because she also refers to it in her extended conversation with Tsurumi Kazuko.41 In her dialogue with Tsurumi, Ishimure recalls the co-organisers of the exhibition saying: ‘Does such a thing as soul still exist these days? That’s creepy’,42 ‘In Tokyo, a word such as soul is a dead language’,43 and ‘Are you going to do another funeral in Tokyo? That’s spooky’.44 Ishimure remarks that people from Minamata were completely at a loss when they heard these responses from their supporters in Tokyo. For the Minamata folks, carrying the souls on the traditional fishing boat was so profoundly important that Ogata was prepared to die for it. What was at stake for them was the souls of the people and all living things killed by methyl-mercury poisoning, as well as the souls of the villagers who came to send the boat off.45 Behind their mission was the same realisation that led to the establishment of the Hongan no Kai two years earlier: the realisation that the legacy of Minamata is to pray for the return of souls (tamashii no kaiki 魂の回帰), which, in a narrow sense, means the reconnection with the souls of the deceased (see Chapter 1),46 but for the villagers it meant the revival of their entire life-world including such things as the sea and mountains.47 The rejection of the notion of soul by the Tokyo supporters created a disjunction between the ‘Tokyo people’ and the ‘Minamata team’. The Minamata team was shocked, and wondered why the ‘Tokyo people’ had offered support if they were not concerned with matters relating to soul, Ishimure told me. More specifically, this disjunction of beliefs meant that the Minamata team could not conduct the tamashii oroshi (魂降ろし) ceremony to transfer the souls off from the boat, which meant that the souls would have to be taken back to Minamata.48 In the end, however, a group of women in Tokyo who had each lost children in tragic circumstances volunteered to prepare for the shukkongi (出魂 儀) ceremony, in order to invoke the spirits of the deceased.49 In the ceremony, Minamata disease sufferers wearing white kimonos similar to those used for goddesses (神女) in Okinawa walked to the fishing boat and lit candles.50 Sugimoto Eiko, as the representative of the sufferers, then read a speech, which had been written on a scroll.51 Ishimure explains to Tsurumi what happened when Sugimoto finished her address: Then, the rain stopped suddenly, and the moon appeared, a really beautiful moon. The sails of the fishing boat spread out and flapped commandingly in the valley between the high-rise buildings. The white sails looked silver in the reflected moonlight. We could hear them fluttering. And then a small flock of geese flew across the full moon, right across the middle of it … It was so very majestic. Tsurumi responded: ‘Splendid! The souls flew!’ Ishimure then said: ‘Yes, those who saw it later told me that they all shivered’.52

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The Nichi-getsu maru had been too badly damaged in the voyage to Tokyo to sail back to Minamata, so it was decided to have it burned at a rubbish disposal incinerator. Ishimure explained to Tsurumi what had happened: Young men volunteering at the Exhibition told us that, the night before the boat was due to be burnt, they spent all night cleaning the inside of the incinerator, crying the whole time they were working. They felt that they should clean away all the rubbish from Tokyo because the boat had brought the precious souls from Minamata. When we visited the disposal site on the day, the incinerator workers all lined up to greet us formally and said that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to burn the boat that carried the dear souls. They said they always despised their work of burning the dirty rubbish from Tokyo, and that they were most grateful to be able to burn the ‘soul boat’ (tamashii no fune 魂の船). We were very moved by this. To our surprise, they also set up an altar for us. … Those young people who had cried while they did the cleaning. … We didn’t ask them to do the cleaning. They volunteered. It looked as if they were longing for something noble. They had an earnest look in their eyes as if they were spiritually hungry. … I want to see them again, but I don’t know why they gathered, what they were feeling. There were so many of them. … There are young people in Japan who do not have a place to be, who are looking for a place to be (ibasho 居場所), a place where their floating souls can land.53 It appears that just as much as some in Tokyo had rejected the notion of soul, others responded even though they had little knowledge of what soul was. Those who responded included some who had experienced death (e.g. mothers who had lost a child), alienated youth who were, in the words of Ishimure, ‘spiritually hungry’, and people working at the rubbish disposal site who normally disliked their work. These people played a crucial role at the beginning, when Minamata delegates were confronted with the possibility of not being able to transfer the souls, and also at the end, when confronted with the possibility of having to burn the ‘soul ship’ together with the foul rubbish from Tokyo. They prepared altars and ‘put their heart and soul’ into preparing the place for the occasion. Without their help, the Exhibition would have been a very sad event for the Minamata people. This episode is important for this book because, as far as the attitudes about soul are concerned, the difference between the ‘Minamata team’ and ‘Tokyo people’ corresponds to the difference between animism and mainstream social science. As discussed in the Introduction, matters spiritual have been largely absent until recently in the social sciences. This brings us back to the very first question posed at the beginning of the book: Have we missed something important in the social sciences? What are the implications of not addressing the issue of soul? Keeping these big questions in mind, I want to pursue the question at hand: What does soul mean to Ishimure Michiko?

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After telling me that she was really taken aback by the people in Tokyo who had no idea what soul meant, Ishimure continued: Soul is something you have inherited from your ancestors (gosenzo-sama ご先祖さま) as their yet unattained prayer, something you yearn for, the most important thing you pray for deep in your heart. Those who can feel it, can feel it, but if you cannot, it can’t be helped; you probably don’t have it – that is what I told the people in Tokyo. It cannot be explained by words, but it’s something you keep in your heart. It is a yearning that has been passed to you from your ancestors, one generation after another. This is what soul means to me. (Interview) What does Ishimure mean by ancestors then? In addition to senzo (先祖 or its honorific form: go-senzo-sama ご先祖さま), which is a standard translation of ‘ancestors’, she often uses the word oyasama (祖さま parents/ancestors). This usage is unique to her writing, and Ishimure explained to me where the word came from: Minamata disease patients were neglected for almost 20 years. Even after they found the cause of the poisoning, Chisso did not stop discharging the chemicals into the sea, and the sea became polluted beyond hope. When sufferers went to appeal to the prefectural or the national government (kuni 国), newspaper reporters would surround them and ask: Why didn’t you appeal to the government earlier? Sufferers would then say: ‘We thought the government (kuni) was oyasama. We thought that those superior people at the prefectural government office were also oyasama, and there was no way we could protest against oyasama. Because they were oyasama, we thought that they would sort it out for us. We did not believe they would leave us alone in our suffering’. When I heard them speak like this I realised what a profound word oyasama is. They do not say senzo (ancestors). They say oyasama [parents/ancestors]. (interview) The difference between senzo and oyasama, as explained by Ishimure, is that the latter is used with a greater sense of yearning and with unquestionable faith. Rather than deriding the submissiveness and lack of critical awareness of those who used this term, Ishimure said: ‘What a profound word “oyasama” is’. It is profound in the sense that sufferers innocently believed in the goodness of those in power, which in their minds was the government (kuni) or the state. This meaning of oyasama as ‘benevolent authority in power’ is similar to the traditional meaning of okami (お上), which refers to institutions such as the Emperor or the government, although okami is used more with a sense of fear rather than one of yearning. Ishimure uses this word, oyasama (or oya 祖 to be precise), also as part of her idiosyncratic phrase kusa no oya (草の祖), which means ‘ancestor of grass’. Rather than meaning ‘benevolent authority in power’, oya in this phrase conveys an image of both the mystical power of nature as well as the

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ancestor of all life, humans and nonhumans alike. Although expressed by the same arcane word, the difference between the two oyasamas is stark. Ishimure describes in her story how the people’s faith in oyasama as paternalistic and benevolent authority collapsed, as Minamata disease sufferers became disillusioned with the power elite. The phrase ‘ancestor of grass’, on the other hand, is often used in her stories, and reveals both the beauty and the plight of the life of Minamata disease sufferers. This contrast in meaning of the word oyasama, I argue, highlights the historical shift in the psychological and ethical landscape of the Minamata disease sufferers. They suggest the process through which Minamata sufferers have freed themselves from the spell of the ideology of the powerful (whether it be the Emperor or elite government officials) in order to (re-)establish their sense of connectedness with nature, as Ogata did, not only as their physical surroundings but also as the basis of their own existence. This shift from a benevolent and powerful human oyasama to a mystical one that draws its power from nature is important because ‘ancestor of grass’ is at the core of Ishimure’s narrative of animism, and the shift indicates that her discourse on animism emerged in the pre-modern to modern to postmodern transition. To put it differently, her narrative of animism is a new ethical and ontological construction that emerged from the grassroots struggle in Minamata. Ishimure does not simply suggest a revival of animistic traditions, nor even a return to a pre-pollution world. Instead, she provides a vision of a new animism that emerged from a negative experience of modernity. Ishimure remarks that after witnessing the extreme suffering caused by Minamata disease, she lost faith in any sort of religion.54 Although her view of animism is based on the Buddhist-Shinto-animistic tradition that has existed as part of the everyday life of ordinary people, as a concept it is new. In the pre-modern world, people lived the world of animism without having to think about it, but after modernity people think about animism more than they live it. It becomes an idea more than a reality. Let me now zoom in on Ishimure’s literature in order to describe this shift from one oyasama (a paternalistic authority) to the other (an animistic notion where life = soul = nature).

The fall of paternalistic authority In Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow, Ishimure describes the ‘Shiranui-kai Fishing Dispute’ of 1959,55 which happened at a relatively early stage of the Minamata struggle, just three years after official confirmation of the disease. In November of that year, when sixteen Diet members visited Minamata to inspect the unfolding problems, some 4,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the Minamata Municipal Hospital and a riot broke out. At the beginning of the demonstration, Nakaoka Satsuki, a representative of the sufferers, read out in front of the huge crowd a fishermen’s petition to the lawmakers. Below is Ishimure’s reconstruction of the incident:

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Stories of soul: Animistic cosmology by Ishimure Michiko Nakaoka Satsuki, a smallish, middle-aged woman, came forward and read out the fishermen’s petition in a trembling voice and with frequent breaks, eloquently expressing their physical and mental torment. I give below an abbreviated version of this petition. ‘We have always regarded you as fathers and mothers of the nation’. ‘Our children are dying of Minamata disease. … Our husbands are suffering from the same terrible illness and so are no longer able to sail out to catch fish. Those who can still handle their nets face poverty and hardship, because no one will buy their catches. Restrained by conscience, we cannot make a living by stealing. We tried to put up with our suffering by convincing ourselves that it was our fate and that we couldn’t change it, but now we have reached the limit of our endurance. We can no longer trust anyone. ‘We take your visit to Minamata to be a token of your goodwill and compassion towards us. You are our only hope. Please help us!’ Repeatedly nodding to the speaker’s words, the older fishermen wiped their tears with the towel headbands they had just removed. The supplicating look on the faces of all participants, their rough, dark hands resting on their knees or clasping the poles of their banners, every fold in their garments showed both despair and the fearless determination of the people sentenced to death.56

Ishimure describes the villagers’ modesty and respect towards authority, and notes that they called the lawmakers the ‘fathers and mothers of the nation’. This respect for authority permeated the fisherfolk, who were at the ‘bottom of Japan’s modern social class’, the social class with which Ishimure identifies herself.57 Her own father said of her criticism of the authorities regarding Minamata disease: ‘If you did that in the past, your throat would have been cut while sleeping or you would be executed on the cross…. How dare you resist authority (okami お上) and the unseen (目にみえんもの) while being a woman (onago おなご)’.58 It is notable that Ishimure’s father juxtaposed those in authority with the unseen, which normally refers to the spiritual world. The phonetic similarities between okami (お上), which literally means ‘those above us’, and kami (カミ), which means ‘god’ or ‘deity’, are also relevant here. Maruyama Masao wrote in 1946 that in Japan people ‘are faced with a situation in which national sovereignty involves both spiritual authority and political power’.59 The identification of moral, if not spiritual, power in those who held political power was evident even in the late 1960s amongst the humble residents of Minamata. In 1968, nearly ten years after reading the fishermen’s petition, the ‘smallish woman’ mentioned above, Nakaoka Satsuki, met with the then Minister of Health and Welfare, Sonoda Sunao, who was from Amakusa (天草, which literally means ‘heaven’s grass’), a group of neighbouring islands across the Shiranui Sea. Being left for ten years with no action on the part of the authorities, Nakaoka stepped forward to confront the Minister. Ishimure reconstructed the incident in her story:

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However, all she could manage was to sob out a fervent supplication: ‘In the name of the Minamata disease patients and their families, we beg you to help us’. Too overwhelmed to say anything, the patients nodded in silence. It was a spontaneous action of the Mutual Help Society, which took by surprise not only Minister Sonoda, but also his hosts in Minamata. … The patients’ sobbing voices grew louder and louder, until their pleas reverberated everywhere: ‘Please help us!’ They seemed to be praying to a god for a miracle.60 The Minister’s delegation then visited the Minamata City Hospital, where one of the patients he met was Sakagami Yuki, who had been hospitalised for more than ten years with the disease. She was surrounded by ‘some thirty gentlemen wearing fine suits … who crowded around [her] bed, staring at [her] as if [she] was some rare animal’.61 And then her recurring convulsive fits started. Ishimure’s narrator reconstructs the scene: Yuki was overpowered at once by three doctors, who pinned down her shoulders and ankles, and gave her a sedative injection. She didn’t seem to realise what was happening to her. Suddenly, she yelled: ‘Long live the Emperor!’ A dead silence fell over the room. Frowning, the minister turned towards Sugihara Yuri [a 17-year old congenital Minamata patient]. In a thin, trembling falsetto voice, Yuri began to sing the national anthem. The melody sounded all the more forlorn for its being so pathetically discordant and out of place. … Unable to bear the raw ghastliness of the scene, Sonoda and his party hastily left the room.62 Four days after this incident, Sonoda and the Ministry of Health and Welfare fully recognised for the first time the causal relationship between the methyl mercury in the effluent from the Chisso Minamata factory and Minamata disease.63 It is not clear whether or not the Minister’s visit to Minamata triggered this official recognition. In the same year of 1968, Japan became the second largest economy in the world. By then, the Chisso Minamata factory had lost it leading industrial role in the chemical sector as the cutting-edge technology had shifted from electrochemical and organic chemistry to petrochemicals.64 The production of acetaldehyde, which involved the use of methyl mercury as a catalyst, was coming to an end.65 Thus for 12 years since 1956, when Minamata disease was officially recognised, or for 15 years since 1953, when the local cats began to die with the ‘crazy dance’ characteristic of Minamata disease, or for 36 years since 1932, when methyl mercury first began to be used for the production of acetaldehyde, the Japanese authorities took absolutely no measures to reduce the discharge of poisonous effluent from the Chisso Minamata factory complex. The authorities firmly protected Chisso and other companies (e.g. Sho-wa Denko-, which caused Minamata disease in Niigata) and embraced what Ui Jun calls ‘technological nationalism’66 at the expense of the life and well-being of the local people, as well as the animals and other living things in the ecosystem.

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It was to the apex of official authority that Nakaoka Satsuki and members of the Mutual Help Society sobbed and pleaded for help, and instead of being outraged and rebellious, patient Yuki yelled ‘Long live the Emperor!’ while having violent convulsive fits, and the severely disfigured girl, Yuri, sang the national anthem. This sense of yearning for the protection of those in power, however, was to be completely shattered in 1970, two years after the ‘Long live the Emperor!’ incident, when delegates of sufferers visited the Ministry of Health and Welfare and met with the then Parliamentary Vice-Minister of Health and Welfare, Hashimoto Ryu-taro-, who later became Prime Minister (1996–1998). Below is an excerpt from the Asahi Shimbun newspaper: ‘Mr Vice-Minister, your words are too cruel’. Minamata disease patient, Sakamoto Masu (43) from Minamata in Kumamoto Prefecture cried. In the morning of the 15th, seven Minamata disease patients and their supporters sat on a loosely woven mat of rice leaves in front of the Ministry building in Kasumigazeki, Tokyo, and protested: ‘Is the Health and Welfare Ministry on the side of the wrongdoer or the victim?’ From about 1 pm, they met with Parliamentary Vice-Minister Hashimoto Ryu-taro(32) … pleaded their plight and requested the warm protection of the government. But Vice-Minister Hashimoto’s attitude was so cold. He repeatedly tripped them up with their own words and raised his voice to press them hard to answer his questions instead. Some patients became silent, and some wept. After the meeting, sufferers were trembling with rage, saying ‘We were treated like criminals’ and ‘It was so scary’. Sakamoto Masu tearfully said: ‘We country-dwellers thought that the Ministry would be thinking about the people’. Although patients begged not to be treated like criminals, it sometimes appeared as if the face of the Vice-Minister Hashimoto was sneering at them. … Sakamoto, who finds it difficult even to sit up, cried out to the Vice-Minister: ‘You persist in denying anything about compensation, but your response is too heartless. Over the last ten years, we have been forced to sell our houses, fishing boats, and fields because of the disease. Those of you who hold a high position, don’t you understand that?’ Masu fell ill 15 years ago, and she could not have children for fear of her disease’s effect on the foetus.67 On this incident, Ishimure writes the following in Villages of the Gods, which is a continuation of Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow: It was well known that Aunty Sakamoto Masu went to Tokyo with others before the ‘Compensation Measure Committee’ began and that they were treated horribly by Vice-Minister Hashimoto. The Vice-Minister rebuked them by saying, ‘I have no time for patients who started the lawsuit’, which was reported in the newspaper and astonished everybody. Aunty Masu’s story was realistic and vivid, but somehow it was also humorous because of her character.

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‘Yah, they all said that Minamata disease patients are all short of soul (魂 の足らん人間). The company people and the government people (国の人 たち), I don’t know what sort of study they did at Todai [Tokyo University]. They have a different soul from us who are suffering from this weird disease’. ‘Compared to those in the government [kuni 国], we are more decent people (当たり前に近か人間)’.68 Masu says the following in Ishimure’s reconstruction of the incident: ‘[The Vice-Minister is] just a little over 30 years of age. People say officials become maggots when they eat rice, but he didn’t even have the soul of a maggot. If someone so heartless can hold a high position in the Japanese government, the state of Japan is also rotten. In that meeting, I saw the true nature of kuni [the government 国] of Japan’.69 Ishimure illustrates further how the Minamata disease sufferers were completely disillusioned about the moral goodness of government (kuni) and its officials. The narrator in her story says that Masu and others thought that: ‘If we go to the kuni, and if only we can have our plight heard by the kuni people, kuni people would understand. If they were kuni, they would’.70 After returning from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, however, they would say: ‘When we went to Tokyo, we thought that kuni would be there. But kuni was not in Tokyo. If what we saw was kuni, then kuni is a frightening thing. The people we met were on a par with us, Minamata folks. No, they were a little out of the ordinary, they were worse than us. They were merciless. They probably intend to abandon us and leave us to die. Kuni was a terrifying place. Where can we find our own kuni?’.71 The narrator continues: [Minamata folks] were feeling miserable after seeing what they called ‘kuni’. It was like finding a complete stranger, a parent who had deserted them. No, it was more like being yelled at by someone who you firmly believed to be your parent [oyasama].72 If people in pre-modern times expected that the foundation of ethics lay in oyasama as the benevolent authority, people in modern times expect that it is in the hands of the educated elite, whom Ishimure calls ‘gakko-yuki’ (‘those who go to school’ ‘学校ゆき’), who serve in legal, political, and bureaucratic institutions. The incident described above is a collapse of faith in oyasama as a benevolent authority as well as in the gakko-yuki elite who also represented

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kuni. What Ishimure narrates above is a complete collapse of the foundation of ethics in the minds of Minamata disease sufferers for both types of authority, which roughly correspond to pre-modern and modern. Disenchantment with authority happened in the early 1970s amongst the Minamata folks. This experience of disenchantment with authority is very relevant today, especially in relation to the nuclear crisis in Fukushima. The nuclear crisis was an incident that shook to the core the general faith people had in the ‘system’. This system is supported by the political, bureaucratic, business, and academic elite, people who are all products of the country’s education system. Uchida Tatsuru, one of the most vocal public intellectuals in Japan today, admits that before the nuclear accident even he had a vague expectation that the brightest top elites would simply not do anything that would seriously risk Japan’s survival. He had faith in their basic goodness to protect Japan’s future,73 and he suggests that there has been a general faith in the establishment as the provider of ethics in postwar Japan. Like Minamata disease sufferers, residents of Fukushima also visited ministry offices to appeal directly to those who were involved in making nuclearand disaster-related decisions. People went to the ministries, some with tears and others with anger, but often came away disappointed and disheartened by the responses given by government officials. Most notorious was the April 2011 decision to allow a radiation level of 20 mSv (milli-sieverts) for children on school premises. Twenty mSv is the threshold level for nuclear workers to apply for compensation for leukaemia,74 and is four times higher than the level with which people were forced to evacuate from Chernobyl.75 The decision caused an uproar domestically and internationally. Residents called a meeting with government officials, the ‘Protect Fukushima Children from Radiation Meeting’, which was recorded and made available online.76 The meeting revealed that the decision was made quite arbitrarily without following due process and without careful consideration of the potential consequences, and this caused general disbelief and a loss of faith in the educational, bureaucratic, political, and academic elite. The same loss of faith with the gakko-yuki elite and their kuni government that Minamata people experienced was thus repeated some 60 years later. Ishimure writes that by witnessing the extreme suffering caused by Minamata disease up close she lost faith in all forms of religion.77 When people have lost faith in the authorities and the system, as they did in Minamata and Fukushima, what else can provide them with something to believe in? What can people trust? What is their ethical foundation (or ‘shin o oku’) in Ogata’s terminology? Or in Ishimure’s terminology, what can replace oyasama as the powerful authority? Ishimure raised this question in my interview with her: I began to wonder what would be my oyasama. Surely I myself must have my own personal oyasama [祖さまというものが私にもあったはず]. (Interview)

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The ‘ancestor of grass’ as a story for change In answering her own question, Ishimure began to talk about the ‘ancestor of grass’ (‘kusa no oya’ ‘草の祖’) in the context of a near-death experience she had when she fell and broke her pelvis a few years earlier: I was wondering what my oyasama would be, and then I had a fall and lost consciousness. I blacked out the moment I broke my pelvis; I didn’t feel pain or anything. While unconscious, I actually went to see my oyasama. If you want to call it an illusion, it was that, but I thought that my oyasama was the ancestor of grass, that is, the ordinary grass you can find anywhere. I felt that it was my oyasama. Professor Tada Tomio talks in his book about the work of a Japanese molecular biologist who lived in America and proposed the existence of ‘the original DNA’ (ganso saibo- 元祖細胞).78 When I fell and lost consciousness, I went back to remote antiquity, to the ancient forests of the ancestor of the original DNA cells. When I fell, it felt like I was falling a long way. I have Parkinson’s disease, and when I walk around it feels as if I am walking on a cloud. When I fell, it was like I had put my feet into the space between the clouds and I fell into that space. I fell at the entrance to this room. My feet went upside down, pointing to the ceiling, and you know the Achilles’ tendon? I saw something leave my body from there, something fluffy, floating, and flying (ふわふわ ふわふわ), not like a bird, but more like a butterfly. I wondered what it was. I broke my pelvis here, but my soul left me from the Achilles’ tendon of my left foot, like a butterfly flying away, floating and flying, floating and flying. … In the Okinawan dialect, a butterfly is called ‘habira’.79 My soul went away as a habira. 80 It was my near-death experience. The first thing I noticed after that was a vast ancient forest (太古の森) on the seashore, and then I felt a sea breeze. When I looked up, I saw the leaves of the ancient trees swaying, and I heard indefinable music that couldn’t be expressed using Western musical notes. The sound of the grass swaying at the foot of the trees became music. I named the music gengaku shiju-so- 幻楽始終奏 [literally, ‘illusionary music from the beginning to the end’, which is a homophony of string quartet 弦楽四重奏]. The leaves of the whole mountain forest swayed to the music. The sea breeze was also playing the music of the ancient forest. I felt that everything from the time of the original cell to present-day civilisation could be expressed in full by the music that I was hearing then. It was bliss. Then I noticed an akou (Japanese sea fig) tree that grew out of the seawater. I saw myself perched on a branch of the akou tree together with some snails. Snails are very primitive shells, and I was there with those primitive creatures perched on the branch in the form of a butterfly floating and flying. I wonder what that was. It was like breathing. (Interview)

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Ishimure has written about this near-death experience elsewhere, where she states more explicitly that the forest where she went was the forest of the ‘ancestor of grass’; that it represents the original DNA; and that she regards it as her ancestor.81 Through this out-of-body experience, Ishimure is conveying the following formula: The ancestor of grass (kusa no oya) = the original DNA = her ancestor. Ishimure’s out-of-body experience is similar to Ogata’s experience of ‘madness’ (see Chapter 1). Ogata had a glimpse of the life-world through his ‘madness’, whereas Ishimure’s soul left her body as she fell, went through clouds, and reached a primordial forest filled with blissful music. The unseen world she visited, however, is not just an anthropocentric spiritual world for the deceased filled with souls to be reposed as in a Noh play, but rather a world filled with life in its original, powerful, and enchanting form. In fact, Ishimure’s story of her near-death experience reminds me of Ogata’s life-world summarised in Figure 1.1. It is as if by falling down head-first Ishimure had passed through the barrier between this world and the other world. She fell all the way down to the place where life is born, where it recuperates, and where it regenerates before eventually returning to a place where life has continued for millions of years with the blissful music she heard. It is a place where life = nature = soul. It also reminds me of the pure, clean, and serene space, underneath the deadly Sea of Corruption, into which Nausicaä falls in Miyazaki’s animation film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (see Chapter 4). Here, let me quote again what Ishimure told me about what soul meant for her: Soul is something you have inherited from your ancestors as their yet unattained prayer, something you yearn for, the most important thing you pray for deep in your heart. Those who can feel it, can feel it, but if you cannot, it can’t be helped; you probably don’t have it – that is what I told the people in Tokyo. It cannot be explained by words, but it’s something you keep in your heart. It is a yearning that has been passed to you from your ancestors, generation after generation. This is what soul means to me. (Interview) Soul for Ishimure, then, is something that connects us with the world which Ogata would call ‘life-world’. For Ishimure, animism is like faith in the existence of this life-world. On being asked what animism means for her, Ishimure explained elsewhere that: It is to put our hands in prayer to meet the morning sun, a rock, a mountain, a river and to worship the ancient mother sphere (存在の母層) to enable the exchange of soul. … It is the exchange on an equal basis with nameless gods who are at the very bottom, not ranked gods in grand state-financed shrines. What shall I say? It is to embrace the most primitive form of existence (存在の原野に帰依する), and to exchange with the spirit of the earth because we are all children of the earth spirit.82

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As sociologist Tsurumi Kazuko points out, the characteristics of Ishimure’s notion of animism are the same as Edward Tylor’s in that it is the faith that a spirit or soul exists in everything, but the difference is that Ishimure’s version has a strong sense of connectedness between humans and nature, resulting in exchanges of soul between each individual person and natural objects.83 As an example of this sense of connectedness, Tsurumi refers to Ishimure’s short autobiographical piece on a Chinese lantern plant.84 In that story, Ishimure as a little girl admired the fruit of the lantern plant so much that she lay on the ground, on her tummy, in order to watch it more intently, simply to breath together with it – to be at one with it85 – just as she did in the ancient forest of ancestor DNA some 80 years later. Tsurumi regards this ‘co-breathing’ as a representation of the rhythm and sound of life, and says it is also expressed in things like Japanese short poems (tanka) and traditional Japanese dance. According to Tsurumi, all these things convey something that cannot be shared by words alone.86 The sense of being connected to the world of life, whether it is called ‘lifeworld’ or the ‘primordial (ancestor of plants) forest’, is of central importance to Minamata cosmology. Ogata and Ishimure put the utmost importance on being connected to this world, as shown in their statement for the Association for the Original Vow (Hongan no kai) as discussed in the previous chapter. Ogata calls this sense of connectedness ‘a sense of dialogue’ or ‘workings of life’. For Ishimure, having a sense of connectedness means to have ‘soul’ that is inherited from ancestors. The relationships between humans, nature, life, and soul in Minamata cosmology are expressed by the last (Stage IV) diagram of Figure 1.1. Both Ogata and Ishimure believe that soul is the common medium that connects them to the world of life, life-world, or the world of the ancestor of grass or the forest of the original DNA. Although Ishimure’s notion of ‘ancestor of grass’ is part of her literary work and her visit to the forest of the original DNA is only a personal out-of-body experience, the story she provides is not far removed from recent developments in biological science: ‘A surprisingly specific genetic portrait of the ancestor of all living things has been generated by scientists’, reports The New York Times (25 July 2016) about a paper published by a group of revolutionary biologists in Germany on the ‘Last Universal Common Ancestor’ (LUCA). Whether LUCA is the origin of life itself might be debatable, but scientists seem to agree that there is a common ancestor of all living things, and that humans are connected with all other living forms through this common origin.87 Recent developments in epigenetics, which have found that what a person experiences in life can cause chemical modification in their genes and then be transmitted to future generations, is also relevant here.88 It suggests that there might be a biological mechanism that carries what Ishimure calls ‘soul’ or what Ogata calls ‘memories of life’ to future generations. One of the key points advocated by the Minamata movement is that Minamata disease will never end. The quarterly magazine published by the Association for the

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Original Vow, for instance, is entitled Tamashii Utsure [Catch the soul 魂うつ れ] and subtitled ‘Minamata has no end’ (Owari naki Minamata 終わりなき 水俣). Epigenetics suggests that, ‘Minamata has no end’ is not just a political statement indicating continuous suffering and damage to the environment: it also suggests that major trauma inflicted upon the human body and other living organisms might be recorded at the genetic level to be transmitted to future generations as a ‘memory of life’. But the ‘memory of life’ which we inherit from our ancestors and transmit to future generations can also work to provide a positive frame of reference. Ogata and Ishimure have done just that. Minamata disease gave both of them a chance to articulate, through their own biography, its significance in the context of modernity, which is as a deep critique of modernity. In the case of Ogata, his childhood memories provided points of reference which he used to change his life from being ‘swallowed by the system’ to the one whereby he could regain his sense of self (or soul) to be firmly connected to the life-world. Ogata believes that the ‘memory of life’ (or soul) throws questions at him and that he was forced to have a dialogue with it, which represented some kind of ‘corrective function’ of life. Ishimure, on the other hand, used her childhood memories and the experiences of Minamata disease sufferers to construct the world of animism – not merely as an intangible cultural heritage in which people lived, but as a grassroots response to the atrocities caused by modernity with a clear political message and an ontological reference point. By doing so, Ishimure as a writer worked like a shaman, conveying the message of the ‘soul’, the ‘ancestor of grass’, or the life-world in order to provide a new foundation of ethics based firmly on life when she felt that all other forms of faith presented by human society had lost their credibility.89 Thus, the Minamata story is no longer just a story of poor victims who were killed and injured by a reckless pursuit of profit and economic development. It is a powerful story for change that is clearly aimed at changing the future. This new positioning of Minamata is expressed by the title of a report of the 50th anniversary of the official recognition of the disease: ‘Minamata for New Genesis’.90 And in the words of Ogata and Ishimure, this pressure to change in part comes from the life-world, so it can regain a state of well-being for all forms of life and prevent further destruction. This narrative for change is important also from the viewpoint of epigenetics because change at the genetic level appears to occur only through our own experience, and only we can change our own lived experience. Epigenetics suggests that by changing our own lived experience we can influence what is passed on to future generations. The Minamata story is also very relevant in the era we now live in: the Anthropocene. It is relevant because it provides powerful reference points for rethinking two fundamental premises of the paradigm of natural and social sciences: the Cartesian division of natural and human worlds and the Weberian premise of a disenchanted world. In the Minamata cosmology, humans are firmly part of nature and the world is full of enchantment. Although local

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people have lived with this cosmology for centuries, it has now been presented by Ogata and Ishimure as new animism, a discourse which emerged as a grassroots response to a socio-ecological disaster that occurred in the process of intensive modernisation. This new discourse on animism is important for the Anthropocene, as it presents a counter-discourse to the techno-scientific management paradigm, where nature, life, and soul might all become something to be managed and controlled with very little understanding of the connectedness between them. How, then, can we advance from here? How can this rather ‘fuzzy’ concept of animism be drawn closer to the language of social science? The following chapter explores this question by introducing the work of sociologist Tsurumi Kazuko.

Notes 1 This chapter contains materials published in Shoko Yoneyama 2017, ‘Animism: A Grassroots response to socioenvironmental crisis in Japan’, in Tessa Morris-Suzuki & Eun Jeong Soh (eds), New Worlds from Below: Informal Life Politics and Grassroots Action in Twenty-First-Century Northeast Asia, ANU Press, Canberra, pp.99–130. Permission to reuse this material has been obtained from ANU Press. 2 Ogata Masato 2001, Chisso wa watashi de atta [Chisso was I (Chisso within)], Ashi Shobo-, Fukuoka, p.67. 3 Ishimure Michiko 2011, Kukai Jo-do [Paradise in the sea of sorrow], Sekai bungaku zenshu- [World literature series] III-04 edn compiled by Ikezawa Natsuki, Kawade Shobo-, Tokyo, p.44 (my emphasis) (Chapter 1, originally published as Kugai Jo-do in 1969). I have translated this passage for the purpose of this book, which is somewhat different from that of the translation by Livia Monnet. See Ishimure Michiko 1990, Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow, trans. Livia Monnet, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, p.60. 4 Monnet’s translation, which is more literary than verbatim, does not reflect these points. 5 Ishimure, Kukai Jo-do, p.235 (Chapter 2, originally published as Kamigami no mura [Villages of the gods] in 2006). 6 ibid. 7 Livia Monnet 2016, ‘“Another world in this world”: Slow violence, environmental time, and the decolonial imagination in Ishimure Michiko’s Villages of the Gods’, in Bruce Allen & Yuki Masami (eds) Ishimure Michiko’s Writing in Ecocritical Perspective: Between Sea and Sky, Lexington Books, New York & London, pp.143–171 (citation on pp.158–159). 8 Ishimure, Kukai Jo-do, pp.235–236 (my translation). 9 Ishimure Michiko [1976] 2013, Tsubaki no umi no ki [Story of the Sea of Camellias], Kawade bunko, Tokyo, p.17 (my translation). 10 See, for example, Graham Harvey 2005, Animism: Respecting the Living World, Hurst & Co., London. 11 Ishimure, Kukai Jo-do, p.236 (my translation; emphasis added). 12 Monnet, ‘“Another world”’, p.161. 13 Ishimure, Tsubaki, p.158 (my translation). 14 Miyazaki Hayao (dir.) 2001, Sen to Chihiro no Kami Kakushi [Spirited away], animation feature, Studio Ghibli, Tokyo. 15 Monnet, ‘“Another world”’. 16 ibid.

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17 Mita Munesuke 2004, ‘Ijutsu toshite no sakuhin: Ten no io o yomu’ [Literary work as a medical art: Reading The Fish of Heaven], in Ishimure Michiko, Shiranui: Ishimure Michiko no kosumorojı- [Shiranui: The Cosmology of Ishimure Michiko] Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo, pp.161–165. 18 Watanabe Kyo-ji 2006, ‘Ishimure Michiko no jiko keisei’ [The formation of Ishimure Michiko’s sense of self], in Iwaoka Nakamasa (ed.), Ishimure Michiko no sekai [The world of Ishimure Michiko], Gen Shobo-, Fukuoka. 19 Histogram ‘A’ is courtesy of Maki Hammond, PhD candidate, University of Adelaide. 20 In 1970, Ishimure was selected for a prestigious Ohya Soichi Non-Fiction Award for Kugai Jo-do [Paradise in the sea of sorrow], but declined as she considered it unethical to be given an award for a book describing the plight of Minamata disease sufferers. 21 Kitano Ryu-ichi 2013, ‘Ima mo kurushimu Minamata no kanja ni atte – Ishimure-san ko-go--sama ni tegami’ [Please meet the still suffering Minamata patients – Ishimure wrote a letter to the Empress], Asahi Shimbun, 25 October. 22 Kitano Ryu-ichi 2013, ‘Ishimure-san ga miokuri – Ko-go--sama kara dengon “Okarada taisetsu ni”’ [Ishimure saw them [the royal couple] off – Message from the Empress ‘Please take care’], Asahi Shimbun (Seibu), 29 October. 23 This includes compilations of her work: an 18-volume Ishimure Michiko zenshu[Complete works of Ishimure Michiko] published by Fujiwara shoten between 2004 and 2014, and another series, a seven-volume Ishimure Michiko shibun korekushon [Ishimure Michiko literary works] also published by Fujiwara shoten in 2009 and 2010. In 2011, just before the triple disaster, Ishimure’s flagship work, Kukai Jo-do (Trilogy), was published as part of Sekai bungaku zenshu- [World literature series], and was the only Japanese entry in the series. The trilogy included Kugai Jo-do (1969) [Paradise in the sea of sorrow], Tenko (1997) [Lake of heaven], and Kamigami no mura (2006) [Villages of the gods], which altogether took 40 years to complete. 24 Ogata, Chisso, p.122. 25 Timothy George 2001, Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp.289–290; Tsuchimoto Noriaki 2004, Minamata Nikki: Yomigaeru tamashii o tazunete [Minamata diary: Visiting the revived soul], documentary film, Shineasoshie, Tokyo. 26 George, Minamata, pp.288–289. 27 Minamata Forum, ‘Minamata Forum katsudo- naiyo-’ [Minamata Forum activities], viewed 29 June 2013, . 28 Minamata Forum, Minamata-byo- ko-shiki kakunin 60nen kinen tokubetsu ko-enkai [Special memorial lecture series to mark the 60th anniversary of the official recognition of Minamata disease], viewed 2 July 2016, . 29 Ogata, Chisso; and Ogata Masato & Tsuji Shinichi 1996, Tokoyo no fune o kogite [Rowing the eternal sea], Seori Shobo-, Tokyo. 30 Ogata Masato, interview by author, digital recording, Minamata, 25 January 2013. 31 Ministry of the Environment 2013, ‘Yutakasa ni Taisuru Ishiki no Henka’ [Change of perceptions about affluence], White Paper, chapter 2, section 1, Government of Japan, viewed 2 July 2016, . 32 Shimazono Susumu 2007, Spirichuaritı- no ko-ryu- [The rise of spirituality], Iwanami shoten, Tokyo. 33 Harumi Minagawa 2012, ‘“Spiritual” interpreted: A case of complex lexical borrowing in Japanese,’ Japanese Studies, vol.32, no.3; Some parts of this paragraph first appeared in Shoko Yoneyama 2010, ‘Spirituality in life stories in postmodernising Japan,’ Referred Conference Proceedings, the 18th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, Adelaide.

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34 Shoko Yoneyama 1999, The Japanese High School: Silence and Resistance, Routledge, London. 35 Shoko Yoneyama 2008, ‘The era of bullying: Japan under neoliberalism,’ Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol.6, issue 2, December. 36 Kin Taii 2013, Hana no okudo e [Towards the paradise of flowers], documentary film. 37 Mita, Ijutsu, p.165 (emphasis added). 38 Antonio Negri 2014, ‘Abenomikusu to kazetachinu – Nihon kara kaette kangaeta ikutsuka no koto’ [Abenomics and “Wind Rises” – Some thoughts after returning from Japan], trans. Miura Nobutaka, in Antonio Negri, Ueno Chizuko, Kan Sanjun, Ichida Yoshihiko, Osawa Masachi, Ito Mamoru, Shirai Satoshi, & Mori Yoshitaka, Neguri nihon to mukiau [Negri faces Japan], NHK Shuppan shinsho, Tokyo, pp.162–184 (citation on p.165). 39 Minamata Forum webpage, 15 April, ‘Ishimure Michiko san o okuru’ [Saying farewell to Ishimure Michiko], viewed 25 April 2018. 40 TV Asahi News 15 April 2018, ‘Ko-go- sama mo owakare – Kukaijo-do no Ishimure Michiko san’ [The Empress also said farewell to Ishimure Michiko, the author of Kukaijo-do]. 41 Ishimure Michiko & Tsurumi Kazuko 2002, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa mandara Ishimure Michiko no maki [Tsurumi Kazuko mandala dialogue with Ishimure Michiko], Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo, pp.40–51. 42 ibid., p.41. 43 ibid., p.42. 44 ibid., p.43. 45 ibid., p.41. 46 Ogata & Tsuji, Tokoyo, p.158. 47 Ogata, Chisso, p.202. 48 Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.42. 49 ibid. 50 Kurihara Akira 2007, ‘Rekishi no naka ni okeru toi – Kurihara sensei ni kiku’ [Questions in history – Interview with Prof. Kurihara], Rikkyo- University Global COE Program, viewed 9 June 2017, . 51 Sugimoto repeated the same speech in Minamata. See Tsuchimoto, Minamata Nikki. 52 Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.44. 53 ibid., pp.46–47. 54 Ivan Illich & Ishimure Michiko [1986] 2004, “Kibo-” o kataru [Discussing ‘hope’], in Ishimure Michiko, Shiranui, Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo, pp.244–256 (citation on p.247). 55 George, Minamata, pp.83–102. 56 Ishimure, Paradise, p.89 (emphasis added). 57 Ishimure, Kukai Jo-do, p.245. 58 ibid. 59 Maruyama Masao 1969, Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics, trans. Ivan Morris, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p.8. 60 Ishimure, Paradise, p.350. 61 ibid., p.351. 62 ibid. 63 ibid., p.352. 64 Ui Jun 1992, Industrial Pollution in Japan, United Nations University Press, Tokyo, p.117. 65 Harada Masazumi 1978, ‘Minamata disease as a social and medical problem’, Japan Quarterly, vol.25, no.1, pp.20–34 (reference on p.21).

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66 Ui, Industrial Pollution, p.17. 67 Asahi Shimbun 16 May 1970, ‘Ningen o kaeshite kure to sakebi tai’ [We want to shout: ‘Give us back our humanity!’], p.23. Permission was granted by Asahi Shimbun to reproduce this excerpt. This is my translation, and it is not officially approved by Asahi Shimbun. 68 My translation; emphasis added. The translation is based on Ishimure, Kukai Jo-do, p.306, which includes Villages of the Gods in its trilogy. This part is not included in Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow, the original translation of Kugai Jo-do by Livia Monnet. 69 ibid., p.248 (my translation). 70 ibid., p.307 (my translation). 71 ibid. (my translation). 72 ibid., p.308 (my translation). 73 Uchida Tatsuru 2012, ‘Doko mademo zokkoku konjo-’ [Still having a client state mentality], in Tokumashoten Shuppankyoku (ed.) Konokuni wa doko de machigaeta noka? [Where did Japan go wrong?], Tokumashoten, Tokyo, pp.19–65 (citation on p.30). 74 Koide Hiroaki 2011, Genpatsu no uso [Lies about nuclear power], Fuso-sha shinsho, p.86. 75 Hirokawa Ryu-ichi 2011, Bo-so- suru genpatsu [Uncontrollable nuclear power], Sho-gakkan, Tokyo, p.6. 76 N.A. 2011, Kodomo no anzen kijun, konkyo fumei [No clear foundation for the safety standard for children], YouTube, video, 21 April, viewed 9 June 2017, . 77 Illich & Ishimure, ‘“Kibo-”’, p.247. 78 Tada Tomio (1934–2010) was an immunologist and a professor emeritus at Tokyo University, and he was the author of traditional Noh stage plays. Ishimure exchanged a series of letters with Tada, which were published in book form: Ishimure Michiko & Tada Tomio 2008, Kotodama [Language spirit], Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo. Ishimure is referring to Tada Tomio’s book (1997), Seimei no Imiron [Theory of the meaning of life], Shincho-sha, Tokyo, and his account on the work of Ohno Susumu (1928–2000), a geneticist and evolutionary biologist. 79 Ishimure might have mentioned the Okinawan dialect, habira, here because I visited her with a friend of mine from Okinawa, Kimura Hiroko, an artist and poet with a severe disability. It could also be because habira is such a beautiful word resembling hanabira, which means ‘petals’, which seems relevant to the context. 80 Habira sounds like a cross between hanabira, which means ‘petals’, and ha, a leaf. Hana, especially hanabira, is a motif of central importance in Ishimure’s writing, representing life that is beautiful and short. 81 Ishimure Michiko & Fujiwara Shinya 2012, Namida furu hana: Minamata soshite Fukushima [Flowers like tears: Minamata and then Fukushima], Kawade shobo-, Tokyo, p.183; See also Ishimure, Kukai Jo-do, Epilogue, pp.254–256. 82 Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.152. 83 ibid. 84 ibid., p.34. 85 Ishimure Michiko 1996, Semiwaro- [Semiwaro- – a name of a person], Ashi shobo-, Fukuoka, p.158. 86 Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.35. 87 Nicholas Wide 2016, ‘Meet Luca, the ancestor of all living things’, The New York Times, 25 July. It refers to Madeline Weiss, Filipa Sousa, Natalia Mrnjavac, Sinje Neukirchen, Mayo Roettger, Shijulal Nelson-Sathi, & William Martin 2016, ‘The physiology and habitat of the last universal common ancestor’, Nature Microbiology, vol.1, no.9, article no.16116.

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88 Sarah Williams 2013, ‘Epigenetics’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 26 February, vol.110, no.9, p.3209; Kylie Andrews 2017, ‘Epigenetics: How your life could change the cells of your grandkids’, ABC Science, 21 April; Jeneen Interlandi 2013, ‘The toxins that affected your great-grandparents could be in your genes’, Smithsonian Magazine, December. I owe this point to Dane Fewtrell. 89 Illich & Ishimure, ‘“Kibo-”’, p.247. 90 Saito Yasuhiko (ed.) So-seiki o mukaeta Minamata: Mirai e no teigen [Minamata that entered a genesis: A proposal for the future], The Executive Committee for the 50th Anniversary of the Official Recognition of Minamata Disease, Minamata.

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Part II

Inspiring modernity with animism

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3

Animism for the sociological imagination The theory of endogenous development by Tsurumi Kazuko1

In pursuit of a paradigm change Sociologist Tsurumi Kazuko (1918–2006 鶴見和子) is the first, and thus far the only, sociologist in Japan who has attempted to locate animism at the centre of a sociological theory. In doing so, she challenged one of the most fundamental premises of sociology, or, if we look at it more broadly, she challenged social scientific knowledge itself: the Weberian disenchantment of the world and the Cartesian human–nature dichotomy. She challenged the very paradigm of modernity, despite having studied and having lived in the United States in the 1960s, when modernisation theory was at its height. More specifically, Tsurumi devoted many years of her academic life to rethinking social development while at the same time embracing the sensitivity of animism, which she considered was still very much alive in the minds and hearts of people in Japan. She postulated that animistic sensitivity could become the foundation for a ‘less violent science, technology, and culture’, which would help mitigate the self-destructive tendencies of modernity.2 Tsurumi pursued this thesis in her Theory of Endogenous Development (内発的発展論), which she subtitled Toward a Paradigm Change for the Future. 3 For her, animism was the ethical foundation of endogenous development, but unfortunately she died while still in the process of planning a book that was to be called The Animist Ethic and the Spirit of Endogenous Development, and she apparently had The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber in mind.4 She left an enormous amount of work behind, mostly in Japanese, much of which has been collated in the nine-volume Tsurumi Kazuko Mandala. Some of it is also available in English in Kazuko Tsurumi: The Adventure of Ideas. 5 The aims of this chapter are (1) to introduce briefly the life and work of Tsurumi Kazuko by paying particular attention to how a US-trained sociologist came to choose animism as her life project; (2) to discuss her theory of endogenous development and its relationship with animism within the broader context of theories of development; and (3) to introduce her pioneering work on Minakata Kumagusu (1867–1941 南方熊楠), a biologist and folklorist who introduced the concept of ‘ecology’ to Japan. Tsurumi’s work on Minakata is important, as it opened up the discourse on animism to new theoretical

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possibilities, namely, connecting animism to recent developments in the natural sciences; connecting animism to esoteric Buddhism; and sharpening the political implications of animism using Shinto as an example. Before discussing Tsurumi’s work in more detail, however, let me first describe her cultural background.

Transcultural creativity In order to fully understand the notion of animism in the works of Tsurumi Kazuko, it is important to understand her background. She worked in an area where three sets of opposing points of view met with exceptional intensity: East and West, traditional and modern, and elite and grassroots. Instead of being torn by the conflicting forces, Tsurumi created something new in this extreme transcultural space. Tsurumi’s ability to be creative in this extreme transcultural space is largely attributable to her own life story. She was born into ‘one of Japan’s premier intellectual dynasties’:6 She was the daughter of Tsurumi Yusuke (1885–1973), a liberal politician and writer, and the granddaughter of GotoShinpei (1857–1929), an Imperial Japanese statesman and cabinet minister in the Meiji Period and Taisho Period. Together with her brother, Tsurumi Shunsuke (1922–2015), a critical philosopher and historian, and other prominent relatives in academia, Tsurumi was at the heart of Japan’s elite establishment. The fact that Empress Michiko attended Tsurumi’s memorial service is one indication of her status in Japan’s high society.7 Tsurumi’s familiarity with traditional Japanese art is also an indication of her elite background. She mastered tanka, short Japanese poems of 31 syllables, as a student of Sasaki Nobutsuna, one of the leading poets in contemporary Japan, and at the age of 20 she was an accredited master of Japanese dance in the Hanayagi School. Tsurumi’s link with traditional Japanese culture is symbolised by the fact that she rarely wore Western clothing, usually preferring to don a kimono. In terms of schooling, however, Tsurumi had very progressive education in both Japan and the United States. She graduated from Tsuda College, one of the oldest tertiary institutions for women in Japan, which has a strong liberal arts tradition with a particular strength in English. Tsurumi then obtained an MA in philosophy in 1941 from Vassar College, a leading women’s college in America. After the war, together with Maruyama Masao, her brother Shunsuke, and others, she established The Science of Thought (思想の科学), a monthly magazine which was one of the most progressive, left-oriented periodicals in postwar Japan. Also, in collaboration with Shunsuke and others, she devoted a great deal of attention to promoting grassroots democracy (especially amongst women) as part of the ‘People’s Philosophy’ project in the early postwar years.8 Tsurumi then moved back to the United States to complete another MA followed by a PhD in sociology at Princeton University. She was one of the first eight women to do a PhD there. Before completing her PhD in 1966, she taught at Stanford University (1961–1962) and the University of British

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Columbia (1964–1965). After completing her doctorate, she finally returned to Tokyo in 1969 to take up a position as a professor at Sophia University, where she worked for 20 years as a specialist in comparative sociology. She continued publishing until her death in 2006 at the age of 88, even after a stroke in 1995 had left her partially disabled.9 So, why did this US-trained, Marxist-inspired sociologist with a ruling-class background devote her prime years to the pursuit of a theory of animism? It was because of her encounter with Minamata disease, which worked as a catalyst to bring together all the strengths she had gained as a transcultural researcher. She had the skills to look at sociology from multiple comparative perspectives.

Minamata encounter Tsurumi asserts that she was awakened to the world of animism through her encounter with Minamata, and that her experience in Minamata has been the foundation of all her work since then.10 Her first encounter was in September 1975, when she was visiting Canada. She literally bumped into a group of Minamata delegates, who were visiting Indigenous Canadians who were also suffering from methyl-mercury poisoning, on a street in Toronto.11 Shortly after this chance encounter, Tsurumi, together with Irokawa Daikichi, met in Tokyo with representatives from Minamata, and the Shiranui Sea Comprehensive Academic Research Team (Shiranui kai so-go- gakujutsu cho-sadan 不知火海総合学術調査団) was formed with 11 leading social scientists (including Irokawa Daikichi and Hidaka Rokuro), one doctor (Harada Masazumi), and one pharmacist (Watanuki Reiko). The team conducted fieldwork for the first time in March 1976.12 When she went to Minamata, Tsurumi had a series of experiences that prompted major changes in her life as a sociologist. The first was the totally unexpected reaction she and the rest of the research team had when they saw first-hand the utter devastation and suffering caused by the mercury poisoning. Tsurumi writes that they were simply blown away by the scale of destruction and were confronted with a question that challenged the meaning of their work as leading academics: When we first went there as a team of about ten researchers, we had a big quarrel. What we saw was hell. We really didn’t know what to do. … Ogata [Masato]-san says he went mad, but we also went mad in a way, as we had never seen so many people trapped in such utter devastation. … We went there as an ‘academic research team’, but what does it mean to ‘do academic research’ about that amount of human suffering? This question confronted us. Being faced with the very real suffering of people, each one of us felt that the scholarship we had been engaged with might in fact be useless. We felt desperately hopeless, and [male] researchers began bickering after drinking sake. … Looking back, we don’t quite know why we had the fight, but I think we didn’t know what else to do, as we all felt so completely hopeless.13

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Another surprise for the research team on their first day in Minamata was a tamashiire ceremony (魂入れ literally, ‘invoking a spirit’)14 held at Ishimure Michiko’s house. According to Ishimure, who had played a critical role in inviting the research team to Minamata, tamashiire is a local custom people do to mark the beginning of something important: a new project, the fresh start of an ongoing project, or even the start of a formal banquet.15 Ishimure explains: Indigenous people in this region used to make little kami, such as the kami of a boat (funadama-san 船霊さん) or the kami of a rice paddy (tano-kamisan 田の神さん) and do a tamashiire ceremony before starting something new. In order to produce each person’s favourite kami, they made an object of worship out of a pestle, mortar or stone, that is small enough to be held in the hand. They then poured sacred sake onto it, thinking that it enabled their souls to be connected with the kami. It is my belief that incidents such as Minamata occurred because our modernisation has killed off these nameless kami in the minds and hearts of ordinary folks. Because of this destruction, I dared to pray to revive the spirits of these little kami in the minds and hearts of those professors who specialise in modern social science.16 Ishimure writes that she was so pleased and excited to receive a message from the research team saying they were heading down the Japanese archipelago to Minamata, that she ‘woke up the local kami which had been buried alive, and made sake to prepare for the tamashiire ceremony’.17 Tsurumi, on the other hand, remarked years later in 2002 that she felt as if she was imbued with spirit each time she visited Minamata and that it unfailingly invigorated her, especially because she lived in an urban area, where ‘our anima [soul] fades away and we become like a hollow soul’. 18 Tsurumi was not talking about the tamashiire ceremony, but the feeling she experienced from listening to the life stories of Minamata disease sufferers. After being overwhelmed by a sense of loss and hopelessness on her first day in Minamata, Tsurumi decided the first step of her team’s research would be to listen to the people’s life stories. As she listened to them, she ‘started to feel increasingly humble’, and came to realise that she was there ‘neither to investigate nor assess them’,19 but to listen to their stories ‘for [her and the research team] to change, to mend [their] ways, and to be taught by the local people’.20 What did Tsurumi learn from the Minamata sufferers? She learnt that humans are entirely part of nature and that by destroying nature we are destroying ourselves, our bodies, our minds and hearts, as well as our human relationships.21 This was completely opposite to what she had been taught in the United States in the 1960s at the peak of modernisation theory, where the principle was to analyse society using only factors found within the social system: It was taboo, for instance, to refer to nature in a postgraduate sociology seminar.22 Had she not done research in Minamata, Tsurumi is

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convinced, she would have continued to treat nature as something completely separate from human society. So now we must ask: What sort of stories did Tsurumi gather from the locals that guided her to this realisation? Her demographic research on the communities most affected by Minamata disease found that locals, not only in fishing hamlets but also in neighbouring farming villages, subsisted mainly on fish and shellfish caught from the sea or the seashore.23 In Modo-, where the number of certified Minamata disease patients was the greatest, Tsurumi found that more than half of its 132 households had certified patients.24 Given the extremely stringent criteria to be certified as a Minamata disease patient, this means that more than half of the villagers were affected in varying degrees by the poisoning. Minamata disease was ‘worse than war’, locals told her, and this was despite many of them having first-hand experience of naval bombardment. The disease harmed life and had a far more drastic impact on the living than the war had.25 Tsurumi also heard Modo- locals say that ‘the sea has died’. An old fisherman told her how it began with a shocking sight of blue, white, and red water gushing out from the factory outlet in the darkness of night. Then, fishermen began to notice changes in the fish. First, they found many fish floating close to the surface of the water that were barely moving. These fish could be speared effortlessly, indicating something was wrong. Next, they found floating dead fish and pitiful-looking dead birds with their wings open lying at the water’s edge. Then cats started to die, and mice living in the hollows of stone walls began to die. As the cats died, house rats increased in numbers and caused great damage. Finally, from 1950 onwards people started to die with symptoms now recognised as Minamata disease.26 The forest of gigantic Modo- pines also died away. Exactly how the industrial water pollution had affected the trees was unclear, but locals took it as a sign of nature’s ecological balance being lost. The loss of the forest had a grave symbolic meaning, as the hamlet was named after the forest: Modo- (茂道) means a road where trees grow thick. Two trees in front of the Yamagami-sama (mountain kami 山神様) in particular were more than 300 years old and were so big that it took six adults to link their arms around each tree’s girth. Tsurumi concludes that the death of the Modo- pines most strikingly indicated the death of living creatures in the area, including humans.27 It was like the death of the heart and identity of the community as well. Human relationships also crumbled, the locals told Tsurumi. Fishing necessitates cooperation, solidarity, and mutual help – especially in times of crisis – but after the outbreak of Minamata disease people became shorttempered, defiant, and suspicious. The disease made the community divisive: Discrimination against those who caught the ‘strange illness’ was rampant, and divisions emerged between certified and uncertified patients, those who took part in a lawsuit and those who did not, and those who were compensated and those who were not.28 Tsurumi points out that when connectedness with nature is broken, human-to-human connectedness is also broken.29

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The destruction of human–nature connectedness, however, was only half of her discovery. Tsurumi also found that when the human body, mind, and soul are damaged in this way healing can be made possible by re-establishing the connectedness with nature.30 She writes: In the extreme devastation of Minamata, [I have] discovered that animism as a view of nature has provided the foundation for the efforts to revive humans and nature amongst the fishermen who suffer from Minamata disease.31 With her research at Minamata, which lasted on and off for five years, Tsurumi claims that she was ‘spiritually awakened to animism’,32 and what she learnt in Minamata formed the basis of her theory of endogenous development.33 The theory is important because it helps to locate animism within the broad map of our thinking in the social sciences.

Tsurumi Kazuko in the trajectory of social scientific thinking Most of Tsurumi’s work on animism and endogenous development was produced between 1975 and 1995. These 20 years represented a time when critique of the monolithic model of capitalist development proliferated in many forms following the historic global environmental awakening in the 1960s.34 Green political parties were launched in the 1970s and grew quickly in the 1980s;35 the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation presented its seminal report What Now? Another Development in 1975 to stimulate a new discourse on alternative development;36 and the Brundtland Report was released in 1987 to establish the notion of ‘sustainable development’ as part of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development.37 Following the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986, academic books such as World Risk Society by Ulrich Beck (German in 1986 and English in 1992), Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern (French in 1991 and English in 1993), and Nature and Society by Philippe Descola and Gìsli Pálsson (1996) were also published, constituting what is now referred to as post-Cartesian social science.38 Tsurumi’s work was very much a part of this general trend. In the following two decades or so, the discourse on new animism began, most notably with a paper by Nurit Bird-David in 1999 and a monograph by Graham Harvey in 2005. This discourse was finally established, as it were, in The Handbook of Contemporary Animism in 2015. With 40 contributors, this book indicates a wide interest in the topic of animism, an interest that had long been marginalised by the social sciences.39 And in 2000, the Nobel Prize Laureate scientist Paul Crutzen coined the word ‘Anthropocene’. The 2016 recommendation made by a group of experts to declare that we are in a new geological epoch called the ‘Anthropocene’40 further augmented calls to rethink the human–nature dichotomy.41

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There is little doubt, therefore, that since the 1970s a need for a paradigmatic change has been recognised in the social sciences to such an extent that it now constitutes part of the mainstream discourse on modernity. It seems, however, that it was mainly a critique of the existing paradigm, with little clear sense of direction as to where to head in the future. This self-reflexive critique of modernity has largely remained at a standstill, even though the calls for change have become louder and stronger after various aggravating crises. As yet, however, there are few signs of a new paradigm on the horizon. In a way, though, this stagnation may be explainable. It would be hard to imagine something entirely new emerging while staying only in the same socio-cultural and institutional mindset, the same epistemological and ontological space of Western civilisation, the space from which modernity itself was constructed. The contradictory nature of this quest within Western civilisation is most salient in relation to the question of how to relate to the nonhuman, as it involves the question of soul and spirituality. Environmental philosopher Val Plumwood writes: The hyperbolized opposition between humans and the non-human order I call human/nature dualism is a Western-based cultural formation going back thousands of years. … Human/nature dualism conceives the human as not only superior to but different in kind from the non-human, which is conceived as a lower non-conscious and non-communicative purely physical sphere that exists as a mere resource or instrument for the higher human one. The human essence is not the ecologically embodied ‘animal’ side of self, which is best neglected, but the higher disembodied element of mind, reason, culture and soul or spirit.42 After being engaged in environmental philosophy for over 30 years, Plumwood concluded that the discipline needed recommitment and renewal because it was not ‘sufficiently addressing our planetary ecological crisis or providing us with adequate guidance’,43 and that ‘a good way to start up the major cultural rethink … would be to talk with people who are now living within the kind of understandings we are seeking’, people such as Aboriginal Australians.44 This explains the significance of, and the expectations of, eco-anthropology, for instance, as a field that can bring about a rethink of human–nature dualism and thus help us imagine a new paradigm for the social sciences. The emergence of the ‘new animism’ discourse can be considered a part of this trend. While the recent return of animism as an academic topic has opened up many theoretical possibilities, many existing studies on animism are anthropological studies (1) on indigenous peoples (of the Americas, Northern Eurasia, the highlands of South East Asia, etc.) who live further away from modernity; (2) by researchers from ‘Western’ academia who go to such places to collect data armed with their own concepts, theories, and methodologies; and (3) with the aim, essentially, of improving their own highly abstract theories to make them more broadly applicable to other communities.

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As a result, a curious lacuna exists. A large part of (‘less-indigenous’) Asia, where animism is still relevant due to Buddhist, Hindu, and Daoist traditions as well as through peasant folk religions,45 has been largely ignored in recent discourse on animism. This is a big gap, as Asia can present significant reference points for considering the human–nature relationship as well as the question of Weberian disenchantment. This void is perhaps a reflection of the intellectual domination of the West and the hierarchical divisions of academic labour, reviving memories of past colonialism, as pointed out by Chua Beng Huat.46 It could also be an indication of the difficulties involved in framing animism as a research topic in the socio-religious milieu of modern Asia, which necessitates specialist linguistic competence in order to handle highly technical research materials in the local language. Thinking politically, there might even be a hesitation in combining animism with broader (‘less-indigenous’) Asia. Providing the epistemology and/or ontology that might lead us to a new paradigm and connecting animism directly to Asia in general could be seen as a threat to Western hegemony, allowing Asia to take over as ‘the dominant culture and the psyche for knowledge production’ for the future.47 Instead of critiquing the discourse on new animism, or trying to fit Tsurumi’s discourse into the current debate on animism,48 I follow the example of Chua in adopting Chen Kuan-Hsing’s suggestion regarding how to move forward. As summarised succinctly by Chua, Chen maintains that ‘Asian scholars should multiply their points of reference, especially those in Asia, and treat Euro-America as one reference point equal to other points of reference’.49 Chen advocates that ‘Asia as Method’ is ‘a critical proposition to transform the existing knowledge structure and at the same time to transform ourselves’.50 This is exactly what Tsurumi Kazuko stood for, and she pursued this project by presenting her theory of endogenous development.

Theory of endogenous development Tsurumi defines endogenous development as: a creative project in which the people in a particular region decide cooperatively the course and the method of development, based on the cultural traditions of the region and the basic needs of its residents, in a way that is ecologically suitable for the area.51 With this definition, Tsurumi indicates clearly that endogenous development (from the Greek ‘endo’ = internal/within, and ‘-genous’ = originating in) is development from ‘within’: it is autonomous both in its method and in its aim, and it has three key factors: (1) local people, (2) local ecology, and (3) local traditions. She positions endogenous development as a ‘counter-model’ to the ‘dominant paradigm’ (or ‘normal science’) of modernisation that has been

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constructed with the West as its model. Her theory is a counter-model in a number of ways, but Tsurumi particularly emphasises four main ways in which it is so.52 First, while modernisation theory is a singular model of development, endogenous development is a pluralist model.53 The Western-made theory allows only ‘advanced’ nations to develop endogenously and expects ‘late-developers’ to develop exogenously by following the Western (i.e. mainly US and European) models.54 In contrast, endogenous development takes Western-made theory as just one example of development, thus allowing other societies to develop their own theories. In that sense, the theory of endogenous development can be considered as a prototype for other theories of development.55 To put it more bluntly, modernisation theory is elitist and ethnocentric (i.e. Eurocentric), whereas the theory of endogenous development is not. Second, while modernisation theory takes the whole society as a unit of analysis, the theory of endogenous development takes a small local region, where people live, as the unit of analysis. Third, while the most important index of modernisation is economic development, human development is crucial for endogenous development, where the main aim is to create conditions where the full potential of each individual can be expressed.56 Fourth, the theory of endogenous development is a counter-model to modernisation theory also in that it takes tradition seriously.57 The re-creation of cultural tradition is a key to endogenous development. Examples of endogenous development are often seen outside the West in places where the influence of Buddhism, Islam, Hindu, Confucianism, Daoism, and animism are evident. Tsurumi says we can creatively use wisdom from traditional cosmologies, religions, or faiths to question the big issues of modernity; we can re-create ancient wisdom to fit contemporary situations. But to ask the question again, how relevant is Tsurumi’s theory of endogenous development within the broader context of social-scientific knowledge today? To discuss modernisation theory in this way may sound obsolete, as it has been widely critiqued since the 1970s from various directions, most notably by postmodernism and post-colonialism. However, the notion of progress, with the highly industrialised ‘North’ being seen as advanced and the developing ‘South’ being seen as ‘backward’, is still dominant and used as justification for the uncritical adoption of Western-based models of development – often to the detriment of indigenous/traditional resources. In addition, there is a question about how deep the alternative development critique of modernisation theory went. Tsurumi’s notion of endogenous development is similar to the concept of alternative development presented by the Dag Hammarskjöld report to the United Nations in 1975, What Now? Another Development. Tsurumi herself remarks that her ‘endogenous development’ and their ‘another development’ can be used synonymously.58 The question is how effective this discourse on alternative development has been, or can be, in the context of growing risk in the age of the Anthropocene.

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The Hammarskjöld report is founded upon ‘three pillars’ of alternative development. Alternative development, then, has to be (1) ‘geared to the satisfaction of needs, beginning with the eradication of poverty; (2) endogenous and self-reliant, that is, relying on the strength of the societies which undertake the development; and (3) in harmony with the environment’.59 Of these ‘three pillars’, the satisfaction of basic human needs was taken up by Amartya Sen and others through the concept of ‘human development’ and institutionalised as the Human Development Index by the United Nations Development Programme. Likewise, the environmental agenda was taken up and established as the concept of ‘sustainable development’ in 1987, when the Brundtland Report was launched to make it one of several key concepts of both science and social science. In contrast, the ‘endogenous’ aspect did not become part of mainstream discourse on development, and in the 1980s it reportedly disappeared from the list of eligible research topics which could receive funding from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).60 The endogenous aspect of the ‘three pillars’ of ‘alternative development’ suggested to the United Nations failed to become part of mainstream discourse probably because it is the most radical. It is radical in the sense that thinking about development from the perspective of an autonomous and selfreliant community almost inevitably illuminates structural inequity between the North and the South, or the core and the periphery, both at the global and national levels. Thus, endogenous development is harder to morph into a global agenda, such as the eradication of poverty or sustainable development, where advanced nations can assume a leadership role. Its emphasis on local autonomy also directly challenges the globalisation thesis as a more powerful form of the modernisation thesis carried forward by global capitalism.61 This clash between global capitalism and endogenous development became most obvious in relation to food production, especially with regard to the control of seeds by multinational conglomerates. It was once again the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, committed to paying ‘sustained attention to the needs of the Third World’,62 which raised a critical voice about the devastating impact that control of food production by global capitalism has had on endogenous development in the developing world.63 Vandana Shiva, an India-based philosopher and activist, writes that the Foundation’s watershed meeting in 1987 on biotechnology, which was called ‘Laws of Life’, made it clear that ‘the giant chemical companies were repositioning themselves as “life sciences” companies, whose goal was to control agriculture through patents, genetic engineering, and mergers’.64 The meeting prompted Shiva to dedicate her life to finding ‘ways to prevent monopolies on life and living resources, both through resistance and by building creative alternatives’.65 The control of seeds by multinational conglomerates is one example of the widening power of global capitalism that tries to also control other key components of food production such as land, water,66 and growing methods.67 With the ever-increasing pressure of depleting natural resources and climate

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change, the conflicting relationship between global capitalism and endogenous development is likely to present ever-greater challenges for the survival of the periphery in more advanced stages of the Anthropocene. It is not surprising, then, that the strongest advocate of endogenous development appeared from within an indigenous group. Rigoberta Menchú, a Guatemalan campaigner for the rights of indigenous peoples and 1992 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, uses ‘endogenous development’ as her slogan. Her notion of endogenous development is very similar to Tsurumi’s, which helps relate Tsurumi’s work to the broader theories and realities of development in today’s context. Menchú received the Nobel Prize ‘in recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous people’.68 She writes in Learning Endogenous Development (2007): Most western-based development approaches have a narrow material and economy-based vision. Such a narrow vision is not found in traditional cultures; indigenous peoples’ cultures, knowledges and languages are rich and diverse, but there is one important value that cuts across all: their relationship of harmony with the land, with Mother Earth. Indigenous peoples have a great deal to contribute to the new value system that humanity needs in order to achieve true sustainable development. They have depended for their livelihoods on Mother Earth for thousands of years, with all living beings. There is enormous scope for including these values in academic circles, in economic systems and in political dialogues with the government. The knowledge developed by the ancestors forms an ancient yet living teaching tradition that is still profoundly relevant today. 69 According to Menchú, unlike Western-based development approaches, endogenous development can acknowledge the significance of traditional cultures, whereby the relationship with the land and all living things is seen as more in harmony with humans, and it can also recognise knowledge from ancestors that constitutes the fundamental values necessary for sustainable development. It should be noted here that there is one major trend in the West that also shares the values that cut across indigenous peoples’ cultures, namely, in the words of Menchú, the ‘relationship of harmony with the land, with Mother Earth’– that is, deep ecology.70 Deep ecology is a term that was coined by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in 1972,71 and the term has been enormously influential as a philosophical foundation for all kinds of environmental advocacy and activism. Deep ecology basically ‘seeks to show that: (1) anthropocentrism is false; (2) all beings are interconnected; and (3) humanity needs to change’.72 Apparently, the idea of deep ecology is profoundly influenced by Eastern thought in many respects,73 and thus it has a lot in common with the theory of endogenous development as well as with the discourses of animism presented in this book. It is worth noting, however, that ‘many philosophers who define themselves as sympathetic to “deep ecology” hold opposing views as to what it is’.74 Instead of trying to locate the discourses of

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animism introduced in this book in the vast sea of deep ecology, which will require mapping out commonalities and disagreements amongst the deep ecologists, which is beyond the scope of this volume, it is hoped that this book will contribute to our common cause by integrating firmly a new kind of thinking in mainstream social-scientific discourse through a critique of anthropocentricity and an emphasis on the interconnectedness of all living beings. And the purpose of this objective is to achieve a sustainable future in the age of Anthropocene. For the purposes of this book, a more relevant advancement regarding the notion of endogenous development in recent years is the conceptualisation of local and ‘place consciousness’ by Arif Dirlik. Dirlik’s notion of ‘place consciousness’ resonates well with Tsurumi’s theory of endogenous development, even though he does not use the same terminology. Dirlik argues that globalisation, as a paradigm, is a new form of modernisation75 and that, due to the conspicuousness of globalisation, ‘place consciousness’ has evolved, paradoxically, as its ‘radical other’.76 Thus, places, and placebased consciousness, or the local (as against the global) no longer represent just ‘legac[ies] of history or geography’,77 or ‘pristine untouchability’,78 but can be developed into radical projects that are ‘devoted to the construction of new contexts for thinking about politics and the production of knowledge’.79 The strength of the local, Dirlik contends, is that ‘places offer not only vantage points for a fundamental critique of globalism, but also locations for new kinds of radical political activity that reaffirm the priorities of everyday life against the abstract developmentalism of capitalist modernity’.80 He also argues that the global discourse on modernity is built upon universalist claims of ‘Euro-American scientism’ that continues to pursue the modernisationist tradition of dominating and ‘cannibalizing other ways of knowing, only to make them irrelevant’, in order to sustain ‘a Euro-American hegemony’ in the name of new cosmopolitanism.81 Dirlik points out, importantly, that the legitimacy of this ‘new scientism’, which is based on the premises of globalisation, depends on whether it is able to ‘confront the problems created by development’.82 Dirlik’s notion of the local (or place consciousness) is important for three reasons. First, it articulates the significance of endogenous development, within the context of globalisation, as a new and more powerful form of modernisation. Recently, the force of globalisation has affected local areas more directly than in the past because nation-states have ‘become more complicit in globalism, and abandon[ed] … the task they had assumed earlier of mediating the global and the local’.83 Had Minamata disease been caused by a multinational conglomerate today, for instance, it is likely that the sufferers’ ability to negotiate with the polluter and the national and local governments would have been far more difficult and restricted. Second, his notion of the local articulates the significance of ‘concrete everyday existence’ over ‘abstract power’,84 which enables us to focus clearly on the lived experiences of people at the grassroots level. As such, it opens up a discursive space to multiple layers of reality that constitute everyday life.

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This includes politics being influenced by local places, and other grassroots aspects of people’s existence which are normally outside the mainstream framework of study (i.e. Euro-American scientism), aspects such as local ecology, traditions, ancestors, spirits, ancient memory of places, and their numinous power. And third, Dirlik’s conceptualisation of the local is significant in that he positions the new knowledge as a counter-discourse to the hegemony of capitalist developmentalism. He holds, however, that the critique of capitalist developmentalism ‘should not be confused with the repudiation of change or development per se’.86 Instead, he suggests that in order to achieve ‘secure development that is consonant with human welfare both socially and environmentally’,87 radical projects are needed to resolve internal inequality, while at the same time opening places to the outside world,88 in order to form ‘translocal alliances’.89 He suggests that translocal alliances of many different places have the potential to create new kinds of knowledge based on new kinds of particularisms, or governing alliances, where place-based knowledge gains ‘first order significance’ in our increasingly globalising world.90 In many respects, Dirlik’s conceptualisation of the local and of place consciousness is an updated version of Tsurumi’s theory of endogenous development. Dirlik’s discourse on the local, however, does not specify what kind of knowledge might actually connect the multitude of places engaged in such a radical project supported by place consciousness. What would be the actual content of this new knowledge which is based on new types of particularism? Or, borrowing the terminology of Simon Avenell, what would be the ‘connective tissue’91 of this new knowledge? Drawing on Dirlik’s notion of the local, Avenell suggests that the ‘environmental injustice paradigm’ is one such knowledge. The paradigm ‘focusses attention on the grassroots victims of environmental contamination and degradation, such as industrial pollution disease sufferers, and later, the marginalized people of developing nations’,92 and ‘became the ideational and motivational basis for the transnational initiatives’ of Japanese environmental activists from the late 1960s onwards.93 With a ‘coherent vocabulary and concrete vision’,94 the environmental injustice paradigm has presented a discourse on ‘the injustices born of grossly distorted power relations between marginalized communities and powerful political and economic institutions whether within Japan or between the global North and South’.95 Because of its focus on human rights, marginalisation, and discrimination, the environmental justice paradigm is ‘clearly inclined towards the localist perspective’.96 Avenell contends: The Japanese environmental injustice paradigm offers a compelling historical example of the relevance of local knowledge in a global age. Through their transnational interactions, the Japanese activists involved came to richer understanding of the local – not only as a besieged subnational space but also as a potent resource to generate and cultivate knowledge useful beyond the local and the national and, moreover, as a counterweight to homogenizing global discourses.97

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Not only was the Japanese environmental injustice paradigm firmly situated in the local, it was also ‘decidedly anthropocentric’, Avenell argues.98 This was because, he explains, the paradigm was fashioned by a group of leading leftist academics99 who were deeply concerned with the plight of pollution victims and firmly committed to exposing the perpetrators.100 By far the most influential of these academics was economist Miyamoto Ken’ichi, who was the principal author of Osorubeki Ko-gai [Fearful pollution], which became the Bible of critical environmental discourse and activism in Japan. He also used the theory of endogenous development in the field of regional economics, and showed how the theory can actually be applied for the development of local communities. As Miyamoto himself admits, he owes his idea of endogenous development to a collaborative study (1979–1981) which was led by Tsurumi Kazuko.101 It is interesting to see that Tsurumi’s notion of endogenous development was only taken up in the spheres of political economy, and that it developed into a ‘localistic’ but also ‘decidedly anthropocentric’ environmental injustice paradigm.102 The strongly non-anthropocentric view of the world that caught Tsurumi’s attention in her encounter with Minamata disease and that motivated her to build the theory of endogenous development did not become part of the Japanese environmental injustice paradigm. This is not surprising, as Tsurumi herself felt that she did not complete the book she tentatively entitled The Animist Ethic and the Spirit of Endogenous Development as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Establishing a non-anthropocentric paradigm in critical environmental discourse is an enormous challenge, as it involves questioning the very foundation of the social-scientific knowledge on which we stand, the foundation that Dirlik calls ‘Euro-American scientism’. An examination of the relevance of Tsurumi’s theory of endogenous development in today’s context suggests two things. The first is that endogenous development as a critique of the mainstream modernisation/globalisation paradigm has been raised in various quarters of the world even though the term ‘endogenous development’ has not always been used. And the second is that there are two key axes in the critique of modernisation and globalisation in this context: the universalist vs localist axis and the anthropocentric vs non-anthropocentric axis. Table 3.1 shows a conceptual map that was created using these two axes. The standard modernisation/globalisation paradigm of development is based on an anthropocentric view of the world, assumes a universalist position, and claims to create ‘universal’ knowledge (what Dirlik calls ‘Euro-American scientism’ and what Tsurumi calls ‘normal science’). The table also suggests that there are three positions that critique this dominant paradigm, each of which leads to the creation of new knowledge. The first critique is the ‘environmental injustice paradigm’, a criticism of the mainstream model of development as presented in the sphere of political economy where, Avenell holds, Japanese transnational activists played an important role especially at an early stage of its development. The second

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Table 3.1 Critiques of the modernisation/globalisation paradigm

Anthropocentric Non-anthropocentric

Universalist

Localist

Modernisation and globalisation paradigm (2) Deep ecology

(1) Environmental injustice paradigm (3) Animism and indigenous paradigm

critique is ‘deep ecology’, which takes a strong non-anthropocentric position. Deep ecology also advocates localism. Naess, for instance, writes that ‘locality and togetherness in the sense of community are central key terms in the deep ecological movement’, and lists some characteristics of ‘green communities,’ such as small numbers of residents, democratic decision-making, the centrality of primary industries, small income disparity amongst residents, and the promotion of local culture.103 In its strong orientation towards localism, deep ecology has an affinity with the ‘animism and indigenous paradigm’. Nonetheless, the sense of place (or ‘place consciousness’) envisaged in deep ecology appears to be less significant and rather prescriptive compared to the sense of place that is inherent in and intrinsic to the animism and indigenous paradigm, and this is shown as the third critique of the mainstream modernisation/globalisation paradigm in Table 3.1. The ‘animism and indigenous paradigm’ represents not only a non-anthropocentric model but also one that is firmly localist and rooted in the knowledge of a particular place. It reflects the ‘deep’ aspects of endogenous development, as advocated by activists such as Rigoberta Menchú and Vandana Shiva, whose ideas are firmly based on the lived experiences of people in their local areas. Their discourses are based on rich ‘indigenous’ frames of reference that simply do not fit with ‘Euro-American scientism’ or ‘normal science’, as they are based on a totally different cosmology and ontology which are decidedly non-anthropocentric. Tsurumi’s notion of animism, as a deep foundation of endogenous development, belongs to this localist, non-anthropocentric space. Tsurumi was inspired by animism in Minamata and saw that animism might be the new knowledge required to bring about the social change needed to achieve a sustainable future.104 Following Tsurumi, I argue that this third critique of modernisation/globalisation, which takes a localist and nonanthropocentric perspective, can be a ‘new frontier’ in our exploration of the new knowledge needed to achieve a more equitable and more sustainable future which will enable all life to thrive. I also argue that animism as a postmodern counter-discourse has the potential to become a deeper-level connection that enables us to have translocal communication and alliances. By presenting animism as a local, grassroots, non-anthropocentric, and postmodern discourse that emerged in post-disaster Japan, I aim to complement the existing environmental injustice paradigm that was also born from the experience of horrendous pollution in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s. In other

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words, the environmental injustice paradigm and animism can be considered as twin legacies of the socio-ecological disasters in contemporary Japan. Just as much as it is a place-based, ‘local’ discourse, the discourse on animism comes with its own particularism. When the country of Japan is regarded as one big ‘local’, the particularism that is most closely associated with animism is Shinto. A complication, though, is that Shinto was used historically to construct the state ideology of Japan, what Dirlik calls ‘supraplace force’, which provides a ‘place-bound’ identity while hiding internal dissensions such as class, gender, and race105 and while concealing the core–periphery division within the country. To examine the discourse on animism in contemporary Japan, it is essential to sort out conceptually the relationship between grassroots animism and animism in Shinto as a state ideology. Once again, it was Tsurumi Kazuko who addressed this complex question.

Animism and Shinto Shinto is a sophisticated example of animism, according to John Clammer.106 Although the Association of Shinto Shrines (Jinja Honcho-) does not generally use the term ‘animism’ when explaining Shinto,107 their explanation nevertheless suggests that Shinto is animism. Introductory material available (only) in English on their webpage, ‘Soul of Japan: An Introduction to Shinto and Ise Jingu’, gives the following explanation: Shinto is the indigenous faith of the Japanese. It is a way of life and a way of thinking that has been an integral part of Japanese culture since ancient times. … Observing the Shinto faith means worshipping ancestors as guardians of the family. It also means showing respect for the myriad kami – a word that corresponds to ‘deity’ in English – [the divine energy or life force] residing in the natural world. There are kami of the mountains, and kami of the sea. Kami are all around us, in every thing and every person. … [Shinto’s] origins can be seen in the relationship between the ancient Japanese and the power they found in the natural world. It is a relationship that continues to this day, defined by a great reverence for nature’s strength, and gratitude for nature’s bounty.108 With its ancestor worship and belief in spirits (kami) in nature, Shinto indeed appears to satisfy the classic definition of animism. Tsurumi, however, stresses that there is no such thing as ‘Japanese animism’: animism cannot be presented as a national tradition.109 Instead, she stresses that the natural environment of each locality has its own unique form of animism: Animism is very much a local thing which comes with its own characteristics; there is ‘animism in Minamata, animism in Yamagata, animism in the Tono Basin in Iwate, animism in Sakishima in Okinawa, etc.’110 This notion of animism fits with her concept of ‘folk Shintoism’, which she defines as follows:

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Folk Shintoism is primarily nature worship based on belief in a symbiotic relationship between man and nature. This belief continues an animistic view that endows trees, animals, plants, mountains, water, fields, and the sea with spirits similar to those of human beings.111 This is similar to the definition of Shinto taken from the Association of Shinto Shrines quoted above. The crucial difference, though, is whether the feature of animism is presented as a special Japanese concept or not. Tsurumi’s account of folk Shinto does not include statements such as ‘Shinto is the indigenous faith of the Japanese. It is a way of life and a way of thinking that has been an integral part of Japanese culture since ancient times’. These propositions, from the Jinja Honcho-, can lead to the ideology of state Shinto, which is a political construct based on emperor worship, which was established at the beginning of Meiji Period (late 1860s) to provide the newly established nation-state with a ‘national spirit’ and an administrative structure. Tsurumi’s notion of animism that comes from her understanding of folk Shinto is in many respects the complete opposite of that associated with state Shinto. She states: I do not think that animism exists on the basis of the nation-state, thus there is no such thing as Japanese animism. It can exist at the level of the earth or universe, but for those who live in this world, it is very much a local thing, and the animism of each locality has its own characteristics. 112 And she continues: Animism embraces a philosophy that goes beyond the boundary of a nation-state. … It is because the sense of being at one with nature exists universally on a global scale and cannot be confined to such things as nation-states.113 Tsurumi explains further that ‘once we start thinking of the nation-state as a unit, it is likely to lead to a narrow nationalism as the nation-state becomes the centre of analysis’,114 whereas, if anything, ‘animism leads to anarchism, a non-violent anarchism that goes beyond nations’.115 Clammer agrees. To reiterate his points discussed in the Introduction, Clammer explains that in contrast with state Shinto, which aims to identify Japan as one entity, folk Shinto is ‘intensely local’.116 This is because ‘kami are very specific to a particular place’.117 In such a local place, the land and its ecology are seen as numinous entities, often with strong connections to ancestors.118 He also explains that folk Shinto is ‘highly polytheistic [and] inherently pantheistic’,119 and that thus it evades any attempt to institutionalise or dogmatise it into the ideology of a nation-state. Indeed, underlying Tsurumi’s adamant rejection of the notion of ‘Japanese animism’ is the ideological nature of the discourse on ‘Japanese animism’ and

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Shinto: what Tessa Morris-Suzuki calls ‘eco-nationalism’.120 For example, on the webpage of the Association of Shinto Shrines, where Shinto is characterised as Japanese animism,121 there are also documents glorifying the war dead.122 Although Shinto in postwar Japan is not officially supposed to be state Shinto (which means it should not involve or promote state-led emperor worship), it is often used to promote nationalism. This promotion of nationalism is regularly highlighted by the controversial visits of prime ministers to Yasukuni Shrine, the shrine where the war dead are enshrined and the place which also represents ‘the ultimate expression of imperial values’.123 As discussed in the Introduction, Japanese animism also has a strong tendency to become a tenet of Nihonjinron, the ‘theory of Japaneseness’, which praises Japan at the expense of other societies.124 Even amongst Japanese academics, there is a belief that animism is linked to the emperor system, and this belief caused Tsurumi to be misunderstood and criticised even by her progressive colleagues.125 In order for the discourse on animism in Japan to contribute constructively to a broader discussion on animism outside Japan, it is imperative to sort out conceptually the relationship between animism and Shinto, and this needs further clarification of the difference between folk Shinto and state Shinto. State Shinto provided the ideology used to justify Japanese aggression during the war, it was subsequently abolished constitutionally in postwar Japan, and it is now sometimes referred to as ‘shrine Shinto’.126 It can no longer be funded publicly, and it cannot be imposed on people as a state doctrine as was the case with the Imperial Rescript on Education in 1890. Thus, the ideological foundation of emperor worship has been legally removed from Shinto. Nonetheless, shrine Shinto retains many features of state Shinto. John Breen and Mark Teeuwen write with regard to the Association of Shinto Shrines, which controls about 80% of all shrines in Japan,127 that the ‘single most important point to make about [it] is that it continues to idealize Shinto in its prewar, state-sponsored guise’.128 As such, imperial lineage from AmaterasuOmikami (the sun goddess), the most revered original kami, to the present emperor remains as a central tenet of institutionalised Shinto;129 shrines are ranked hierarchically with Ise Shrine at the top; the Ise chief priest, one of a number of imperial appointments, holds the power ‘to appoint, dismiss, promote, demote, and suspend shrine priests working at any of the 80,000 shrines which are under the umbrella of the Association;130 and there are branches in every prefecture that work as the Association’s administrative arms. Breen and Teeuwen also remark that the Association’s ‘consuming passions remain emperor and imperial institution, the Ise Shrines, revising the Constitution, the Yasukuni Shrine, and ethical education’.131 These ‘passions’ match the political agenda of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and various conservative politicians. In fact, 16 of the 20 cabinet members of the third Abe administration, and 304 out of 717 Diet members (in February 2016) belonged to the Shinto Political League (Shinto seiji renmei).132 In other words, although Shinto today is not exactly state Shinto, it is literally at the heart of Japan’s political power to a far greater extent than would be expected constitutionally.

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As mentioned above, folk Shinto is almost the complete opposite in many respects to institutionalised Shinto. To explain what folk Shinto is, Tsurumi first quotes ethnographer Sakurai Tokutaro, who defines ‘folk Shintoist belief ’ as follows: A folk belief refers to the totality of basic beliefs that function in the daily lives of the inhabitants of a local community. It does not belong to the realm of established religions, but in its contact with them it transforms them while at the same time being transformed by them. Its essential characteristics lie in its capacity to change, accommodating itself to the changing needs of the people who hold the belief.133 This definition of ‘folk Shintoist belief ’ is very much in line with Tsurumi’s notion of endogenous development: It is a traditional, local ‘resource’ for social change for human development that enables local people to change based on their own needs. This concept of social change by a small community was also strongly advocated by folklorist and ethnographer Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962), whom Tsurumi studied closely.134 He was also a friend of the Tsurumi family. According to Tsurumi, Yanagita had a ‘strong conviction based on his extensive fieldwork that it is the common [people] – and not the elites – who [have been, are now], and always will be, the agent of social change in both Japan and the West’.135 These people have settled in a specific area and inherit through spoken language ‘the patterns of doing, thinking and feeling from the previous generations who dwelled in that area, and take time to transform those inherited patterns with [their] own wisdom to make them fit to the changing conditions of [their lives]’.136 They are the transmitters of indigenous culture and the bearers of endogenous development.137 According to Breen and Teeuwen, Yanagita represents one of the three schools of thought that took part in the debate on the nature of Shinto. This school ‘rejected the idea that centralist imperial ideology was at the core of Shinto. Instead, [it] stressed the spiritual value of local traditions of worshipping local kami, in all their centrifugal variety’.138 Because of its diverse and local nature, its oral (as against written) mode of transmission, and its generally humble shrines, folk Shinto is much less visible, making it harder for observers to grasp its social and historical significance, than institutionalised Shinto. Nonetheless, Breen and Teeuwen consider that the reason for the survival of Shinto after its state structure was dissolved by the Occupation authorities after the war ‘proves that the imperial cult was never more than an ephemeral superstructure … [and that in spite of] the centralizing policies of the government, shrines continued to function first and foremost as stages for local community festivals … [which were] far more effective in inspiring the general public to be actively engaged in shrine affairs than the ideological rites of imperial Shinto’.139 Indeed, there have been some splendid examples of the revitalising power of local shrines in post-triple-disaster Japan, which will be discussed in the Epilogue.

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Table 3.2 summarises the institutional, political, and ideological differences between folk Shinto and institutionalised Shinto that have already been discussed. Two other key differences between folk and institutionalised Shinto are shown at the bottom of the table: their relationship with other religions and with nature. Regarding the relationship with other religions, in contrast with state Shinto, which attempted, at the beginning of the Meiji Period, to separate Shinto from Buddhism,140 folk Shinto ‘can absorb or fuse with other religions, endogenous, or exogenous’.141 This point is most salient with regard to folk Shinto’s relationship with ancestor worship. According to Tsurumi: Folk Shintoism worships the spirit of the dead, the basis for ancestor worship, which in turn is associated with fertility deity worship. For farmers, the ancestral spirit was identified with the deity of the rice fields.

Table 3.2 Folk and institutionalised Shinto: Institutional, political, and ideological differences

(1) Institutional/ ideological characteristics

Folk Shinto

Institutionalised Shinto

Chief agent

Common people

General orientation Ideological function Language transmission Historical model

Horizontal/egalitarian

Emperor/imperial family/Jinja HonchoVertical/elitist/ authoritarian Strong

Administrative organisation Shrine

Egalitarian

Administration

Implications for life (inochi)

Irrelevant Oral transmission Continuing

Small local shrines (sonsha 村社) Limited mainly to local festivals Paramount (especially for birthplace deity)

Written/documentbased Periodised by imperial reign Hierarchical Ise Jingu- at the top Central/based on a system of management Used as war ideology

(2) Relationship with other religions

Syncretistic

Assumes a superior position

(3) Relationship with nature

Integral

Elastic

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It was quite natural for them to believe that the ancestral spirit resided in the fields that their ancestors had made fertile.142 Tsurumi further summarises the characteristics of ancestor worship, again drawing upon the work of Yanagita: The Japanese believe that the spirits of the deceased first go to the hillside behind the home and, as time passes, they gradually purify themselves over a thirty-three-year period. The spirit is then fused with the ancestral spirit of the family. They further believe that communication between the living and the dead can be held at any time, not just on the special occasions of the two major festivals, the summer Obon (honoring the dead) and New Year’s Day. Finally they believe that the unrealized aspirations of the dead will be carried out by succeeding generations and any unfinished tasks can be completed.143 These characteristics of ancestor worship are also applicable to institutionalised Shinto, but they are more ideological in that they assume the presence of a common ancestor for all Japanese people, which leads to the belief that the sun goddess is a direct ancestor of the imperial family. This is quite different from the way Ogata, Ishimure, and others in Minamata relate to the deceased. For example, Ogata’s ‘communication’ with his deceased father and the villager’s wish to be connected with the deceased through the activities of Hongan no kai (The Association for the Original Vow [of Amida Buddha]) can be considered as a part of folk Shinto. Their thinking and activities, such as carving stone Buddha statues, are strongly influenced by Buddhism. Breen and Teeuwen point out that institutionalised Shinto can also coexist with other religions, but that it is because it is positioned to be of a different category (or league) from other religions,144 almost like a ‘supra-religion’. Tsurumi argues that animism (or folk Shinto) has been the main influence on endogenous development, and that Buddhism syncretised with it in a way that reinforced animism.145 For instance, with regard to ancestor worship Buddhism teaches that ‘the departed soul should leave this land of filth and enter the Pure Land’ as quickly as possible.146 Yet Japanese Buddhism augments ancestor worship through various practices such as the 33-year memorial service for the deceased (see the transformation of the soul discussed by Yanagita above). Another example of Japanese Buddhism reinforcing animism is the notion of ‘so-moku jo-butsu’ (‘草木成仏’), which refers to the enlightenment of plants such as grass and trees. While mainstream Buddhism does not support the notion that plants are sentient beings (i.e. able to perceive or sense and therefore attain Buddhahood), plants are included as sentient beings in Japanese Buddhism.147 Tsurumi also hypothesises that Catholicism had an influence on the endogenous development in Minamata. She was inspired by the discovery of a statue hidden in the pillar of a house: The statue showed a Bodhisattva at the

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front and the Virgin Mary at the back, leading her to suspect that the statue had once been owned by clandestine Christians who had been severely oppressed during the Tokugawa Period. The fact that people in Minamata often talk about the construction of ‘another world in this world’ as an aim of regional rejuvenation, Tsurumi holds, might also be an influence of Christianity, whose texts talk about ‘The Kingdom of Heaven on this earth’.148 My point here is that folk Shinto, which is best described as animism, and which Tsurumi considers has been at the core of endogenous development in Japan, has never been exclusive in its faith. Rather, it has resonated strongly with the tradition of ancestor worship and syncretised Buddhism, and even Christianity, albeit in a limited way. This was due to the non-exclusivist nature of animism / folk Shinto as an ‘open religion’, making integration with other religions possible. The third point that distinguishes folk Shinto from institutionalised Shinto is its relationship with nature. Both types of Shinto have an apparent association with nature through the notion of kami, which, in the case of institutionalised Shinto, is also reflected strongly in rituals that are centred upon items found in nature such as rice, straw, water, and fire. However, the key difference between folk Shinto and institutionalised Shinto regarding their relationship with nature was brought to light when the Meiji government attempted to rationalise shrines through the 1906 Imperial Ordinance, which was issued as part of the scheme to merge villages and towns to reduce administrative costs and to improve the government’s control over the periphery. Before then, every community, no matter how small, had its own little shrine which housed its ‘guardian deity of birthplace’ (ubusuna 産土). The 1906 decree limited the number of shrines to one per new administrative unit and ordered the smaller shrines to be demolished and the trees in their sacred groves (chinju-no-mori 鎮守の森) to be cut down and sold to raise funds to support the bigger shrine. As a result, numerous hamlet shrines that had been the basis of grassroots folk Shinto for centuries were destroyed, which involved not only the killing the local deities but also the destruction of the ecosystem surrounding the shrines.149 Biologist and folklorist Minakata Kumagusu, the eccentric but exceptional scientist who introduced the word ‘ecology’ (ekorojı-) to Japan, was vehemently opposed to this Ordinance. He was an academic who mostly worked on his own without belonging to a university. He spent four years in the United States and nine years in Britain, where he studied at the British Museum by himself. After returning from Britain, he devoted his life to collecting fungi and algae in the Kumano Mountains (Wakayama Prefecture) in the daytime and reading and writing English papers in the evenings. He was a regular contributor to the science magazine Nature and to Notes and Queries, a weekly magazine from Oxford University: He published 50 papers in Nature, and contributed 323 pieces to Notes and Queries, and thus was very much part of the frontline of the scientific world of his time.150

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Tsurumi Kazuko played a pivotal role in establishing Minakata’s reputation as a scholar. He had been little known until Tsurumi published an analytical biography of him in 1978.151 In her paper, Tsurumi introduces the content of a petition Minakata made to the government explaining the ecological and social significance of the small shrines. Tsurumi writes: In his petitions, Minakata wrote how the swallows and many other birds, which used to make nests on the eaves of old shrines and in the forests, had disappeared since the destruction of the shrines and deforestation, and this had caused a radical increase of insects that damaged crops on the farms. Consequently, famers were forced to buy insecticides, which made for increased cost of production. Since the forests on the waterfront were also cut down, the fish that used to come to rest under the shade of trees stopped coming near the shore. This made it necessary for fishermen to switch from inshore to offshore fishing, for which they were not equipped.152 Minakata’s persistence in protecting the ecology of the shrines was due to his fear that ‘rare specimens of microbes might become completely extinct’ as plants and foliage were destroyed.153 He was a microbiologist with a strong passion for slime moulds (myxomycetes or mycetozoa) and was ‘renowned for having discovered about 100 different species of slime molds … and one new genus’154 that is named after him: Minakatella longifila Lister. Minakata writes, as quoted by Tsurumi: Many shrine forests of this country retain the natural forest of that particular locality for well over a thousand years. In addition, each time people found plants rare to the locality, they planted them there to offer to the kami, and as a result, shrine forests often have rare plants. Great old trees and species distinct to the area are definitely found in the shrines and ponds. … Therefore, to destroy them unhesitatingly is a shameful thing to do vis-à-vis foreign countries where science is taken seriously.155 Minakata suggests the sacredness of the shrine not only protected its forests but also enriched its diversity for centuries. These ecosystems were especially valuable for Minakata, as slime moulds live at the bottom of the forest at the lowest strata, where there is a lot of moisture, and they could only survive as part of the surrounding ecosystem.156 The government was irked by Minakata’s activism, and as punishment for his passionate protests he was jailed for 18 days in 1911. By then, Wakayama Prefecture, where he lived, had already lost over 80% of its shrines157 because Wakayama was an area where the decree to destroy small shrines was followed zealously. Despite being put in jail, Minakata ‘never stopped campaigning with local farmers, fishermen and craftsmen for ten consecutive years, until finally the decree was repealed in the House of Peers

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in 1920’.158 Yanagita Kunio, discussed earlier as a folk-Shinto specialist, helped Minakata with his campaign. Yanagita was a top bureaucrat who also served on the Privy Council (1946–1947), an advisory body for the Emperor. In the end, however, as a result of the decree, between 1906 and 1920 the number of shrines declined from approximately 190,000 to 110,000.159 This means that over 40% of the shrines in Japan were destroyed, and this had a tremendous ecological and social impact on large parts of the country, especially in farming, fishing, and mountain villages. As well as disrupting the local environment, destroying nature around a shrine also meant that the local kami who resided there were discarded. The numinous power of the land was extinguished, and the local spiritual traditions were suppressed. As Clammer points out, the decree aimed to sabotage the belief systems of the local people, which basically means that the Meiji government wanted to destroy folk Shinto, because its shamanistic aspects were impossible to codify and would have presented an enormous challenge to a government whose aim was to construct a strong new nation-state. The animistic aspect of folk Shinto directly challenged the Japanese government’s modernist plan.160 The rationalisation of Shinto shrines in the Meiji Period thus revealed a radical side of grassroots animism which made it extremely difficult to systematise and institutionalise.161 Figure 3.1 shows again the conceptual relationships between folk Shinto and institutionalised Shinto. In terms of the theoretical relationship between humans and nature, and the presence of kami in nature, both forms of Shinto are the same and this is indicated by the overlap of the two circles. However, with regard to (1) the institutional, political, and ideological aspects of Shinto, (2) their relationship with other religions, and (3) the actual relationship with nature, they are quite different. Although both folk and institutionalised Shinto are theoretically ‘animistic’, only folk Shinto, with its steadfast relationship with nature, has genuine affinity for animism. According to Breen and Teeuwen, the lack of interest in nature by the Shinto establishment continues today. Through detailed analyses of the attitudes and practices of the Shinto establishment, they found that it has ‘no genuine interest in nature or the environment, and nature has had nothing obvious to do with the Shinto establishment at all’, and that as far as institutionalised Shinto is concerned the proposition that ‘Shinto is a religion of nature, and that Japan’s nature is somehow, of itself, Shinto’ is fantasy more than it is fact.162 Now that I have clarified the relationship between animism and Shinto, let me return to Tsurumi’s proposition that animism provides a frame of reference for endogenous development. But what exactly is the relationship between animism and endogenous development as envisaged by Tsurumi, and how is it relevant to a broader discourse on animism outside of Japanese Studies? In order to address these questions, I will draw on the work of anthropologist Tim Ingold.

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Instuonalised Shinto (1) Ideological (2) Assumes a superior posion to other religions (3) Nature can be destroyed Belief in the presence of kami in nature Folk Shinto (1) Non-ideological (2) Syncretic with other religions (3) Nature is essential

Figure 3.1 Folk and institutionalised Shinto: Conceptual map

Animacy as the source of life and movement Tim Ingold presents a new interpretation of animism in his 2006 paper, ‘Rethinking the Animate, Re-animating Thought’, and challenges the conventional understanding of animism as ‘a system of beliefs that attributes life and even spirit to objects that are ostensibly inert’. He argues that animism is not ‘a way of thinking about the world but of being alive to it, characterized by a heightened sensitivity and responsiveness, in perception and action, to an environment that is always in flux, never the same from one moment to the next’.163 He calls this the ‘ontology of animism’,164 and it helps us to understand the relationship between animism and endogenous development. Following this interpretation of animism, Ingold continues: Animacy … is not a property of persons imaginatively projected onto the things. … Rather … it is the dynamic, transformative potential of the entire field of relations within which beings of all kinds, more or less person-like or thing-like, continually and reciprocally bring one another into existence. The animacy of the lifeworld, in short, is not the result of an infusion of spirit into substance, or of agency into materiality, but is rather ontologically prior to their differentiation.165 Ingold uses ‘animacy’ as a concept that opposes ‘agency’, that is, animacy is the opposite of ‘a thing or person that acts to produce a particular result’.166 He says that animacy is the dynamic, transformative potential that exists ontologically because of its nature and its very being, whatever that it is. In his account, life is ‘continuous birth’,167 a continuous expression of animacy,

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or a continual process of regeneration, of becoming. With this notion of animism, Ingold envisages an organism ‘as the outward expression of an inner design’168 because ‘life in the animic ontology is not an emanation but a generation of being, in a world that is not pre-ordained but incipient, forever on the verge of the actual’.169 Ingold’s notion of animacy connects with Tsurumi’s theory of endogenous development in the most fundamental sense (i.e. ‘endo’ = internal/within, ‘-genous’ = originating in) that development occurs from within. To put it differently, Ingold seems to be saying that animacy can develop only endogenously and that life is one expression of that tendency. Ingold’s notion of animacy, that it is something that is noticed by ‘heightened sensitivity and responsiveness, in perception and action’ that is in ‘an environment that is always in flux, never the same from one moment to the next’, as quoted above, is clearly conveyed by the Japanese word kehai (気配). Kehai means a very slight, almost imperceptible sign or hint of the movement of something, and that ‘something’ can be living (visible or hidden) or non-living (such as a spirit, ghost, air, or energy) and requires ‘a heightened sensitivity and responsiveness’ in perception in order to notice it (see the discussion on this ‘something’ by Miyazaki Hayao in Chapter 4). Furthermore, Tsurumi says tamashii (soul) gives us the ability to sense kehai, 170 and that animism is the feeling of being connected with everything around us through tamashii, which dwells not only in humans but also in all living and non-living things171 (as described by Figure 1.1). Ishimure adds that tamashii is the same as anima, 172 which she explains as: something that is eternal. It is immortal and does not die. It may look dead sometimes, but it needs to die to revive, and the more frequently it dies, the more frequently it revives and it becomes eternal. In that sense, tamashii (soul) [or anima] of not just humans but of all life is essentially free, not because we think so, but because that is its fundamental nature. It is not bound to anything, and it coexists with the universe in its most idealistic form; it is one with the life of the universe. We call it tamashii to refer to it in a common language, but it can fly beyond time and space even before we name it, because that is the nature of its existence.173 This account of anima by Ishimure seems similar to Ingold’s description of animacy: continuous birth (on a far larger scale) originating from fundamental nature a priori to any sort of conceptualisation, or name, or even language, and characterised by complete, ontological freedom. Instead of attempting to sort the relationship between this account of anima/tamashii/ soul in the context of anthropological and philosophical discourse in Western scholarship, which is beyond the scope of this volume, let me pursue Ingold’s notion of animism so as to bring it closer to Tsurumi’s work. Ingold’s notion of animism has two basic ideas. One is that an organism is not ‘a self-contained object like a ball … but an ever-contained ramifying web

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of lines of growth … [like] fungal mycelium’. The other idea is that ‘the animistic world is in perpetual flux’175and that ‘whenever there is life there is movement’176 – namely, an organism is like a web of lines that keep moving. These descriptions of organisms by Ingold remind me of Tsurumi’s discussion of Minakata Kumagusu and his study of slime moulds. These moulds seem relevant to Ingold’s account of animism because of their exceptionally ‘dynamic process of transformation’, which not only involves an ‘ever-contained ramifying web of lines of growth’, but also includes a stage of being ‘a self-contained [thing] like a ball’,177 as well as a simple form of lines before they form a web (see Ingold’s diagrams in his 2006 paper),178 and because they are in ‘perpetual flux’ and move constantly by crawling, spreading, connecting, standing (as a stem), and flying (as a spore). Minakata integrated modern Western science and Buddhism into his study of slime moulds in order to find the principle of life within them.179 174

Slime mould: Connecting esoteric Buddhism, science, and animism What exactly is slime mould? It is: any of about 500 species of primitive organisms that contain true nuclei and resemble both protists and fungi. … Originally grouped within the kingdom Fungi, some classification systems consider slime molds to be in the kingdom Protista. They typically thrive in dark, cool, moist conditions such as on forest floors. Bacteria, yeast, molds, and fungi provide the main source of slime-mold nutrition. The complex life cycle of slime molds, exhibiting complete alternation of generations, may clarify the early evolution of both plant and animal cells. In the presence of water a tiny spore releases a mass of [two kinds of cells that] can fuse in sexual union; the resulting fertilized cell, or plasmodium, grows through nuclear division and forms a spore case, which, when it dries, disintegrates and releases spores to begin the cycle again.180 Slime mould has garnered a lot of attention in recent years due to its incredible ‘intelligence’, despite being a single-cell organism: ‘It is capable of finding the shortest path through a maze, it can construct networks as efficient as those designed by humans, it can solve computationally difficult puzzles, it makes multi-objective foraging decisions, it balances its nutrient intake and it even behaves irrationally’.181 In comparison to the scientists who made these recent discoveries, which were made in highly controlled laboratories, Minakata studied slime moulds as a naturalist-oriented microbiologist, stressing the significance of observing them directly in nature (with the sun, moon, rain, and wind), at the same eye level, as part of an ecosystem (observing the availability of food, levels of moisture in the air and soil, and the relationship with surrounding fauna and flora), and seeing them move and transform in their own time. His particular curiosity was with the process of metamorphosis. Based on Minakata’s account

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of slime mould written in 1931, Tsurumi, in her final scholarly paper, ‘The Minakata-Mandala: A Paradigm Change for the Future’, discusses three points that are relevant for further consideration of life, animism, and endogenous development.182 The first point is that moulds go beyond the simple division of plants and animals: They have characteristics of both and do not fit neatly into either category. Minakata even thought that slime mould challenges the boundary between life and death because when it is most active it looks like phlegm and is often considered dead, whereas it is often considered alive when it is in fact ‘half-dead’ as it turns into spores for future propagation.183 Furthermore, this metamorphosis, or inversion of category from animal to plant, from ‘life to death’, like yin and yang in continual flux, is what enables slime moulds to adapt and survive in an ever-changing environment. Frederick Little points out that monism, which is at the core of esoteric Buddhism,184 was the basis of Minakata’s cosmology and epistemology.185 Monism is ‘the belief that only one being … exists, esp. the doctrine that all living things are elements of a universal being’,186 and it also asserts there is no distinction or duality between, for example, matter and mind, or good and evil. Esoteric Buddhism is ‘a system of “theosophical” doctrines, alleged by its adherents to have been handed down by secret tradition among an initiated class of Buddhists’,187 and Minakata was part of the Shingon sect, which is ‘an early Japanese synthesis of the traditions best known in the West as Tibetan or Tantric Buddhism [which is esoteric Buddhism]’.188 Slime moulds, which transcend conventional dualism (i.e. plant vs animal), exemplify monism, which is at the core of the esoteric Buddhism that Minakata pursued. Second, Tsurumi remarks that Minakata’s intellectual curiosity was aroused by the question of how to analyse events that happen by chance or coincidence (en 縁) because they do not fit with the standard scientific method, which basically analyses cause and effect. Nor do chance and coincidence, which some people refer to as fate or destiny, fit ‘Western forms of positivism which [is a] “theory of necessity, based upon Newtonian mechanics”’.189 Minakata’s curiosity was piqued by the fact that the slime mould’s ‘processes of change from the phlegm-like state into the fungus-like shape depends upon chance factors rather than fixed laws’.190 In this context, Tsurumi quotes Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003) saying that slime moulds helped him clarify the notions of chaos and chance.191 Prigogine, a Nobel Prize laureate, hypothesised that ‘order and organization can actually arise “spontaneously” out of disorder and chaos through a process of “selforganization”’.192 Prigogine wrote that ‘slime mold aggregation is a typical example of what may be termed “order through fluctuations”’,193 and that its aggregation appears to begin spontaneously,194 which can be taken to mean ‘endogenously’ (Tsurumi’s terminology), or ‘by chance’ (Minakata’s words), or ‘with complete freedom’ (as Ingold and Ishimure might say). According to Minakata, this recognition of both causality (cause and effect) and coincidence is at the core of esoteric Buddhism.195

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The third point Tsurumi makes about Minakata’s study of slime mould is that it was his motive for introducing the term ‘ecology’ to Japan, which he did almost at the same time as the term was coined in the West.196 She writes: ‘Minakata understood ecology as a holistic structure in which soil, water, plants and animals of diverse species, including humans, lived in mutual interdependence and in a constant process of transformation and circulation’,197 because unless ‘the whole structure of vegetation peculiar to a specific locale is maintained, slime molds cannot survive’.198 Slime moulds are extremely place-specific, hence their huge diversity (more than 500 species have been discovered), and each location has its own holistic environment. The point Tsurumi is making here is that it is again Eastern religion, especially Buddhism, where holism (the theory that parts of a whole are in intimate interconnection, such that they cannot exist independently of the whole, or cannot be understood without reference to the whole, which is thus regarded as greater than the sum of its parts)199 is a fundamental principle. Tsurumi contends that the study of slime moulds by Minakata can be linked to Buddhism, especially esoteric Buddhism through monism, taking into account not only cause and effect but also chance and a strong belief in the holistic nature of things. It is noteworthy that these points are more relevant to science today than at the time when Minakata lived because some fundamental premises of modernity are now being questioned, including (1) a critical rethinking of categories such as human nature, human vs nonhuman, life and death, and animal vs plant; (2) the recognition of chance, uncertainty, and self-organisation as scientific principles, in chaos theory and quantum physics, for example; and (3) an increasing acceptance of holistic thinking in the social sciences as well as in the natural sciences, including ecology, health, and climate change. If I can use slime mould to connect our imagination to animistic ontology, these points suggest a direct and possibly even greater relevance of animism to science today – very different from the conventional image of animism as primitive, backward, irrational, and pre-modern. But what about the relationship between esoteric Buddhism and animism? Is it possible to connect animism and Buddhism more directly rather than just ‘relying on’ slime moulds? Anthropologist Iwata Keiji (1922–2013), who worked extensively on animism in South East Asia, argues that animism and esoteric Buddhism are essentially the same.200 His first point regards pantheism,201 where kami are identical to nature and the universe and are manifest in everything. According to Iwata, it is not sufficient to describe animism simply as a belief that there are spirits in all animate and inanimate things, a point which Ingold would agree with. Instead, Iwata considers that animistic kami manifest themselves in many forms (e.g. as a crow kami or a lizard kami), and that each and every one of them is a kami itself. In other words, animism is pantheistic (rather than polytheistic),202 and so is esoteric Buddhism, the main doctrine of which is that Buddhahood resides in everything. The corollary of this is monism, the second commonality between animism

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and esoteric Buddhism, which presents a completely different logic from the dualist Cartesian logic of modernity (as discussed in the Introduction). Iwata’s third point is that both animism and esoteric Buddhism position nature as the foundation of all knowledge, something that is made clear in esoteric Buddhism by the presence of the great sun deity (or Mahavairocana Buddha) at the centre of the mandala which transmits the absolute wisdom of the cosmos. Iwata adds, though, that we do not need to focus on such words as ‘esoteric Buddhism’, ‘animism’, or even ‘spirit’ in order to understand the world they represent: We simply need to walk into nature, face it directly, and enjoy its blessings203 – that is, we do not need an intermediary or ‘medium’ to connect with nature and animism. And that is exactly what Minakata Kumagusu believed. This leads us to one more point Tsurumi raised in relation to Minakata’s study of slime moulds: the question of self.

The question of self As discussed above, Minakata devoted his life to understanding the nature of life through his study of slime moulds, blending biological science with esoteric Buddhism. In this context, Tsurumi refers to Minakata’s letter to a Buddhist priest in which he discloses that his dreams led him to locate and discover ‘rare specimens of algae, lichen, fungi and slime molds’.204 According to Tsurumi, Minakata: interprets the function of dreams in terms of alaya consciousness (alayavijnana) – which in the Buddhist philosophy of yuishiki [唯識] (vijnaptimatra) means ‘supreme wisdom’, ‘supreme enlightenment’, or ‘the basis upon which all the accomplishments of past activities are retained and from which the future life is to emerge’. Minakata maintains that … ‘at the time when unusual ideas come to us or we dream about some mysterious matter, the unconscious self (alaya) is activated from below the superficial level of everyday consciousness’.205 Minakata’s interpretations of his dreams include the notion of multiple selves, unconscious thought, and fate or chance, which, as pointed out by Tsurumi, are ideas parallel to those of Carl Jung.206 Tsurumi holds also that Minakata’s prophetic dreams, called ‘synchronicities’ in Jungian terms, necessitate that he himself is present in the situation to experience it directly and that this was possible because he was very much part of the environment which the microorganisms inhabited: He spent hours every day searching for micro-organisms in the woods and observing them at ground level in the forest.207 In other words, Minakata himself was part of the holistic web of relationships that Tsurumi calls a ‘mandala’.208 A mandala is ‘a symbolic circular figure, usually with symmetrical divisions and figures of deities, etc., in the centre, used in Buddhism and other religions as a representation of the universe’.209

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In fact, Minakata is famous for the so-called ‘Minakata-mandala’, a term coined by Tsurumi for a diagram of hand-written criss-crossing lines which has various points marked with letters and which looks like ‘a spilled bowl of noodles’.210 As Tom Gill points out, Tsurumi ‘has done more than anyone else to popularize the term mandala’.211 Her accounts of the mandala, however, are somewhat fragmented, and her intention to incorporate the theory of Minakata’s mandala into her theory of endogenous development was left unaccomplished. Perhaps this is because she was unsure what might constitute the suiten (翠点) or gathering point, the most important point in the Minakata-mandala, where the greatest number of lines, representing different series of causes and effects, intersect.212 Tsurumi, in her discussion with Kawakatsu Heita in 2002, raised the question of what exactly the suiten would be in her own personal mandala, apparently expecting an abstract idea as an answer.213 Kawakatsu replied – referring to the Kegon (Flower Garland 華厳) School of esoteric Buddhism – that the suiten is the very person who the mandala is about, the person whose cosmology is expressed by the mandala. That is, the suiten is the person who is the agency for all the things expressed in the mandala.214 To Tsurumi, who felt stuck and unable to solve the riddle of how to incorporate the mandala into her theory of endogenous development,215 Kawakatsu suggested that the connecting point would be Tsurumi herself. She would be the suiten (gathering point) of her mandala,216 which is what Jean-François Lyotard might call the ‘nodal point’ (as discussed in the Introduction).217 According to Kawakatsu, the world that a mandala expresses can be expanded from that of an individual to the world and then to the universe because the basic ideas of the Kegon School of Buddhist philosophy, which he adhered to, is ‘one in all, and all in one’.218 In other words, it presents ‘a totalistic view of the universe wherein the Absolute … is inherent in every individual … and each entity mirrors the Absolute’.219 More broadly, the Kegon School is based on a particular school of Mahayana Buddhism, according to which: no part of the whole exists in isolation and there is complementarity and mutual identification between all entities in a grand harmonious unity. Elements which appear to be separate are in fact subtly linked like jewels which reflect their brilliance upon one another.220 Little, in an unpublished PhD thesis, comments that Tsurumi ‘does not seem to address the historic accommodation between academic/esoteric Buddhist cosmology and native animism’.221 The validity of Little’s statement could perhaps be questioned because his thesis referenced only one of Tsurumi’s papers, the only one which is available in English. Nonetheless, his statement is consistent with my reading of Tsurumi, and he may have identified the reason for the difficulty she faced in incorporating Minakata’s mandalas into

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her theory of endogenous development. In fact, the perspective of esoteric Buddhism that Little adopted in his study of Minakata provides a vivid illustration of suiten, in such a way that it strengthens Tsurumi’s point that Minakata was an indispensable part of nature in the areas where he worked. Little writes: Minakata sees in the area of maximum interplay between the ‘necessity’ and the ‘coincident’ the ‘suiten’ or ‘gathering point’ around which phenomena ranging from the geological through the biological, ontological, and sociological carry out their self-organizing activity spontaneously. … For Minakata, this suiten was the mountains and shores of the Kii peninsula, and by siting himself there, far from the apparent center of Tokyo, he placed his own mind, trained in the modes of observation and deduction found in Western empirical science, and in the modes of contemplation, observation, projective vision found in the ancient mind-science of esoteric Buddhist theory and practice at a spot where the confluence of the ancient and the modern, the foreign and the native, the eastern and the western, the past and the present, and the effects of their interaction could be seen rippling through the landscape, the lives of the people who occupied it, and their relation with Japan’s Imperial center and the world beyond.222 This illustrates vividly how opposing influences, sometimes caused by necessity and other times by chance, gather like criss-crossing lines through Minakata himself and the ecosystems of the Kii Peninsula, where he strolled and studied using all his intellect, physicality, and spirituality that eventually became his own mandala. This illustration consolidates the very first and most fundamental thesis Tsurumi presented as animism, namely, that humans are part of nature.223 With the image of Minakata as the intersection through which all different, inevitable, and coincidental forces pass through, it is not hard to understand how he experienced synchronicity, or meaningful coincidences, manifested as prophetic dreams. Similar to Minakata, who had prophetic dreams, Ogata, who had a mysterious period of madness, and Ishimure, who had a blissful near-death experience, Tsurumi also had a near-death experience in 1996 at the age of 77 after a stroke. As she woke up from a coma, she was overwhelmed by numerous tanka poems that overflowed in her mind despite her having stopped producing tanka more than five decades previously. Although the left side of her body was disabled, Tsurumi intensely felt the innate power of life, most strongly with nature around her, especially small life forms such as flowers and birds. Tsurumi states that she was awakened to a deeper meaning of endogenous development, that self is a fundamental part of it,224 which continues to develop endogenously beyond time and space while being connected to the universe and other manifestations of life (i.e. nature).225

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A sociological discourse on animism In this chapter, I have examined the intellectual journey of sociologist Tsurumi Kazuko, who maintained that animism could become the foundation for a ‘less violent science, technology, and culture’,226 which could help mitigate the selfdestructive tendencies of modernity. Since the mid-1990s, when Tsurumi published her last academic paper, there has been a resurgence of interest in animism and it has regained academic currency. The reality of the Anthropocene has confronted us with the need to rethink the human–nature relationship, and so has the reality of the world risk society, especially after the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima. These developments, as well as the general increase in the interest in spirituality, have made animism far more relevant today than at the time Tsurumi worked on it. What, then, are the implications of Tsurumi’s pioneering work on animism in today’s context? It should be reiterated that Tsurumi’s discourse on animism began as a critique of modernity, as was the case with Ogata Masato (Chapter 1). In Tsurumi’s case, the profound sense of powerlessness she felt as a sociologist, when she witnessed the devastation caused by industrial pollution in Minamata, became the foundation of her intellectual journey. What she experienced in her mind was a collapse of the legitimacy of the social-scientific paradigm, or the collapse of what Dirlik would call ‘Euro-American scientism’ or ‘new scientism’.227 As Dirlik points out, Euro-American scientism imposes its abstract, flattening, hegemonic knowledge in the name of development or modernisation (or globalisation), while ‘cannibalizing other ways of knowing, only to make them irrelevant’.228 Instead of simply critiquing the modernisation thesis, Tsurumi positioned it as one of the variants of endogenous development, a version that originated in the West. She thus relativised the position of modernisation theory vis-à-vis other yet-to-emerge theories of development. In other words, she positioned endogenous development as a theoretical prototype, which gives discursive space to local people in each place to decide their own mode of development, based on local traditions and local ecology. Tsurumi proposed a ‘shell theory’ that can be used to advance what Dirlik would call the radical project of the local (or the place). By proposing the theory of endogenous development, Tsurumi prepared a universal theoretical framework that enables each locality to develop its own mode of development based on its ‘place consciousness’229 and its own ‘way of knowing’ (i.e. ontology and epistemology), something that is on the verge of extinction under the hegemonic knowledge of Euro-American scientism, which is often backed by the enormous power of global capitalism. Animism was one such disappearing ‘way of knowing’ that Tsurumi discovered in Minamata. She saw it waning as the local ecology was destabilised by industrial pollution, which also caused the disappearance of local kami. The destruction of pine forests in Modo-, for instance, meant the disappearance of their mountain kami (Yamagami-sama). The ‘death of the sea’ in Minamata meant the death of the local fishery, which also signalled the

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demise of kami associated with the sea such as Funadama-san (the kami of a boat) and Ebisu-san (the deity of the sea: see Chapter 1). It meant the disappearance of local ways of knowing (i.e. ontology), the way local people understood the relationships between life, nature, and soul. Based on her observations in Minamata, Tsurumi positioned animism at the core of her model of endogenous development. Although it represents only one model, she envisaged it as a model which could have wide applicability to many localities, due to the broad relevance of animism in many traditional cultures. She thus positioned animism as a counter-balance to the dominant modernist and globalist development paradigm. This positioning of animism is consistent with the ‘new animism’ movement. As discussed in the Introduction, the ‘new animism’ discourse began as a critique of modernity at the beginning of the new millennium. Graham Harvey writes, for example: ‘Animism is worth considering (a) because it exists, (b) because it addresses contemporary issues and debates, and (c) because it clarifies, in various ways, the argument that the project of modernity is ill-conceived and dangerously performed’.230 The strength of Tsurumi’s discourse on animism is that she framed it at the core of a future-oriented theory of development. In other words, her discourse on animism is not just ‘negative sociology’,231 nor is it a mere critique of modernity. This raises a question: What, then, represents her ‘positive sociology’ for the understanding of animism? The examination of discourses of endogenous development, as presented in this chapter, identified two key parameters in the critique of the modernisation (or globalisation) paradigm of development: the anthropocentric vs non-anthropocentric axis and the universalist vs localist axis. Animism belongs to the localist–non-anthropocentric space, and this is the space where Tsurumi’s discourse on animism as the theory of endogenous development belongs. To rephrase the question then: What is the significance of Tsurumi’s discourse on animism as a localist–nonanthropocentric paradigm? I argue that her discourse on animism is significant for the theorisation of life-world, place/locality, and self. Animism as a theory of life-world Although animism definitely presents a non-anthropocentric view of the world, there is a question as to what exactly is envisaged by the ‘non-anthropocentric’. Does it refer to animals other than humans (i.e. anthropomorphism = ‘personhood’ being assigned to animals), nonhuman living beings (including plants), nonhuman animate and inanimate existence (including the land), or the beyond (e.g. soul or spirit)? Whatever is meant by the term ‘nonhuman’, however, each of these perspectives presupposes a human vs nonhuman binary, or what Plumwood refers to as human–nature dualism. To reiterate her points again, human–nature dualism (1) is a ‘Western-based cultural formation going back thousands of years’; (2) ‘conceives the humans as not only superior to but different in kind from the nonhuman’; and (3) has the essence of humans conceived to lie in ‘the higher disembodied element of mind, reason, culture and soul or spirit’.232

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Describing Tsurumi’s discourse on animism as non-anthropocentric means more than just the inclusion of the ‘nonhuman’ in the discourse. As discussed above, it is based on the realisation that ‘humans are entirely part of nature and that by destroying nature, we are destroying ourselves, our bodies, our minds and hearts, as well as our human relationships’;233 and, conversely, that ‘when the human body, mind and soul are damaged in this way, healing can be made possible by re-establishing the connectedness with nature’,234 as happened with Ogata Masato (Chapter 1). Clammer agrees. He states that the kind of animism represented by Shinto ‘creates a world view in which humans are a product of nature and nature is in a sense … a product of humans, both through the literal intervention of humans in nature through activities such as agriculture and through the activities of kami as former humans’.235 In this kind of animism, nature is not just the environment, or even ecology, but is the embodiment of a vitalistic force, life itself, of which humans are a part. This is what Ogata calls ‘life-world’, which is a composite of life, soul, and nature (see Figure 1.1), a world vividly illustrated in Ishimure Michiko’s literature (Chapter 2). This vitalistic force is called ‘animacy’ in Ingold’s terminology (or ‘anima’ in Ishimure’s terminology), and is a free, autonomous, and self-complete entity that emerges and develops endogenously.236 As pointed out by Clammer, the ‘positive sociology’ in the discourse on animism as folk belief in Japan (of which Tsurumi’s is a part) is to ‘provide a vision of society that is organised to reflect the vitalistic forces’ underlying it.237 This discourse on animism resonates well with that of Ingold as discussed above. He calls the vitalistic force ‘animacy’, ‘the dynamic, transformative potential of the entire field of relations’ that exists ontologically prior to their differentiation (i.e. their manifestation into material objects or beings).238 He argues that embodied life is an outward expression of this innate design which continuously moves and relates and which is constantly on the verge of the actual, the becoming,239 or developing endogenously. Tsurumi’s notion of animism as vitalism is closely associated with monism, which is the belief that all living things are elements of one universal being. It does not recognise dualisms such as mind vs matter, good vs evil, or human vs nonhuman, and Tsurumi’s animism is best represented by the doctrine of esoteric Buddhism: ‘one in all, and all in one’.240 This can be understood also as a kind of holism. Another key concept discussed in association with Buddhism is the notion of en, which not only means ‘chance’ (which leads to spontaneity and self-organisation in relation to chaos theory), but also means ‘relationality’ and ‘connectedness’. Tsurumi’s work on animism has enabled us to locate the Minamata discourse on animism/life-world as presented in Chapters 1 and 2 in a broader intellectual map. In relation to (still) mainstream social-scientific knowledge, it is a critique of Cartesian, dualist epistemology and the Weberian premise about the disenchantment of the modern world, a critique which is consistent with the general trend of ‘new animism’ and other movements such as deep ecology. As ‘positive sociology’, it continues to draw the discourse on animism

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one step closer to Eastern thinking, especially esoteric Buddhism, where concepts such as vitalism, monism, holism, and en are central. Tsurumi’s discourse, contrary to animism’s ancient and archaic and sometimes primitive image, resonates well with recent developments in modern science: (1) the integration of the notion of chance (in chaos theory and quantum physics); and (2) the concept of holism (or ‘holistic’ to use a buzzword) in social science. When combined with recent research on epigenetics, which was discussed above in relation to Ogata’s notion of ‘memory of life’, it seems safe to say that a rethinking in social science stimulated by the discourse on animism has already been taking place. Animism as a theory of place The second significance of Tsurumi’s work on animism lies in its implications for Dirlik’s theory of place. As quoted earlier, she remarks that animism is ‘very much a local thing, and the animism of each locality has its own characteristics’.241 Here, locality is not just the opposite of something ‘big but not great’ as positioned by Naess.242 Instead, ‘local’ represents a place where people feel directly connected to the life-world as an enchanted form of nature; through the numinous power of the land, through birth and death, through the presence of ancestors, beyond time and boundaries. It is the place where we are connected directly to the source of vital energy, or to the cosmos that constitutes the ontology of the local. Tsurumi’s work clarified that folk Shinto is animism. In clear contrast with institutionalised Shinto, its main characteristic lies in its existential relationship with the local. Locality or place consciousness is an essential feature of folk Shinto without which it simply cannot exist. Folk Shinto is based on a vitalistic model of the universe and it is ‘intensely local’.243 There are sub-sets of this proposition. First, folk Shinto is very much part of the local ecology, best described by Minakata’s description of the chinju-nomori, sacred grove, that surrounds a shrine. Folk Shinto consists of diverse components native to the locality, which in turn are an integral part of the ecology and life of the local area (e.g. farming, forestry, and fishing). Second, just as much as the ecology is local, the kami, as enchanted nature or the expression of its vitalistic force, are also deep seated in the local area, as described in Ishimure’s stories (e.g. a special kami of a local river with a particular name and characteristics). Third, folk Shinto is a folk belief which is part of the everyday life of a local community, and as such has the capacity to change244 to meet the changing needs of the local area. A theory grounded on the everyday lives of local people and their capacity to change composes the basic tenets of folklorist tradition in Japan, as outlined by Yanagita Kunio and Sakurai Tokutaro. Fourth, folk Shinto as an intensely local belief system can generate political power to meet the needs of the locals to survive. This political power is resourced from the numinous power of the land which is hard to codify, making folk Shinto, prior to its integration into the modern state system, a major threat to the state.245 Fifth, although being ‘intensely

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local’, folk Shinto is not a dogmatic belief system, and is very open in the way it relates to other religions, as seen in the case of syncretism with Buddhism. All these characteristics of folk Shinto resonate well with Dirlik’s theory of place,246 and can be developed into what Dirlik calls a ‘radical project’ of the place. Key to radical projects are: the local ecology, spiritual connections to the land, everyday life, a capacity to change, and openness to connect to the outside world. The discussion on animism presented in this chapter not only locates animism as a ‘localist and non-anthropocentric’ counter-discourse to the mainstream theory of development, but also identifies folk Shinto as a strong reference point for thinking about how development can be envisioned and pursued. There is a possibility of creating ‘new knowledge’ based on local ways of knowing. Animism as a theory of self and social change Animism which conceives of life as an expression of vitalistic force can address the question of self. This is because, as Clammer points out, ‘in the vitalistic world view all selves are in a sense manifestations of the “Great Self”’.247 He also points out that this kind of animism ‘continually keep[s] open the channels to a metaphysical and ontological reality’.248 In this world view, self is directly connected to the cosmos or the life-world. Self is also within the theoretical reference of Tsurumi’s discourse on animism because she takes animism as the spirit of endogenous development, the ultimate purpose of which, she regards, is to create conditions, or to bring about social change, which enables the full potential of each individual to be expressed.249 The third theoretical implication of the discourse on animism presented in this chapter, therefore, is for a theory of self and social change. Tsurumi’s encounter with animism in Minamata undoubtedly changed her as a sociologist and a person. After losing faith in the legitimacy of social scientific knowledge, and through listening to the life stories of the Minamata disease sufferers, she was ‘awakened to animism’. She also concluded that she and the research team came to Minamata ‘to change, to mend [their] ways, and to be taught by the local people’.250 She experienced a paradigm change in herself, which became the source of her intellectual journey. Quite paradoxically, Tsurumi was very much part of the intellectual crowd at Princeton University in the 1960s, and her time there coincided with that of Thomas Kuhn just after he published The Structure of Scientific Revolution (1962). To pursue a paradigmatic change not only in sociology but also broader social scientific knowledge became Tsurumi’s ongoing life project. Self is central for making connections, through necessity, or by fate or chance, in the relational epistemology of a mandala. Tsurumi’s near-death experience led her to believe that her existence is deeply connected to some other ‘being’ or cosmos from which her tanka poems emanated during her coma. This leads us to ask, what is the significance of these episodes which might be regarded as ‘supernatural’ or ‘para-psychological’, namely, Ogata’s

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notion of life-world that emerged during his ‘madness’, Ishimure’s image of ‘ancestor of grass’ that came to her in her coma, Tsurumi’s sense of connectedness with a cosmic entity through her tanka poems that emerged after her near-death experience, and even Minakata’s prophetic dreams that emerged from his experience of synchronicity with the environment? It is simply beyond the scope of this book to examine these episodes against recent developments in brain science and the study of near-death experiences.251 The explanations science can offer on this topic, however, are limited to the mechanism of the brain, and will not address why a certain mechanism exists. The question of why belongs in the realms of religion and metaphysics. The stories of Ogata, Ishimure, Tsurumi, and Minakata all hint at what might be present beyond the critical border of consciousness. Their stories are of their own endogenous development, whether it is called an encounter with the lifeworld, the world of the ancestor of grass, the world of animism, or, more vaguely, the cosmos. However you name it, having a sense of connectedness to such a world is the crux of understanding what animism is. Tracing the intellectual journey of Tsurumi Kazuko has enabled us to critically analyse animism through a variety of binaries: the East vs the West, ordinary folk vs the elite establishment, the periphery vs the core (or rural vs urban), the appreciation of traditional knowledge vs the single-minded pursuit of economic advancement, and the inclusion of the unseen vs its exclusion. These sets of ‘opposites’ can be presented in a mandala-like form as in Figure 3.2. In this schematic diagram, Tsurumi’s concept of animism resonates with the parameters at the bottom of the figure (i.e. tradition, grassroots, nature, rural, the unseen,

Human Urban

Elist

Seen

Present

West

East

Tradion

Unseen

Grassroots

Rural Nature

Figure 3.2 Conceptual mandala to think about animism

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and the East). In contrast, the shading of the concepts at the top (i.e. present, elitist, human, urban, the seen, and the West) indicates a smaller affinity with animism. Tsurumi’s theory of endogenous development, of which animistic thinking is a part, is based on clear values (kachi meijiteki 価値明示的) and does not pretend to be value-neutral.252 Nonetheless, discussion about animism should not begin with a negation of the parameters that occupy the top half of the diagram, as they represent modernity, of which we are all a part. Also, Tsurumi envisaged animism as being intensely local but at the same time universal in its applicability. I conclude his chapter by saying that an examination of animism within the social sciences can be seen as continual form of critical thinking that starts with critical thinking within each binary pair (human–nature, East–West, seen–unseen, urban–rural, etc.), each of which can perhaps be likened to a mini-attractor that might flip from time to time (like the metamorphosis of slime moulds). The interplay of this multitude of attractors might gradually transfer energy towards the bottom and one day cause the whole system to flip ‘upside down’, moving the animistic way of thinking, sensing, perceiving, and feeling the world around us to the top. This would represent a paradigmatic change, and would mean moving to a new kind of modernity, although Tsurumi does not quite put it this way. Changes in the reality of everyday lives, though, might be minimal. And in this mandala-like conceptualisation of animism, Tsurumi herself would be located at the centre originally, but each individual person who thinks critically in this super-transcultural space would be at the centre of their own intellectual mandala, and the thoughts developed would be as diverse as the number of individuals taking part in this creative rethink, each representing their own animism-inspired process of endogenous development.

Notes 1 ‘Sociological imagination’ is a term coined by sociologist C. Wright Mills and is also the title of his book that was published in 1959. It denotes the ability to imagine structural issues by looking at personal trouble (or vice versa) and is often used to explain the fundamental perspectives underlying the discipline of sociology. I have used ‘Animism for Sociological Imagination’ as the title for Tsurumi Kazuko’s work to indicate that she contended that the animistic perspective and animistic sensitivity should be part of sociological imagination (although she did not quite put it this way). 2 Tsurumi Kazuko 1998, ‘Chikyu- kankyo- o kangaeru’ [Thinking about the global environment], in Tsurumi Kazuko Mandara VI: Minamata, animizumu, ekorojı[Tsurumi Kazuko Mandala VI: Minamata – An approach to animism and ecology], Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo, pp.9–23 (citation on p.12). 3 This is the English title of the ninth volume (1999), the last volume of the Tsurumi Kazuko Mandala series, Naihatsuteki hatten-ron ni yoru paradaimu tenkan [A theory of endogenous development: Toward a paradigm change for the future], Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo. 4 Tsurumi Kazuko 1999, ‘Naihatsuteki hatten-ron no tenkai’ [The development of the theory of endogenous development]’, in Tsurumi Kazuko Mandara IX: Naihatsuteki hatten-ron ni yoru paradaimu tenkan [Tsurumi Kazuko Mandala IX: A

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Animism for the sociological imagination theory of endogenous development: Toward a paradigm change for the future], Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo, pp.59–63. Tsurumi Kazuko Mandara was published by Fujiwara shoten in 1997–1999. For the English collection, see Ron Morse & Tsurumi Kazuko 2014, Kazuko Tsurumi: The Adventure of Ideas: A Collection of Essays on Patterns of Creativity and a Theory of Endogenous Development, e-book available at Japanime, Tokyo & San Francisco, viewed 8 January 2017, . Tom Gill & Tsurumi Kazuko 2014, ‘New Lives: Some Case Studies of Minamata’, Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, vol.12, issue2, p.1. Kitano Ryu-ichi 2013, ‘Ima mo kurushimu Minamata no kanja ni atte – Ishimure-san ko-go--sama ni tegami’ [Please meet the still suffering Minamata patients – Ishimure wrote a letter to the Empress], Asahi Shimbun, 25 October. Simon Avenell 2010, Making Japanese Citizens, University of California Press, Berkeley. Morse & Tsurumi, Kazuko Tsurumi: The Adventure of Ideas, p.341. Tsurumi Kazuko 1998, ‘Ekorojı- no sekaikan’ [The worldview of ecology], in Tsurumi, Mandara VI, pp.405–450 (citation on p.406). Tsurumi Kazuko 1996, ‘Saishu- ko-gi: Naihatsuteki hatten no mittsu no jirei’ [The last lecture: Three examples of endogenous development], in Tsurumi, Mandara IX, pp.29–55 (citation on p.46). No-zawa Toshihiko & Tsurumi Kazuko 1999, ‘Tsurumi Kazuko Kenkyu- Nenpu’ [Tsurumi Kazuko Study – Chronological record], in Tsurumi, Mandara IX, pp.363–424 (citation on pp.391–392); Irokawa Daichiki, folk historian and leader of the research team, writes that Ishimure and others appealed to their academic colleagues around the world to conduct research on Minamata in October 1975, but researchers were not keen on doing so. Irokawa, however, came to be interested when approached directly by Ishimure, who said that in order to see the whole of the issue it would be necessary to have external as well as internal perspectives. Irokawa then persuaded others to join the collaborative study. See Irokawa Daikichi 1995, ‘Naze Minamata no “so-go- cho-sa ka”’ [Why a ‘comprehensive study’ on Minamata?], in Irokawa (ed.) Shinpen Minamata no Keiji [The Revelation of Minamata], Chikuma shobo-, Tokyo, pp.5–16 (citation on p.12). Tsurumi Kazuko 1998, ‘Minamata minshu- no sekai to nainatsuteki hatten’ [The world of Minamata people and the endogenous development], in Mandara VI, pp.28–79 (citation on p.30). This is a correct reading of this term as explained by Ishimure in Ishimure Michiko & Tsurumi Kazuko 2002, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa Mandara: Ishimure Michiko [Tsurumi Kazuko’s Mandala dialogue with Ishimure Michiko] Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo, p.176. Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.9. Ishimure Michiko 2004, Ishimure Michiko no kosumorogı- [The cosmology of Ishimure Michiko], Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo, p.113. ibid., p.9; regarding this ceremony, Irokawa Daichiki writes that he initially thought it was a unique local form of entertainment to welcome the visitors. It took him two years to realise that it indeed was a ceremony to make the 12 researchers ‘apostles’ to find and convey the historical meaning of the Minamata incident, and that prior to the ceremony Ishimure and others prayed to the gods to send ‘emissaries’ for that purpose. See Irokawa, ‘Why a comprehensive study?’, pp.5–16. Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.9. Tsurumi, ‘Minamata minshu-’, p.31. Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.14 (emphasis added). Tsurumi Kazuko 1998, ‘Shakai kagaku kara mita entoropı- ron’ [The theory of entropy seen from the perspective of the social sciences], in Mandara VI, pp.458–475 (citation on pp.466–467).

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22 ibid., p.467. 23 Tsurumi Kazuko 1998, ‘Tahatsu buraku no ko-zo- henka to ningen gunzo-’ [The structural change in villages affected heavily by Minamata disease and its human profile], in Tsurumi, Mandara VI, pp.152–219 (citation on p.154). 24 ibid., p.154. 25 ibid., p.174. 26 ibid., pp.174–177. 27 ibid., pp.176–177. 28 ibid., pp.182–186. 29 Tsurumi, ‘Saishu- ko-gi’, in Mandara IX, p.39. 30 Tsurumi, ‘Minamata minshu-’, p.32. 31 Tsurumi Kazuko 1998, ‘Animisumu to kagaku’ [Animism and science], Tsurumi, Mandara VI, pp.225–256 (citation on p.230). 32 Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.144. 33 Tsurumi, ‘Minamata minshu-’, p.33. 34 Simon Avenell 2017, Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, p.2. 35 Derek Wall 2010, The No-Nonsense Guide to Green Politics, New Internationalist, Oxford, p.12. 36 Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation 1975, What Now? Another Development. Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Uppsala, Sweden. 37 Brundtland Commission 1987, ‘Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development’, United Nations, Geneva. 38 Ulrich Beck 1999, World Risk Society, Polity, Cambridge; Bruno Latour 1993, We Have Never Been Modern, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA; Philippe Descola & Gísli Pálsson (eds) 1996, Nature and Society, Routledge, London & New York. 39 Nurit Bird-David 1999, ‘“Animism” revisited: Personhood, environment, and relational epistemology’, Current Anthropology, vol.40, Supplement, February, pp.S67–S91; Graham Harvey 2005, Animism: Respecting the Living World, Hurst & Co. London; Graham Harvey (ed.) 2014, The Handbook of Contemporary Animism, Routledge, New York. 40 Working Group on the ‘Anthropocene’ 2017, ‘What is the “Anthropocene?”’, Subcommission on the Quaternary Stratigraphy, viewed 11 January 2017,

41 Clive Hamilton, Christophe Bonneuil, & François Gemenne 2015, ‘Thinking the Anthropocene’ in Clive Hamilton, Christophe Bonneuil, & François Gemenne (eds), The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch, Routledge, London & New York. 42 Val Plumwood 2015, ‘Nature in the active voice’, in Graham Harvey (ed.), The Handbook of Contemporary Animism, Routledge, London & New York, pp.441–453 (citation on p.445). 43 ibid., p.442. 44 Deborah Bird Rose 2015, ‘Death and grief in a world of kin’, in Graham Harvey (ed.), The Handbook of Contemporary Animism, Routledge, London & New York, pp.137–147 (citation on p.145). 45 John H Miller 2008, Modern East Asia: An Introductory History, Routledge, London & New York, p.18. 46 Chua Beng Huat 2015, ‘Inter-Asia referencing and shifting frames of comparison’, in Carol Johnson, Vera Mackie, & Tessa Morris-Suzuki (eds), The Social Sciences in the Asian Century, ANU Press, Canberra, pp.67–80 (citation on p.67). 47 Kuan-Hsing Chen 2010, Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization, Duke University Press, Durham, NC.

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48 This will involve, for instance, (1) how Tsurumi’s theory is located in relation to the typology of human interaction with the natural world proposed by Descola (i.e. four different ontologies: animism, totemism, naturalism, and analogism) (see Philippe Descola 1996, ‘Constructing natures: Symbolic ecology and social practices’, in Philippe Descola and Gìsli Pálsson (eds), Nature and Society, Routledge, London; Philippe Descola 2006, ‘Beyond nature and culture’, Proceedings of the British Academy, vol.139, pp.137–155); (2) whether it is relational epistemology or relational ontology (see Eduardo Viveiros de Castro 1999, ‘Comments to Bird-David, ‘“Animism” Revisited’’, Current Anthropology, vol.40, Supplement, February, pp.S79–S80); (3) whether/how perspectivism (Eduardo Viveiros de Castro 1998, ‘Cosmological deixis and Amerindian perspectivism’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol.4, no.3, pp.469–488) or anthropomorphism may be relevant; or (4) whether it belongs to egalitarian or hierarchical animism (Kaj Århem 2015, ‘Southeast Asian animism in context’, in Kaj Århem & Guido Sprenger (eds), Animism in Southeast Asia, Routledge, London & New York). To do so, however, often means that local complexities ‘have to be severely trimmed to fit “neatly” into the selected Euro-American concepts [at the expense of] the richness of the local’ (Chua, ‘Inter-Asia referencing’, p.67). 49 Chua, ‘Inter-Asia referencing’, p.68. See also Chen, Asia as Method, p.227. 50 Chen, Asia as Method, p.212. 51 Tsurumi, ‘Saishu- ko-gi’, in Mandara IX, p.32. 52 The four points are from Tsurumi, ‘Saishu- ko-gi’, Mandara IX, p.32, unless otherwise specified. 53 Tsurumi, ‘Saishu- ko-gi’, Mandara IX, p.32. 54 Tsurumi Kazuko 1997, ‘Naihatsuteki hatten-ron e mukete’ [Towards a theory of endogenous development], in Tsurumi Kazuko Mandara I: Tsurumi Kazuko no shigoto, nyu-mon [Tsurumi Kazuko Mandala I: The works of Tsurumi Kazuko – A guide], pp.515–536 (citation on p.522). 55 Tsurumi Kazuko 1999, ‘Naihatsuteki hatten no genkei’ [The prototype of endogenous development], in Mandara IX, pp.67–148 (citation on p.71). 56 Tsurumi Kazuko 1989, ‘Naihatuteki hatten no keifu’ [A genealogy of endogenous development], in Tsurumi Kazuko & Kawata Tadashi (eds), Naihatsuteki hatten-ron [The theory of endogenous development], Tokyo University Press, Tokyo, pp. 43–64 (citation on pp.49–50). 57 Tsurumi, ‘Saishu- ko-gi’, in Mandara IX, pp.32–33. 58 Tsurumi, ‘Naihatuteki hatten no keifu’, p.47. 59 Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, ‘What Now?’, p.34 as quoted by Tsurumi, ‘Naihatsuteki hatten-ron e mukete’, p.521. 60 Nishikawa Jun 2007, Shakai kagaku o saiko-chiku suru [Reconstructing the social sciences], Akashi shoten, Tokyo, p.10. Although ‘endogenous development’ has regained some currency in the context of rural development in Europe, its orientation appears largely economy-based, and the meaning of ‘endogenous’ seems limited mainly to mean ‘area-based’ and ‘bottom-up’. See, for instance, Gary Bosworth, Ivan Annibal, Terry Carroll, Liz Price, Jessica Sellick, & John Shepherd 2015, ‘Empowering local action through neo-endogenous development: The case of LEADER in England’, Sociologia Ruralis, vol.56, no.3, pp.427–449. 61 Arif Dirlik 2005, ‘Globalism and the politics of place’, in Kris Olds, Peter Dicken, Philip Kelly, Lily Kong, & Henry Wai-chung Yeung (eds) Globalisation and the Asia-Pacific: Contested Territories, Routledge, London & New York, pp.37–54. 62 Amir H Jamal 1988, ‘The socioeconomic impact of new biotechnologies in the Third World’, in Gary Fowler, Eva Lachlivics, Pat Mooney, & Hope Shand, The Laws of Life: Another Development and the New Biotechnologies, the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Uppsala, Sweden (citation on p.5).

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63 Fowler, Lachlivics, Mooney, & Shand, The Laws of Life. 64 Vandana Shiva 2000, Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply, South End Press, Cambridge, MA, p.3. 65 ibid. 66 Vandana Shiva 2002, Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit, North Atlantic Books, Cambridge, MA. 67 Vandana Shiva 1992, The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology, and Politics, Zed Books, London. 68 Nobel Foundation, ‘The Nobel Peace Prize 1992’, , viewed 16 December 2016. 69 Rigoberta Menchú 2007, ‘Live the culture of life!’, ETC Foundation – COMPAS, Learning Endogenous Development: Building on Bio-Cultural Diversity, Practical Action Publishing, Warwickshire, UK, p.xi (emphasis added). 70 The following discussion on deep ecology and the significance of the local was developed from my conversation with Simon Avenell, who read an early version of the manuscript. I thank him for his extremely valuable comments and suggestions. 71 See the footnote in Arne Naess 1973, ‘The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movement: A summary’, Inquiry, vol.16, pp.95–100. 72 Eccy de Jonge 2005, Spinoza and Deep Ecology, Routledge, London & New York (citation on p.57). 73 de Jonge, Spinoza, pp.37–40. 74 ibid., p.1. 75 Dirlik, ‘The politics of place’, p.37. 76 ibid. 77 ibid., p.38. 78 ibid., p.51. 79 ibid., p.38. 80 ibid. 81 ibid., p.46. 82 ibid., p.46. 83 ibid., p.48. 84 ibid., p.50. 85 ibid., p.48. 86 ibid. 87 ibid., p.52. 88 ibid., p.51. 89 ibid., p.53. 90 ibid., p.47. 91 Simon Avenell 2017, Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, p.212. 92 Avenell, Transnational Japan, p.4. 93 ibid., p.17. 94 ibid., p.4. 95 ibid., p.218. 96 ibid., p.217. 97 ibid., p.214. 98 ibid., p.213. 99 ibid., p.238. 100 ibid., p.38. 101 Miyamoto Ken’ichi 1989, Kankyo- Keizaigaku [Environmental economics], Iwanami shoten, Tokyo, p.346. 102 Avenell, Transnational Japan, p.4.

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103 Arne Naess 1989, Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy, trans. David Rothenberg, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p.144. 104 Tsurumi, ‘Saishu- ko-gi’, in Mandara IX, p.34. 105 Dirlik, ‘The politics of place’, p.45. 106 John Clammer 2004, ‘The politics of animism’, in John Clammer, Sylvie Poirier, & Eric Schwimmer (eds) Figured Worlds: Ontological Obstacles in Intercultural Relations, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, pp.83–109 (citation on p.102). 107 The word ‘animism’ was actually used to explain Shinto on the webpage of the Association of Shinto Shrines around 2013. I would like to thank John Breen of the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) for this information. He made his comments after my seminar at Nichibunken entitled ‘Re-framing animism for modernity – Japan’s contribution to the social sciences: Lessons from Minamata for the post-Fukushima World’, on 5 December 2013. 108 Jinja Honcho- 2017, ‘Soul of Japan: An introduction to Shinto and Ise Jingu’, viewed 27 January 2017, . 109 On this point, Tessa Morris-Suzuki agrees. By examining intellectual history from the Tokugawa Period, she has shown that there has been a multiplicity of views of ‘nature’, and that ‘it is far too simple to identify “traditional” Japanese attitudes toward nature with an animist respect for the spirit of trees’ (Tessa Morris-Suzuki 1998, Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation, ME Sharpe, New York, p.59). 110 Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.282. 111 Tsurumi Kazuko 2014, ‘Religion and endogenous development in modern Japan: State Shintoism vs folk beliefs’, in Morse & Tsurumi (eds), Kazuko Tsurumi: The Adventure of Ideas, pp.262–287 (citation on p.272). 112 Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, pp.282–283 (emphasis added). 113 ibid., p.278. 114 Quotations in this paragraph are from Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, pp.282–284. 115 Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.149. 116 Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’, p.95. 117 ibid. 118 ibid. 119 ibid., p.93. 120 Tessa Morris-Suzuki 1991, ‘Concepts of nature and technology in pre-industrial Japan’, East Asian History, vol.1, June, pp.81–97. 121 See above, n. 65. 122 For instance, Jinja Honcho- 2017, ‘Toki o koeta manazashi: Eirei no kotonoha’ [Glances that go beyond time: Precious words of the war heroes], viewed 27 January 2017, . 123 See John Breen & Mark Teeuwen 2010, A New History of Shinto, Wiley & Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex, UK, p.218. 124 See, for instance, a critique on ‘Japanese animism’ in Sueki Fumihiko 2015, So-moku jo-butsu no shiso- [The philosophy of plants’ attaining Buddhahood], Samgha, Tokyo. pp.12–17. 125 Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.277. 126 The term ‘shrine Shinto’ is used in various ways. Breen and Teeuwen, for instance, use ‘shrine Shinto’ to distinguish it from ‘state Shinto’ (see Breen & Teeuwen, Shinto, p.13), while Clammer uses ‘shrine Shinto’ to mean ‘folk Shinto’ as against ‘state Shinto’. See Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’. 127 Breen & Teeuwen, Shinto, p.1; Jinja Honcho- 2017, ‘Jinja Honcho’, viewed 30 January 2017, . 128 Breen & Teeuwen, Shinto, p.199. 129 Jinja Honcho- 2017, ‘What is Shinto?’ viewed 30 January 2017, .

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130 Breen & Teeuwen, Shinto, p.202. 131 ibid. p.200. 132 Shu-kan Daiamondo [Weekly Diamond Magazine] 2016, ‘Sei, Zai, Shin, Toppu wa Abe Shinzo, Shinto seiji renmei no kessoku’ [The top of political, financial and religious circles is Abe Shinzo: The solidarity of the Shinto Political League], Jinja no meikyu- [The maze of Shinto], 16 April, p.47. 133 Tsurumi, ‘Religion and endogenous development’. Tsurumi is quoting Sakurai Tokutaro 1978, ‘Minkan shu-kyo- no kino-teki kyo-i [Functional dimensions of folk religions], in Sakurai Tokutaro (ed.) Nihon shu-kyo- no fukugo-teki ko-zo- [The complex structure of Japanese religion], Kinbundo, Tokyo, p.12. 134 Tsurumi’s work on Yanagita has been collated in the fourth volume of Tsurumi Kazuko Mandara: Yanagita Kunio ron [Tsurumi Kazuko Mandala: A Theory on Yanagita Kunio], Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo. 135 The name is sometimes spelt as Yanagita and at other times Yanagida, and there is no consistency even in Tsurumi’s writing. Yanagita with a ‘t’ is used in this book unless a ‘d’ is used as part of quotations or unless it is in the title of a publication. 136 Tsurumi Kazuko 1975, ‘Yanagida Kunio’s work as model of endogenous development’, Institute of International Relations (IIS), Research Paper Series A-26, pp.12–13. 137 ibid., p.11. 138 Breen & Teeuwen, Shinto, p.6. 139 ibid., p.14. 140 See ibid., pp.7–13. 141 Tsurumi, ‘Religion and endogenous development’, p.271. 142 ibid., p.272. 143 ibid., pp.273–274. 144 Breen & Teeuwen, Shinto, p.199. 145 Tsurumi, ‘Saishu- ko-gi’, in Mandara IX, p.41. 146 Tsurumi, ‘Religion and endogenous development’, p.274. 147 Sueki, So-moku jo-butsu, pp.141–144. 148 Tsurumi, ‘Saishu- ko-gi’, in Mandara IX, p.35, p.42, & pp.45–46. 149 Tsurumi Kazuko 1998, ‘Tenkan-ki no kyojin Minakata Kumagusu’ [Minakata Kumagusu – A giant in a transitional period], in Tsurumi Kazuko Mandara V: Minakata Kumagusu no kosumorojı- [Tsurumi Kazuko Mandala V: Essays on Minakata Kumagusu], pp.33–104 (citation on p.92). 150 ibid., p.59. 151 Tom Gill 2014, ‘Kazuko Tsurumi on Minakata Kumagusu’, in Morse & Tsurumi (eds) Kazuko Tsurumi: The Adventure of Ideas, pp.152–164 (citation on p.152). 152 Tsurumi Kazuko 1980, ‘Creativity of the Japanese – Yanagita Kunio and Minakata Kumagusu’, Institute of International Relations (IIR), Sophia University, Research Papers Series A-39, p.28. 153 ibid. 154 Gill, ‘Tsurumi on Minakata’, p.153. 155 Tsurumi Kazuko, ‘Tenkanki’ in Mandara V, pp.33–104 (citation on pp.94–95). 156 Kawai Hayao & Tsurumi Kazuko 1999, ‘Shizen to no tsukiai’ [How to get along with nature], in Tsurumi Kazuko, Mandara IX, pp.299–320 (citation on p.306). 157 Tsurumi, ‘Creativity’, p.28. 158 ibid., pp.28–29. 159 Shu-kan Daiamondo [Weekly Diamond Magazine] 2016, ‘Kuzureru ujigami ujiko kankei’ [The collapse of the relationship between patron gods and shrine parishioners], Jinja no meikyu- [The maze of Shinto], 16 April, pp.36–45 (citation on p.37). 160 Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’. 161 There have been other attempts to institutionalise animistic traditions for nationbuilding. See the attempts by the Sami people in Norway as discussed by Siv

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Animism for the sociological imagination Ellen Kraft 2009, ‘Sami indigenous spirituality: Religion and nation-building in Norwegian Sápmi’, in Temenos: Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion, vol.45, no.2, pp.179–206. Breen & Teeuwen, Shinto, p.210. Tim Ingold 2013, ‘Being alive to a world without objects’, in Graham Harvey (ed.) The Handbook of Contemporary Animism, Routledge, London & New York, pp.213–225 (citation on p.214). ibid., p.214. Tim Ingold 2006, ‘Rethinking the animate, re-animating thought’, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, vol.71, no.1, pp.9–20 (citation on p.10). ‘Animacy’ 1989, in Edmund Weiner & John Simpson (eds) Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Colin Scott 1989, ‘Knowledge construction among Cree Hunters: Metaphors and literal understanding’, Journal de la Société des Américanistes, vol.75, p.195, as quoted by Ingold, ‘Rethinking the animate’, p.11. Ingold, ‘Rethinking the animate’, p.11. ibid. Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.198. ibid., pp.155–157. ibid., p.247. ibid., p.248 (emphasis added; my translation). Ingold, ‘Rethinking the animate’, p.13. ibid., p.14. ibid., p.15. ibid., p.13. ibid. Tsurumi Kazuko 2014, ‘The Minakata-Mandala: A paradigm change for the future’, in Morse & Tsurumi (eds) Kazuko Tsurumi: The Adventure of Ideas, pp.165–186 (citation on p.180). ‘Slime mold’ 2006, in Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, p.1767, Encyclopaedia Britannica, London. Madeleine Beekman & Tanya Latty 2015, ‘Brainless but multi-headed: Decision making by Acellular Slime Mould Physarum Polycephalum’, Journal of Molecular Biology, vol.427, no.23, pp.3734–3743. Tsurumi, ‘Minakata-Mandala’, pp.178–180. ibid., pp.178–179. Frederick Alan Little 2012, Lost in Translation: Non-Linear Literary, Cultural, Temporal, Political, and Cosmological Transformations – The Anglo-Japanese Productions of Minakata Kumagusu, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Rutgers University (citation on p.154). ibid., p.118. ‘Monism’ 1989, in Edmund Weiner & John Simpson (eds) Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford. ibid. Little, Lost in Translation, p.2. ibid., p.154. Tsurumi, ‘Minakata-Mandala’, p.179. ibid., p.181. Alvin Toffler 1984, ‘Science and change’, Foreword to Ilya Prigogine & Isabelle Stengers, Order out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature, Bantam Books, New York, pp.xi–xxvi (citation on p.xv). Prigogine & Stengers, Order out of Chaos, p.159. ibid. Little, Lost in Translation, p.116.

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ibid., p.154. Tsurumi, ‘Minakata-Mandala’, p.179 (emphasis added). ibid. ‘Holism’, in Angus Stevenson & Christine Lindberg (eds) Oxford Living Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Iwata Keiji 1995, Kosumosu kara no shuppatsu [Departure from the cosmos], Ko-dansha, Tokyo. Pantheism, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (eds Edmund Weiner & John Simpson, 1989), means ‘a belief or philosophical theory that God is immanent in or identical with the universe; the doctrine that God is everything and everything is God. Frequently with implications of nature worship’. Polytheism, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (eds Edmund Weiner & John Simpson, 1989), means ‘the doctrine or belief that there is more than one god’. Iwata, Kosumosu kara, p.219. Tsurumi, ‘Minakata-Mandala’, p.180. ibid. ibid. Kawai & Tsurumi, ‘Shizen’ in Mandara IX, pp.304–305. ibid. ‘Mandala’ 1989, in Edmund Weiner & John Simpson (eds) Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Gill, ‘Tsurumi on Minakata’, p.157. ibid., p.156. Tsurumi, ‘Minakata-Mandala’, p.171. Kawakatsu Heita & Tsurumi Kazuko 2008, ‘Naihatsuteki hatten’ towa nanika: Atarashii gakumon ni mukete [What is ‘endogenous development’? Towards a new scholarship], Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo, p.98. ibid., p.115. ibid., p.91. ibid., p.115. Jean-François Lyotard 1985, ‘Note on the meaning of post-’, in Thomas Docherty (ed.) Postmodernism: A Reader, Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York, pp.47– 50. Kawakatsu & Tsurumi, ‘Naihatsuteki hatten’, p.135. John Bowker 2003, ‘Kegon School or School of the Flower Garland’, in John Bowker (ed.) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, Oxford University Press, Oxford. John Bowker 2003, ‘Avatamsaka literature’, in John Bowker (ed.) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Little, Lost in Translation, p.150. Ibid., p.153. See, for example, Tsurumi, ‘Shakai kagaku’, p.466. Tsurumi Kazuko & Ishimure Michiko 2006, ‘Kaisei: Turumi Kazuko no yuigon’ [Regeneration: The will of Tsurumi Kazuko], DVD, Fujiwara Eizo- Library. After her near-death experience, she had a strong conviction that she had a new life to live, and that deepened the meaning of her work through ongoing discussions with prominent intellectuals. These discussions were published as a series of 12 books. She also compiled all her work in the nine-volume Tsurumi Kazuko Mandala, published three books of tanka poems, and published other volumes and DVDs, all of which were published by Fujiwara shoten. This is the English title of the ninth volume (1999), the last volume of the Tsurumi Kazuko Mandala series, Naihatsuteki hatten-ron ni yoru paradaimu tenkan [A theory of endogenous development: Toward a paradigm change for the future], Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo.

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Animism for the sociological imagination Dirlik, ‘The politics of place’, p.48. ibid. Dirlik, ‘The politics of place’. Harvey, Animism: Respecting the Living World, p.xii. Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’, p.98. Plumwood, ‘Nature in the active voice’, p.445. Tsurumi, ‘Shakai kagaku’, pp.466–467. Tsurumi, ‘Minamata minshu-’, p.32. Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’, p.102. Ingold, ‘Being alive to a world without objects’, p.214. Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’, p.98. Ingold, ‘Rethinking the animate’, p.10. ibid. Kawakatsu & Tsurumi, ‘Naihatsuteki hatten’, p.135. Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, pp.282–283. Naess, Ecology, Community and Lifestyle, p.144. Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’, p.95. Tsurumi, ‘Religion and endogenous development’. Tsurumi is quoting Sakurai Tokutaro 1978, ‘Minkan shu-kyo- no kino-teki kyo-i [Functional dimensions of folk religions], in Sakurai Tokutaro (ed.) Nihon shu-kyo- no fukugo-teki ko-zo- [The complex structure of Japanese religion], Kinbundo-, Tokyo, p.12. Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’. Dirlik, ‘The politics of place’. Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’, p.100. ibid., p.102. Tsurumi, ‘Naihatuteki hatten no keifu’, pp.49–50. Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.14. See, for instance, Tachibana Takashi’s documentary film on the question of consciousness and the brain in NHK 2014, NHK Special, Rinshi taiken to no-kagaku [Near-death experience and brain science]. Tsurumi, ‘Naihatuteki hatten no keifu’, p.43.

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Animating the life-world Animism by film director Miyazaki Hayao

Animism for the global audience Animism has been a central theme of the animation films directed by Miyazaki Hayao (宮崎駿 1941–). As well as being the main theme of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), the first film by Studio Ghibli,1 the majority of his stories have animism as an underlying theme. They are Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Princess Mononoke (1997), Spirited Away (2001), and Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (2008). The only two which do not have animistic themes are the films he wrote specifically for adults: Porco Rosso (1992) and The Wind Rises (2013). Animism is Miyazaki’s response to the problem of how to live with the incessant human destruction of nature. He has pursued this issue since the 1970s,2 well before scepticism towards Cartesian human–nature dualism came to be expressed in the West. Saying ‘I know the word animation probably comes from animism’,3 he also suggests that there is an innate relationship between animism and animation. In fact, Miyazaki’s anime has provided a global audience, in particular children, with images, stories, and sounds of the enchanted world of animism, which would have inspired their hearts and minds (and dare I say souls) with animistic sensitivities, even when the movies were modified to make them more palatable to audiences from monotheistic cultures.4 Regardless of whether the audience is aware of it or not, it is possible that Miyazaki has ‘baptized a whole generation’5 with an animistic imagination – if not globally, then certainly in Japan. As Takahata Isao, the other senior director of Studio Ghibli, comments, the popularity of My Neighbor Totoro has resulted in Totoros ‘in forests and woods throughout Japan. Totoro lives in the hearts of all children throughout Japan, and when they see trees now, they sense Totoro hidden in them. And this is a truly wonderful and indeed rare thing’.6 In the entertainment industry, where Miyazaki works, which is an industry at the pinnacle of global capitalism, the level of ‘baptism in animism’ correlates with the level of profit that the above-mentioned movies have made at the box office. It also correlates with the numerous awards Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli have received worldwide: This includes a 2003 Academy Award for

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Best Animated Feature and a Golden Bear Award at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival, both of which were won by Spirited Away. 7 In Japan, three Miyazaki films are ranked in the top ten all-time box-office hits: Spirited Away (1); Howl’s Moving Castle (6), and Princess Mononoke (7).8 Spirited Away created a box-office record with 23.5 million viewers, generating an income of over 30 billion yen (US$250 million) in Japan alone, and when it aired on television in 2003, the viewing rate was a phenomenal 46.9%.9 Despite his huge global popularity, and the centrality of animism in his work, it is questionable how well the animism in Miyazaki’s films is understood by viewers. This is partly because of the elusive and possibly culturally alien nature of the concept of animism, particularly for those from JudaeoChristian backgrounds. It is also because his work is often (mistakenly) considered to be representative of (again mistakenly) certain characteristics of Japanese culture. One misunderstanding of Miyazaki’s work seems to be based on the following logic: (1) Animism is the main theme of his anime; (2) animism is the basis of Shinto; (3) Shinto is the foundation of nationalism in Japan; and therefore (4) Miyazaki’s anime is promoting nationalism in Japan.10 Underlying this logic is a lack of understanding about Shinto’s part in Japanese culture and a lack of understanding about Miyazaki’s own position with regard to Japan as a state. In order to understand animism in Miyazaki’s work, it is first necessary to understand the director’s philosophy. And in order to understand his philosophy, it is necessary to explore the trajectory, that is, the origin and development, of his thoughts in the broader socio-historical context of Japan and beyond. This chapter will therefore explore the philosophy of animism in Miyazaki’s work from a sociological point of view, instead of just interpreting the film scenes which have images of animism in them. The chapter draws mainly on (1) Miyazaki’s own accounts of his thoughts, which are available in print media and audio-visual materials (including many that are available in Japanese only); (2) the manga version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, an epic story that took Miyazaki 12 years to complete (1982–1994); as well as (3) some of his animation films. The manga, or comic version, of Nausicaä will be used as a key reference although it is less known to the public than the animated version. It was originally published as a series in the magazine Animage, and totalled over 1,000 pages. Miyazaki worked on both the anime and comic versions of Nausicaä concurrently until the film was released in 1984,11 and it took him ten more years to complete the comic. Miyazaki asserts that the two versions ‘are not split in his deep consciousness’ and that he would not change the ending of the anime movie even after reaching a quite different conclusion in the manga ten years later.12 While the anime version gave ‘life’ to the characters and the story, with vivid images, colours, sounds, music, as well as animation or movement, the manga version documented the development of his philosophy.13 The manga version represents the tenets of Miyazaki’s philosophy and his view of the human–nature relationship in particular.

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Miyazaki developed his philosophy of animism during the 12 years he was working on Nausicaä, 14 and he seriously believes that animism will become a significant philosophy for all societies in the twenty-first century.15 The comic version of Nausicaä, with animism as its philosophical bedrock, became the basis of his ‘mega-hits’ that followed, especially Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. Miyazaki indicates, for instance, that he would not have been able to produce Princess Mononoke without having completed the manga series of Nausicaä. 16 I will also argue that Nausicaä marks not only the starting point but also the end point in Miyazaki’s historical view of our time, in which the human–nature relationship has become a key problem. Let me explain this now in some more detail.

The spirit of the times The most important characteristic of the Miyazaki films, according to Miyazaki himself, and Studio Ghibli producer Suzuki Toshio, is that they always reflect ‘the spirit of the times’ (jidaisei 時代性).17 When asked for the secret of the ‘mega-hit’ Miyazaki films, Suzuki answered that it has to do with how relevant the film is to the era and how well it resonates with the spirit of the times.18 For theatrical anime films that take around five years to design and produce, fitting with the spirit of the times requires a high sensitivity to emerging changes, and there is indeed a sense that Miyazaki films are a few steps ahead of the times. The animation film Nausicaä, Miyazaki’s first original story that depicts a post-apocalyptic future world, was released two years ahead of the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl. The story is set in the future, 1,000 years after a nuclear war (‘Seven Days of Fire’) that caused ‘clouds of poison’ and that destroyed industrial civilisation,19 which itself had polluted the soil and air. This civilisation which caused the nuclear war also used technology to modify and remould life-forms according to their will. In the bleak future after the war, industrial technology has long been lost, once flourishing cities have disappeared, and the Earth has been transformed into ‘a sterile wasteland’ overtaken by an enormous forest of gigantic toxic bacteria referred to as the ‘Sea of Corruption’.20 While the ‘clouds of poison’ brought to mind the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests carried out around the world, the image of ‘a sterile wasteland’ reminded us, at the time, of Chernobyl and, right now, of Fukushima. The bleak and suffocating world of Nausicaä is made even more ominous by endless wars amongst competing kingdoms, in which humans invade, kill, and enslave others for power and limited resources, causing even more ecological destruction. The story of Nausicaä, however, is not just a story of doom and gloom. The protagonist is a 16-year-old princess from a small kingdom called the Valley of the Wind. This valley is located on the edge of a toxic forest called the ‘Sea of Corruption’, and the forest is covered by a deadly miasma of spores released

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from giant fungi. Insects are the only living things able to survive in the miasma. Humans, birds, and other animals need to wear a mask which resembles a radiation protection mask to prevent their lungs from being destroyed by the toxic air. The valley where Nausicaä lives is protected from the miasma by winds which blow in from the clean ocean,21 and the young princess rides the wind on Mehve, a jet-powered glider, which makes her look like a Bird Person (tori no hito 鳥の人). Nausicaä was created based on two characters from other stories. One is Nausicaä, a free-spirited, fleet-footed, beautiful Phaeacian princess in Homer’s Odyssey, who loves her harp, as well as singing and playing in nature, and who was also brave enough to help a shipwrecked and badly injured Odysseus. The other influence was ‘a princess who loved insects’ who appears in Tales of the Tsutsumi Middle Counsellor from eleventh-century Japan. Like Nausicaä in Homer’s Greek epic poem, the Japanese princess was free-spirited and unconventional, and her main interest was watching caterpillars change into butterflies. When the character of Nausicaä was conceived in Miyazaki’s mind, he had no intention of making a tragedy. Instead, he intended to ‘somehow bring this young heroine into a world of peace and freedom’ – a world where the two most important values for Miyazaki would prevail.22 Regarding the reason for Miyazaki’s intention to bring Nausicaä to a world of peace and freedom, taking her out of the deadly toxic, violent, and decaying world, here again we find a Minamata connection. Apparently, Miyazaki gained inspiration for the story of Nausicaä from the Minamata disease incident. He said: I now realise that there was something that gave me a big inspiration to make Nausicaä. The Bay of Minamata became a dead sea, that is, it became a dead sea for humans and they stopped fishing. As a result, after several years, scores of fish, unseen in other parts of Japan, came to be seen in Minamata Bay and abundant oysters were found on the rocks. This moved me so much that it sent shivers up my spine. Living things other than humans are very admirable. … They live on, carrying on their shoulders the sin humans have caused.23 His comment that ‘it sent shivers up my spine’ suggests that this news came to him like a revelation: We should have a stronger faith in nature. With this renewed faith in nature, Miyazaki could pursue the theme of the human– nature relationship, ultimately consolidating his philosophy of animism, which is similar to those of the other thinkers discussed in this book: Ogata Masato, Ishimure Michiko, and Tsurumi Kazuko. The notion of ‘sin’ being caused by humans and imposed on nature and then being followed by an ultimate faith in nature is also shared by Ogata as discussed in Chapter 1. The Sea of Corruption (fukai 腐海, which literally means ‘Sea of Decay’) is a strong reminder of the Shiranui Sea, which was polluted by methyl mercury, which caused immeasurable death and harm to all kinds of life in the region in the 1950s, 1960s, and beyond.

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More than two decades after the release of the anime version of Nausicaä, Miyazaki still felt a ‘sense of being ahead of the times’ and able to depict events from the future when he released Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea in 2008, a fantasy story about a fish-child who causes a powerful yet non-frightening tsunami. His sense of being ahead of the times ended on 11 March 2011, however, when the triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident) hit Japan. The tsunami was not the future; it was now. He stated in 2013: The time caught up with me. That’s why the tsunami came [after the release of Ponyo]. I knew that it would be risky [for the film] if a tsunami did come. I thought there would be one, but could not predict in what way it would come. And then, while I was working on the storyboard of [The Wind Rises], just after I finished with the scene of the [Great Kanto] earthquake [of 1923] and moved to the next scene, a real earthquake [on 11 March 2011] came. I thought that I was finally caught up by the times and overtaken.24 On the whiteboard in Miyazaki’s workshop, there is a note saying, ‘11 March 2011 – the year of the beginning’.25 Beginning of what? Apparently, it is the era when we have to live with the constant threat of radiation. For Miyazaki, however, this post-nuclear age is where he began his story back in the 1980s when he first started working on Nausicaä. He said: I knew earthquakes would come and nuclear power plants would explode, otherwise I would not have drawn Nausicaä. I completed working on the issues a long time ago. I drew Nausicaä [about the post-nuclear disaster age], and I drew Princess Mononoke about the present time. … I am astonished by the fact, though, that I actually got caught up in those times which I predicted. Reality is moving much faster than I thought it would.26 Miyazaki is saying that he anticipated both the natural disaster and nuclear disaster and that he gave us the Nausicaä story to demonstrate how to live in a post-nuclear-disaster era.27 He felt, however, that the times caught up with him in 2011, when he was working on The Wind Rises (Kaze tachinu 風立ち ぬ). It appears as if his work has now completed a loop that started with Nausicaä, where his story of a post-nuclear-catastrophe world began, and that finished with The Wind Rises, when we faced the reality of a post-nuclearcatastrophe world. All his other stories are about different stages and aspects of the present. As he suggests in the quotation above, even Princess Mononoke, which is set in the Muromachi Period (1336–1573), is essentially about our present time. If indeed The Wind Rises marks the end point of the present era in Miyazaki’s stories and the beginning of a period where the threat of radiation is part of everyday life, how exactly does he see the ‘post-Fukushima’ era or,

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more precisely, the ‘post-nuclear-explosion’ era, in the sense that the issues unleashed by the explosion will never end? Issues such as the continuous leakage of radioactive substances and the subsequent devastating impact upon human life, ecology, and society. He sees a clear relationship between the present times and Nausicaä, and he recognises that the ‘Sea of Corruption is now emerging’.28 While the wind is a consistent theme in Miyazaki’s anime, only two movies, Nausicaä in the Valley of the Wind and The Wind Rises, have ‘wind’ in the title. While the wind that blows in the Valley of the Wind dilutes the threat of the poison from the Sea of Corruption, the wind in The Wind Rises is a scary wind. Miyazaki says: What sort of wind is the wind of The Wind Rises? After the nuclear plant in Fukushima exploded, the roaring wind came [to Tokyo]. I was lying down on the second floor and saw trees swaying violently in the wind, and thought that the wind in The Wind Rises must be a wind like this. I then bought a dosimeter and checked the level of radiation at the [Studio Ghibli] nursery, thinking that the wind in The Wind Rises would not be a pleasant wind, but rather a scary, roaring wind. I was made aware in my own real life that that’s why we must try to live.29 The wind in The Wind Rises refers to disquieting situations in Japan in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, a period which was marked by a natural disaster (The Great Kanto- Earthquake of 1923), structural poverty (associated with the Showa Financial Crisis of 1927), increasing thought control (that resulted in the Maintenance of Public Peace Law of 1941), and ultimately, the plunge into war. The message of the film, which was released in 2013, however, is clearly directed at those of us who live in the post-Fukushima world. As Miyazaki says above, he was made aware in his own life experiences that we must try to live. Plus, the tagline of The Wind Rises, ‘We must live’ (ikineba 生きねば), is also the tagline of Nausicaä. Although the historical periods are different, The Wind Rises marks the end of the present time and the beginning of the desolate ‘future’ illustrated in Nausicaä.

Post-Fukushima Japan: Another beginning, another ending Here we ask the question again, when Miyazaki wrote on his board, ‘11 March 2011 – the year of the beginning’, what was it that he saw as beginning? Does it only refer to the age where the threat of radiation is part of our everyday life? In the documentary film The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, Miyazaki and Suzuki Toshio, the producer, talk about a different kind of beginning and a different kind of ending. Their dialogue, recorded in late 2012, was as follows:

Inspiring modernity with animism SUZUKI: MIYAZAKI: SUZUKI:

MIYAZAKI: SUZUKI: MIYAZAKI: SUZUKI: MIYAZAKI: SUZUKI:

MIYAZAKI:

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You know, we’re starting to feel restricted. By whom? Everyone. Starting with NHK30 telling us what we can’t do. Getting pre-empted. Suggesting we can’t touch on certain issues. Whether it’s on film or TV. Pathetic. Not just the government, even the private sector too. Pushing us back to the far right. The days of creative freedom are ending. You think? You two [Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao, who were working on The Wind Rises and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, respectively] are the end of the line. In a sense, what we managed to do for 50 years is all coming to an end. The writing is on the wall. And so it begins [emphasis added].

31 Suzuki is talking about the oppressive pressure to avoid producing politically touchy films, which he perceives as the end of creative freedom, as well as the end of the first phase of Studio Ghibli as a studio established to produce films by Miyazaki and Takahata. Miyazaki takes it as the end of what they have done for 50 years, the end of his working life as an animator and film director and the beginning of something new. At the end of the conversation he said, ‘And so it begins’. But what exactly did he mean by ‘it’? Apparently, ‘it’ is the suppression of freedom of expression, which has become more pronounced in Japan from around the time this conversation was recorded in 2012. Jeff Kingston points out that a ‘series of media muzzling initiatives, orchestrated campaigns of harassment and the ousting of prominent television news anchors and commentators critical of Mr. Abe’ happened during Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s 2012–2016 tenure, which continues as at 2018. The ‘special state secrets’ legislation was also passed in 2013, and Japan’s global ranking of media freedom for the period ‘plunged 50 places to 72nd out of 180 nations’, according to Reporters Without Borders.32 December 2012, the time when the above conversation between Suzuki and Miyazaki took place, was the time when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) regained power in the first post-3.11 election of the House of Councillors and when the second Abe government was formed. The biggest beneficiary of the suppression of freedom of expression in post3.11 Japan was the nuclear power industry. In a special roundtable organised by Studio Ghibli, Ko-no Taro-, a Liberal Democratic member of the House of Representatives, remarked: ‘When musicians express an anti-nuclear view, they are barred from all the TV programs sponsored [by electric utilities]’.33 Ko-no’s remark was made in relation to the fact that after the ‘meltdown disaster

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of 2011, Studio Ghibli hung a banner from its rooftop announcing that it would “make movies with electricity that did not come from nuclear power,”’ as reported in The Japan Times, Japan’s largest English-language newspaper.34 The roundtable discussion, with Miyazaki, Suzuki, Ko-no, and a few others, was actually about this banner and nuclear energy, and it was published in the August 2011 issue of Studio Ghibli’s monthly magazine Neppu- [Hot wind 熱風]. The cover of the magazine had a photograph of Miyazaki ‘demonstrating’ on a street close to the studio wearing his trademark apron with a ‘No Nukes’ placard hanging from his neck. Walking with him were two Studio Ghibli staff members (and a dog), who were also wearing placards. Ko-no, known for his maverick stance on nuclear energy in the ruling LDP, was impressed with the fact that Studio Ghibli raised the banner in its own name. Amazingly, both the anti-nuclear banner and Miyazaki’s ‘demonstration’ were completely ignored by the Japanese media.35 No reports of these incidents could be found even in the Asahi Newspaper database Kikuzo II, except for a brief mention on Miyazaki’s mini-demonstration in a monthly column written by Takahashi Genichiro-.36 This was the case despite (or because of) the fact that Miyazaki’s anti-nuclear position was expected to have the same worldwide impact as that of writer Murakami Haruki, who is probably of equal calibre and enjoys just as much global fame as Miyazaki. Though invisible in the media, the banner was physically visible from trains on the Chu-o- Line in Tokyo for over three months after it was raised in June 2011, and its strong but softly presented message, juxtaposed with the images of a ‘strawberry girl’ and three sunflowers, would have been seen by millions of people as they rode the train to work each day. Studio Ghibli also made explicit its political stance about constitutional reform, another politically sensitive issue. Prime Minister Abe is well known to have a longcherished desire to revise both Clause 9, that bans Japan from engaging in war, and Clause 96, which specifies the procedures required to change the constitution. A special issue of Neppu-, which was published in early July 2013, shared the views of three Studio Ghibli heavyweights, the two directors Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao and the producer Suzuki Toshio, on this controversial issue. The titles of their articles were ‘It is outrageous to change the Constitution (Miyazaki)’, ‘Clause 9 – Let’s tell the world (Suzuki)’, and ‘The significance of the 60 years of peace (Takahata)’, and they all argued against the constitutional revision that would enable Japan to be involved in wars. Five thousand copies of the magazine were sold out quickly, showing the enormous interest people had in Miyazaki’s views on the issue. His words were quoted heavily on the first page of the Tokyo Shimbun on 19 July, two days before the House of Councillors election. The Kingdom recorded the conversation between Suzuki and Miyazaki as they were looking at the newspaper, and Miyazaki was heard saying: ‘If Suzuki-san gets stabbed, I’ll be stabbed too. … But I’m glad they mentioned the constitutional reform. [The lead reads] Miyazaki Hayao says, “Leave Constitution Alone”’.37 The Wind Rises was released the following day, 20 July, one day before the election.

Inspiring modernity with animism 167 The election resulted in a sweeping victory for the LDP–New Ko-meitocoalition government, which secured firm control of both houses of Parliament. On 6 December of the same year, the bill restricting freedom of expression was eventually legislated when the National Diet passed the Special Secrets Bill (tokutei himitsu hogo ho- 特定秘密保護法), despite many concerns expressed by ‘media outlets, research institutes and the movie industry’ amongst others.38 The Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA) points out that the Bill violates the public’s right to know about major issues if they are designated as special secrets. These issues could include, the JFBA continues, information about the safety of nuclear power, data on nuclear radiation, and its impact upon public health, which the government might regard as issues related to the ‘prevention of terrorism’. The JFBA also emphasised that it is not clear from the law what exactly constitutes a criminal act, suggesting a wide range of arbitrariness, which can easily lead to the abuse of power.39 According to Suzuki, Miyazaki decided to retire in June 2013 before the release of The Wind Rises and before he made his public stance concerning constitutional revision. An official announcement of his retirement was made on 1 September by the president of Studio Ghibli at the Venice International Film Festival, and it was followed by Miyazaki’s own announcement a few days later in Japan. Interestingly, the note he held in his hand at the news conference had only one sentence written on it: ‘I’d like to work ten more years’.40 In fact, after announcing the retirement in 2013, Miyazaki worked on a short anime, Boro the Caterpillar, which was released in 2018 at the Ghibli Museum. It depicts the world from the viewpoint of a little caterpillar that is born into a life-world where mysterious ‘night fish’ swim across in the air,41 air exists as ‘air jellies’, light comes as ‘light sticks’, and plants sparkle with photosynthesis. It was also announced in 2017 that Miyazaki was working on another feature film entitled Kimitachi wa do- ikiruka? [How do you live?].

War as the beginning Why did Miyazaki decide to so publicly announce his position concerning two of the most sensitive issues in Japan today? The answer, he says, is in his 2012 dialogue with Suzuki. He felt that what they ‘managed to do for 50 years is all coming to an end’, and what pushed him most was the premonition that ‘it’ had begun.42 ‘It’ was, first, the post-nuclearexplosion world and the increasing restrictions on freedom of expression. There is also another beginning, though: the increased risk of Japan being involved in a war and a sense that we live in a stage of history that may propel us into another major war. The trigger for Miyazaki’s premonition was the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands issue, which resurfaced in September 2012 after the Japanese government purchased the disputed islands from a private owner.43

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Miyazaki elaborates on his premonition of war in the documentary film Kingdom. The dialogue between Miyazaki and Suzuki which was quoted above is followed by a talk from Miyazaki, which is projected against a background showing Suzuki, wearing rabbit ears, walking around with a Miyazaki look-alike amongst a group of young people, some wearing cosplay outfits, others dancing, at a site which looks like an anime convention. Miyazaki says: I think we’re feeling the [same] sense of dread in the air that my parents felt back in their day. Headed to the unknown. No one thought we’d go to war with America, and get into that quagmire with China. It happened while people weren’t paying attention. Suddenly, Japan went crazy and waged war on the world. I didn’t know how people felt back then, but now I’m beginning to understand. We are headed that way [again]. This isn’t some kind of predictable story. Who knows what’ll happen. As for me, I’m done making movies. It’s futile now. I’m done.44 The sense of dread that Miyazaki’s parents felt in the early twentieth century is illustrated in The Wind Rises. As Miyazaki writes in his project proposal, it was a time ‘when the sense of entrapment was far greater than what we feel in Japan today’ with ‘the Great Kanto Earthquake, the Great Depression, unemployment, poverty and tuberculosis, revolution and fascism, speech control and a succession of wars’.45 It was the time when Japan became embroiled in the Asia-Pacific War. Miyazaki discerns the same sense of dread spreading in Japanese society today, where heightened social control is being allowed to happen because: ‘people [are] not paying attention’. He feels the apathy, malaise, and indifference of people who are too busy to pursue their own happiness.46 Indeed, there are strong parallels between Japan in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, as described in The Wind Rises, and post-Fukushima Japan. Both are marked by major natural disasters (The Great KantoEarthquake of 1923 and The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011); structural poverty (associated with the Showa Financial Crisis of 1927 and prolonged economic stagnation since the 1990s); and increasing thought control (the notorious Maintenance of Public Peace Law of 1941 and the Special Secrets Bill of 2013). More personally, The Wind Rises describes the time in which Miyazaki was born. He was born in 1941, the year Japan plunged into the Asia-Pacific War, meaning that Japan was at war for the first four years of his life. Miyazaki repeatedly stresses the importance of not letting children under the age of three watch television, which may seem surprising because he makes films mainly for children. The reasons he raises are that they cannot distinguish reality from the fictional life shown on TV (often full of violence); even a very trivial thing for adults can leave a big scar on children; and children should use all of their five senses to understand the world.47 The films he makes for small children (e.g. Totoro and Ponyo) are happy stories with no violence or war.

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Miyazaki directly experienced war in his early years and was left with indelible memories. He experienced an air raid at the age of four in the city of Utsunomiya in July 1945 just before the war ended. He describes his experience: When I was woken up by of the air raid, it must have been the middle of the night, but everything outside the house looked very red, or rather pink like the sunset. Even the inside of my room looked pink. It was a big house with a big garden, and we went to an air raid shelter that had been built in the corner of the garden. But my family decided it would be too dangerous to stay there. … [So] we fled under the girders of a bridge on the To-bu train line … thinking that incendiary bombs would not come there. In reality, the sky was covered by rain clouds, and from above the clouds incendiary bombs – the ones called ‘oil incendiary bombs’, with oil [jellied gasoline, or napalm] inside – pelted down, and the town was in flames.48 His strongest memory, however, even stronger than the air raid itself, was the following experience: We decided to flee to the outskirts of the town by car [which was a very small Datsun pickup truck]. My uncle was in the driver’s seat, and my mother sat next to him holding my little brother, which made the small car full. On the back, my father, older brother, and I sat with a futon over us, as we’d have to drive through the fire. The car started. … Then I definitely heard a women’s voice pleading: ‘Please let us on’. … A woman I knew as our neighbour, holding a girl, ran to us saying: ‘Please let us on’. But our car didn’t stop, and the voice saying ‘let us on’ got further and further away.49 Miyazaki himself admits to the vagueness of the details as he was only four, but that was the reality he remembered, and it left an intense memory: The fact that we fled in a gasoline-operated car at a time when cars were very rare, while others were dying, and the fact that we deserted people who begged us to take them on, left a very intense memory on me as a four-year-old.50 What tortured him was the fact that he did not ask his parents to stop the car for the woman and the girl, as he believes that they would have stopped the car had he asked.51 This feeling of intense regret became his starting point: So there was self-loathing, and my sense of self-denial lasted for a long time. It was my starting point, I think. As I get older, it gets more obscured and is not there at the same level of intensity. Yet the sense that I drove on without stopping when I should have stopped. I didn’t or

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Miyazaki was also tormented by a strong sense of self-negation that arose from the fact that his father built wealth from the munitions industry,53 and that ‘older men’ around him talked about having killed people in China. He writes: Weren’t Japanese perpetrators in the war? Weren’t my father and others mistaken? Having been raised by such parents, wasn’t I a product of their mistakes? Those were days when I couldn’t help but indulge in such self-negation.54 Miyazaki’s critique of his father and the other older men developed into a strong feeling of guilt. As he read more and more about the atrocities committed by the Japanese army in Asia, he became extremely anti-war and anti-Japan. He explains: Before I knew it, I became a boy who disliked Japan. … Around me were adults who boasted about stabbing Chinese people to death. As I found the stupidity of the Japanese army in all aspects hidden behind their glorious stories, I was utterly disappointed. I became a Japanese who disliked the Japanese. I trembled with a sense of guilt towards China, Korea, and countries in South East Asia, and could not help but negate my own existence. … I disliked the Japanese nation, the Japanese people, and the country’s history. … Even while engaged in animation work, I preferred films set in a foreign country. While wanting to use Japan as a movie background, I could not have a liking for its folklore, legends, or mythology. I disliked everything about Japan.55 Thus, as well as his first-hand experience of the air raid, the war left Miyazaki with a sense of guilt and with aversions to himself for not being able to raise a voice to help the woman and the girl, his parents, especially his father, who had a complicit relationship with war in Miyazaki’s mind, and Japan, as the perpetrator of the war in Asia. As Sugita Shunsuke points out, there is little doubt that the experience of war in his formative years fashioned the core of Miyazaki’s ethics.56 Miyazaki remarks, however, that he has no intention of creating films and manga about his own traumatic experience. Rather, he stresses the importance of sublimating one’s own experiences into a different form.57 In fact, he does not describe children being consumed with a sense of regret or hurt;58 instead, the sublimation, or substitution, of his trauma is a consistent strength of Miyazaki’s films, whether it be into a sense of exaltation, increased morale, a will to live, fulfilment of the soul, or simply a sensation of being lifted up and flying. As he promised in his project proposal for Nausicaä, as mentioned

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above, his stories end with a sense of freedom and happiness, at least the ones which are for children. This is because inspiring and invigorating children has always been the central theme of his work. It is what Miyazaki aimed to do for 50 years, but he felt in 2013 that it would be impossible to continue because freedom of expression was seriously curtailed and a premonition of a war threatening the very existence of life was felt by him to be real – threatening to push children back down to ground zero, where he had started. Now that I have drawn a rough sketch of where Miyazaki stands today (in 2018) and where he is coming from, the question becomes: What has it got to do with animism? I argue that in order to transform his traumatic experience into uplifting stories, Miyazaki used the power of (1) children/soul, (2) nature, and (3) animation, each of which represent different aspects of animism. I also argue that by using the power of soul and nature, Miyazaki has presented images of an animistic world where humans are at the same level as the rest of nature, a world where the position of humans is decentred and that of nature is recentred.

Transforming negativity 1: Connecting with the soul of children Although Miyazaki was frustrated with, and critical of, Japan, his parents, and his young self, he also writes that he was surprised to see his bright lively eyes when he looked in a mirror, which were in clear contrast to the gloomy and depressing thoughts in his mind. He found himself longing to be positive about something.59 His urge to be positive about the world was crystallised by the Tale of the White Serpent (Hakujaden 白蛇伝), Japan’s first full-length colour animation film based on a Chinese love story between a man and a serpent. It was released in 1958, his final year of high school.60 Miyazaki writes that he was ‘moved to the depths of my soul’61 by the dedication and earnestness of the heroine, and that this made him realise that it was the pure aspects of stories that he wished to pursue as part of his dream of becoming a manga artist. He did not want to be cynical or follow the ‘absurd style’62 that was popular at the time: He realised that there was ‘another me’63 who was desperate to connect with the world positively, an antithesis of his previous self. He writes: I was no longer able to deny the fact that there was another me – a me that yearned desperately to affirm the world rather than negate it.64 This was when Miyazaki was liberated from his spell of negativity. He was liberated from his ‘cynical pronouncements’,65 his mindset, and his view of himself. After this eye-opening experience, Miyazaki has always given serious thought to what he should create and has believed that ‘no matter how selfconscious and embarrassed [he] might feel, [he] also [felt] compelled to create something that [he] truly believed in’.66 Miyazaki says it was the genesis of his film-making.67

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This explains why, when asked what animation is for him, Miyazaki answered that it is whatever he wants to create.68 Animation is an expression of his innate self, his soul (tamashii 魂). So why does Miyazaki want to create? It is because, he says, animation is a yearning for opportunities and possibilities that are lost the moment we are born. This includes ‘the chance to be born in other ages’.69 His words imply the presence of something that continues beyond time and space, something that is infused with opportunities and possibilities, which he believes starts to erode the moment we are born, and becomes weaker and weaker the longer we are exposed to this world.70 He is talking about the souls of children: [I tell children’s stories because] I believe that children’s souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations. It’s just that as they grow older and experience the everyday world that memory sinks lower and lower. I feel I need to make a film that reaches down to that level. … If, as artists, we try to tap into that soul level – if we say that life is worth living and the world is worth living in – then something good might come of it. … Maybe that’s what these films are doing. They are my way of blessing the child.71 Miyazaki suggests that the film White Serpent ‘tapped into his soul’ and salvaged it from the low place where it had been weakened by his constant negative thoughts about himself, his parents, and Japan. He suggests that he wants to bless children by doing the same for them through his films; he wants to tap into children at the level of their soul, so that no matter how dark the world around them appears to be their souls are invigorated by his films. For Miyazaki, ‘tapping into the soul’ means reaching the ‘historical memory from previous generations’ that children are born with by providing a story that makes them feel that ‘life is worth living’ and that ‘the world is worth living in’. Miyazaki believes that humans are at their best when they are born and that they go downhill from that point; they keep losing possibilities, and they become increasingly uninteresting – especially after the age of five, when they begin learning to read and write72 and then eventually turn into ‘boring adults’.73 His view of adults and parents is generally negative and is apparently based on his own experience. He writes that he was a ‘good kid’ who was always trying to follow his parents’ will without any self-reflection or any realisation of what he was doing, which meant that he did not look at things with his own eyes and that he did not have any independent ideas of his own. According to Miyazaki, ‘parents are apt to stamp out their children’s purity and goodness’, and he therefore wants to create stories for children that say: ‘Kids, don’t be stifled [or ‘eaten up’] by your parents [親に食い殺されるな]’ and ‘Become independent from your parents’.74 In fact, Miyazaki’s original stories for children require the protagonists to be independent of their parents, especially their mothers. Nausicaä, in the manga version, realises that her mother did not love her; in Totoro, Satsuki’s

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and Mei’s mother is hospitalised for a long time; in Princess Mononoke, San’s mother is a wolf and Ashitaka is driven away from his village because of the curse he received while he was saving the village from a wild boar that was possessed by an angry spirit; in Spirited Away, Sen’s parents are turned into pigs because of their greed; and Ponyo’s mother, Granmamare, the Mother of the Sea, thinks it is ‘alright’ if Ponyo returns to the sea as a bubble and therefore dies. When Miyazaki says ‘Don’t be stifled or eaten up by your parents’, he is talking about the transformation of children’s souls, that is, the declining purity, goodness, and possibilities a child is born with. On this point, biographer Oizumi Mitsunari points out the influence of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944), especially his description of a baby in Wind, Sand and Stars, a book that Miyazaki read towards the end of his university years. Saint-Exupéry writes:75 I sat down face to face with one couple. Between the man and the woman a child had hollowed himself out a place and fallen asleep. He turned in his slumber, and in the dim lamplight I saw his face. What an adorable face! A golden fruit had been born of these two peasants. Forth from this sluggish scum had sprung this miracle of delight and grace. I bent over the smooth brow, over those mildly pouting lips, and I said to myself: ‘This is a musician’s face. This is the child Mozart. This is a life full of beautiful promise. Little princes in legends are not different from this. Protected, sheltered, cultivated, what could not this child become?’ [Yet this] little Mozart will be shaped like the rest by the common stamping machine. This little Mozart will love shoddy music in the stench of night dives. This little Mozart is condemned. … What torments me is not the poverty. … What torments me is not the humps nor hollows nor the ugliness. It is the sight, a little bit in all these men, of Mozart murdered. 76 Oizumi quotes Miyazaki recounting when he visited Cape Juby in the Sahara Desert, a place where Saint-Exupéry was station manager of the airport in the late 1920s: When I saw the airstrip buried in the sand, I recalled that [Saint-Exupéry] was one of my starting points. He wrote in Wind, Sand and Stars, that the issue is not poverty. The issue is nothing but the murdering of the Mozart in children. The problem is that the Mozart which is killed within each child is like a wound that keeps opening day after day, resulting in the loss of the supreme possibilities they were born with. I remembered that when I was young I decided to stand on the side of the child that is murdered [sono korosareru kodomotachi no gawa ni tatou その殺される子ど もたちの側に立とう] and I was overwhelmed by this memory.77 ‘On the side of the child that is murdered’ means ‘on the side of the Mozart’ in children. For Miyazaki, Mozart was the name of the ‘another me’ he had discovered after watching the animation film White Serpent. His discovery

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was consolidated through the words of Saint-Exupéry and became the ‘spirit’ of his work. The significance of Saint-Exupéry for Miyazaki is strongly reflected by the name of his studio: ‘Ghibli’ is an Arabic word that refers to the hot wind of the North African desert, the wind that used to carry Saint-Exupéry as an aviator. What exactly is it, though, in the mind of Miyazaki, that kills the Mozart in children? The causes are (1) a sense of being unwanted by parents and a sense that it might have been a mistake to be born;78 (2) the practices and culture of highly regimented schools and societies that control children’s minds and squash their powers of imagination and their ability to be themselves;79 (3) the notion that happiness centres around materialism; and (4) the notion that childhood is a time of preparation for adulthood.80 It also includes everything that potentially threatens children’s lives, most notably, wars. All of these were experienced by Miyazaki himself as a child. Regarding the origin of the ‘Mozart’, that is, where the ‘spirit’ (or ‘soul/ tamashii’) comes from, Miyazaki believes that ‘children’s souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations’,81 and it seems that this ‘historical memory’ covers a few different things. One is the subconscious transmission of memory from one generation to another, meaning that the memories come from our ancestors. Although Miyazaki does not talk about it directly, he implies it when he talks about a strong feeling of nostalgia about some images he encountered as a young child. One was an illustration in a book which inexplicably made him feel terribly nostalgic. He writes: It may seem absurd for a young elementary school pupil to feel ‘nostalgic’ about anything, but I really did. Of course, in the real memories I have of my own short life there isn’t a trace of such a scene, and I therefore have no idea why it would seem so nostalgic. … I had actually had a similar experience when I was even younger, when I felt a sense of nostalgia on seeing a drawing of boys walking on a sidewalk. … [A]t the time that I saw that drawing, there were no such sidewalks around, and I had no experience that would have allowed me to feel nostalgic about such a landscape. … This made me dimly realize, even as a child, that we don’t just feel nostalgic because of something we remember seeing: there is something more at work.82 While he is not explicit about the origin of his nostalgia, the wonder of the ‘unfounded’ feeling of nostalgia makes sense if ‘children’s souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations’. Interestingly, recent developments in epigenetics, as discussed in the Chapter 3, suggests that transmission of ‘historical memory’ from ancestors is possible. However, reincarnation, which constitutes the second aspect of Miyazaki’s belief about children’s souls, cannot be explained by epigenetics. He talks about encountering a little girl who he was sure was the rebirth of his deceased mother:

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I was in China, in a not particularly memorable place, and there I saw a mother holding a little girl. But when I saw the face of the girl, I thought, ‘Oh, this is Mum!’ I thought ‘Mum has been reborn in such a place. Oh, good!’ Of course, there are no grounds for believing this, but I was convinced. It is interesting that such workings of the mind (kokoro no ugoki 心の動き) can be found in me, even when I have decided to do things following basically a modern way (ichio- kindaiteki na yarikata de yatte iko- to omotteiru 一応近代的なやり方でやっていこうと思っている). But at that time, I really felt relieved to see my mother there in that girl.83 What is notable here is not just his conviction about the rebirth of his mother, but the fact that he is observing his own mind with a touch of surprise that such a strong conviction came to him while he had ‘decided to follow basically a modern way’. It is as if it is a matter of choice whether he follows a modern way or not; this suggests that he has a large reservoir of ‘non-modern’ ways of doing things, which means that he can see things in quite different ways if he so chooses. On his way in September 2013 to the press conference where he announced his retirement, Miyazaki called Sunada Ami to the window of the waiting room in the hotel. At that time, Sunada was recording him for the documentary film The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness. As they stand at the window looking out at the Tokyo rooftops stretching into the distance, Miyazaki explains to the young director how different things can look if one changes their perspective.84 And this ‘looking at things from a different perspective’ has been one of the principles of Miyazaki’s work. It began when he learnt as a child that spiders have eight eyes, which shocked him so much that his ‘world seemed to crumble. [He] wondered “how can they see with so many eyes?”’. This sense of wonder led him to create the multi-eyed Ohmu in Nausicaä. 85 Glimpses of the unseen world have been a source of strong appeal for Miyazaki’s audiences worldwide. Totoro and the Cat Bus are two delightful ‘creatures’ that have enlivened the hearts of children (and adults) globally. The kodama spirits which inhabit the trees and the Shishi-gami, the deer god of the forest, in Princess Mononoke also belong to the unseen world. The world Chihiro and her parents accidentally wandered into in Spirited Away is another unseen world, one that they forgot about as soon as they left it. The underwater world in Ponyo, where elderly people were freed of all ailments, is also an unseen world – most likely the ‘other world’, where one goes after death. In fact, the unseen world plays a pivotal role in all of Miyazaki’s fantasy stories for children and adolescents. For Miyazaki, the unseen world is not just a fantasy, a fable, or a figment of our imagination, but it is rather a reflection of ‘historical memory from previous generations’86 that is carried in the souls of children. It includes a memory of ancestors, as well as the possibility of reincarnation or rebirth. There is yet another dimension to Miyazaki’s sense of connectedness with the unseen world – and that is a connectedness with nature as life-world.

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Transforming negativity 2: Reconciling with Japan through nature ‘The hallmark of Studio Ghibli films is the depiction of nature’.87 There is the magical wonder of nature in Totoro, the stunning beauty and majestic force of nature in Princess Mononoke, the serene but fearful nature in The Wind Rises88, the magnificent world of the sea in Ponyo, and the awesome power of insects and plants in Nausicaä. Nature is always present in Miyazaki’s films, sometimes as a central character, sometimes as part of the background, but it is always there in the form of trees, fields, seas, and mountains, as well as air, wind, light, sun, clouds, and the sky. Nature is the world in which his stories are told. Miyazaki states: The major characteristic of Studio Ghibli – not just myself – is the way we depict nature. We don’t subordinate the natural setting to the characters. Our way of thinking is that nature exists and human beings exist within it. … That is because we feel that the world is beautiful. Human relationships are not the only thing that is interesting. We think that weather, time, rays of light, plants, water, and wind – what makes up the landscape – are all beautiful. That is why we make efforts to incorporate them as much as possible in our work.89 Miyazaki’s perception that humans exist as part of nature is consistent with the discourse on animism by Ogata, Ishimure, and Tsurumi. However, at the beginning of Miyazaki’s career he could not see the beauty of nature. When he discovered his ‘another me’ (i.e. child’s soul), he was awoken to the beauty of nature. His view of nature was originally negative, reflecting his anti-Japan feelings as discussed above. Miyazaki writes: My early childhood was a time when many Japanese lost confidence through being defeated in the war. … The only things we could be proud of were ‘nature and the beauty of the changing of the four seasons’. … Rivers were clear, and rice paddies were vast, but to me they were nothing but an indication of poverty.90 Similar to his awakening to the presence of his ‘another me’ through watching White Serpent, Miyazaki was made aware of the beauty of nature by a book, The Origin of Cultivated Plants and Agriculture (original in Japanese) by botanist Nakao Sasuke, which Miyazaki read when he was in his thirties.91 In the book, Nakao shows how Japan is part of what he called the ‘broadleaf evergreen forest (sho-yo- jurin 照葉樹林) culture’ zone which has covered a vast area of mountains in Asia since pre-historic times, and which stretches from Nepal and the Himalayas to the southern half of Japan. Miyazaki says that he ‘received quite a shock’92 when he read Nakao’s book because it provided him with a completely new perspective on Japan within Asia. It liberated him from the anti-Japan feelings that had haunted him from childhood. Miyazaki explains:

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I felt greatly relieved when I realized that the country I had thought was confined to the Japanese archipelago … was actually connected to the wider world beyond borders and ethnic groups. … I felt the clouds clear when I realised that even though Japanese may have committed various mistakes, we are not limited to that history. … Looking at Japan with this new perspective, I was able to reassess myself, to figure out what sort of baggage I carried. … I realized I had many bottled-up feelings inside, I was able to put all that aside, to suddenly liberate myself, and embrace the broadleaf evergreen forest culture.93 Nakao’s thesis thus dissolved the national, ethnic, and historical boundaries that isolated Japan from other parts of Asia in Miyazaki’s mind by providing a view that Japan shares a common plant-based culture with other parts of Asia. It thus liberated Miyazaki from the feelings of guilt and shame he had regarding the war that had darkened his heart for nearly 30 years, and it allowed him to connect with Japan in a new light, in a liberated space and time that superseded ‘Japanese history’. Miyazaki says: I felt so liberated and so pleased when I found out that what flowed inside me was connected to the broadleaf evergreen forest. My culture went far beyond the idiotic Japanese who started the war, beyond Hideyoshi Toyotomi who invaded Korea, and beyond The Tale of Genji that I detested. It was then that I realized how valuable plants are and how important the issue of cultural climate is to us. If we were to destroy that climate, I would lose my last connection to being Japanese.94 This sense of liberation came to Miyazaki not just as a discovery of an academic thesis that provided him with an eye-opening perspective, but as something that resonated with his personal senses and feelings, what he describes as ‘what flowed inside me’. That includes his genetic make-up (e.g. the shape of his nose), his liking of things which he understands to be part of the ‘broadleaf evergreen forest culture’ such as certain foods (e.g. sticky rice and natto [fermented beans]), trees (e.g. elm, beech, camphor, oak, and holly), and forests (e.g. broadleaf evergreen forests rather than European or Siberian forests).95 It should be emphasised that his allegiance to Japan is not to Japan as a state, but to Japan as a place with a certain natural and cultural climate sustained by people in their locality and in everyday life. Underlying all these feelings was an even deeper sense of connectedness with his own personal roots, his mother, and his ancestors, which goes as far back as the mid-Jo-mon Period, around 5,000 years ago. The fact that Nakao’s thesis designates the mountainous Shinshu- region on the main island as the northern end of the ‘broadleaf evergreen forest’ in Japan is important for Miyazaki, as this is the area where his mother was born. He describes the sensation he felt when he connected with the theory at a deeper, personal level:

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The area where Fujimori hypothesised that farming was conducted in the midJo-mon Period and the mountain village where Miyazaki’s mother was born are in fact very close to each other (less than 30 km), and this is also the place Miyazaki likes to go to relax and recuperate. As an indication of how special this part of Japan is for Miyazaki, some of the characters in Princess Mononoke have names taken from the area, names such as Eboshi, Ottoko, Jikobo-, and Koroku. A talk Miyazaki gave in Shinshu- in 2002, a recording of which is included in Turning Point (pp.293–315), reflects his strong interest in and devotion to the place, especially with regard to the life of the people who lived there in ancient times, as suggested by his original drawings printed in the book. Nakao’s book helped Miyazaki to be freed from his dislike of Japan (as a state); connected him with ‘another’ Japan (as a place with nature and people); and also connected him with his cultural and ancestral roots and showed ‘whose descendant [he] was’. In other words, the book enabled Miyazaki to discover his new identity in relation to nature and to his ancestors. Miyazaki’s experience may be comparable to Ogata Masato’s ‘Big Bang of Life’ experience discussed in Chapter 1 (see Figure 1.1). Like Ogata, Miyazaki started to see nature in a totally different light, as something that connects him with other things, including insects and grass,97 living and non-living, in such a way that transcends time and space while providing him with the serenity, joy, and confidence of soul. Miyazaki writes: This book taught me the starting point of how to look at things. I came to understand history, Japan the country, and Japan the nation-state, much better than I had before. … [It] has empowered me so much, and it’s almost impossible to describe how much happiness Nakao’s book has brought me.98 With this change, Miyazaki began to see the real beauty of nature. He states that there was a time in his thirties when he thought that there was nothing more beautiful than the new green leaves of Japanese elm trees, and that was the beginning of his attraction to plants.99 As quoted above, Miyazaki tries to ‘tap into [the] soul’ of children by showing that ‘life is worth living and the world is worth living in’.100 Originally, it was the film White Serpent that taught him ‘life is worth living’ because it connected him with his positive self, or soul. Nakao’s book showed him that ‘the world [was] worth living in’, and this newly attained stability was expressed in Totoro. He says:

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By encountering perspectives of people like Nakao Sasuke and Fujimori Eiichi, who is an independent archaeologist, I came to wonder how I could create a world where Japanese nature is incorporated in a different way from folklore, left-wing literature, or weak juvenile literature in Japan. … To me, that was Totoro. 101 More directly, Miyazaki says that: Totoro is a kind of letter to my childhood. It was a letter to my younger self who couldn’t believe that greenery was beautiful, who thought that greenery was nothing but a symbol of poverty.102 Miyazaki describes the exaltation he felt when he read Nakao’s book: ‘I felt my perspective was drawn to a lofty height far away. I felt the wind blowing through me; the boundaries of nation-states, walls of ethnicity, and the oppressive weight of history all going further and further away from me; and a breath of life from the broadleaf evergreen forests was flowing into me’.103 This is exactly the same feeling audiences experience when they watch the scene of Totoro on a spinning top, taking Satsuki, Mei, and two little spirits higher and higher into the sky. The scene conveys the same sense of liberation Miyazaki experienced when he first read Nakao’s book. The impact of the revolution initiated by Nakao’s book, however, reached far beyond the levels of Miyazaki’s own personal development and the inclusion of the beauty of nature in his films. It actually tapped into his creative energy at an even deeper level. All the strengths he gained from his heightened level of connectedness with nature, self, and ancestors converged into the philosophical base that underlies his work: he now identifies animism as his fundamental philosophy.

Why animism? When he was young, Miyazaki called himself an ‘emotional leftist’;104 he espoused Marxism and was heavily involved in the labour movement.105 His political beliefs were reflected by the fact that Studio Ghibli was the first firm in Japan to employ animators on a full-time basis, his aim being to establish a fairer and more sustainable production industry.106 Miyazaki remarks, however, that from around 1970 he came to realise that it was not sufficient to just look at the materialistic aspect of human society – the means of production, the distribution of wealth, and human relationships107 – and he no longer wanted to make films which failed to address the natural environment and the condition of the earth on which we depend.108 This change coincided with the time that he encountered Nakao’s book. He states that around that time, he could ‘no longer ignore the fact that our society … was actually predicated on and supported by photosynthesis in the natural world’.109 Miyazaki’s view is not just that of an ‘environmentalist’ or ‘ecologist’. Instead, he is critiquing

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our anthropocentric view of the world itself and arguing for the necessity of incorporating nature into our thinking in a fundamental way. He holds that we need to change the premise underlying modernity itself: This is not just about films. I think that everything is tested now with regard to the question about how we face the end of modernity. … It seems to me that our view of the universe and our view of the earth are now changing. … It is an outrageous lie to say that the earth is a kind mother. It sometimes kills all its children! Our views of the world and of the cosmos need to incorporate this.110 The world view Miyazaki believes to be essential for modernity is animism: Animism will be an important philosophy for humanity after the twenty-first century … I seriously believe this.111 Miyazaki’s animism comes from deep inside his heart, or soul, but it is not a religious conviction. He states: I do like animism. I can understand the idea of ascribing character to stones or wind. But I don’t want to laud it as a religion.112 I feel a kind of animism in my heart, which is not religion.113 So, where does the animism in his heart come from? Miyazaki suggests that it might stem from the stories he heard repeatedly from his mother. To quote him again: When I was little, my mother told me various stories about the countryside, trivial things, repeatedly … stories of being deceived by a fox or a raccoon; that she saw the spirit of a dead person; that there was an omen before someone was about to die. These stories have somehow become my nutrition.114 Miyazaki’s mother is from a family known to have strong psychic power.115 As I will discuss in further detail below, Miyazaki himself suggests that he knows how to connect to the subconscious in order to create his films. He considers, however, that animism is there as a part of folk belief in Japan. He explains: There is a religious feeling that remains to this day in many Japanese. It is a belief that there is a very pure place deep within our country where people are not to enter. In that place, clear water flows and nourishes the deep forests. I share this feeling – an intense religious sensibility – that returning to this place of purity is the most marvelous thing. There is no holy book and there are no saints. This feeling is not recognized as a religion on the same level as the world’s religions, but for Japanese it is definitely a religious

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feeling. … The forest that is the setting for Princess Mononoke is not drawn from an actual forest. Rather, it is a depiction of the forest that has existed within the hearts of Japanese from ancient times.116 Although Miyazaki states in the quotation above that ‘I share this feeling – an intense religious sensibility – that returning to this place of purity is the most marvelous thing’, it is important to note that Miyazaki is not exactly talking about established religion. How, then, does he see the relationship between animism on the one hand and Buddhism and Shinto on the other? With regard to Buddhism, Miyazaki makes a point that its commonality with animism is found in the concept of banbutsu bussho- (万物仏性), which means that all things have a Buddha nature.117 With regard to Shinto, his position is clear. He hardly uses the word ‘Shinto’, and expresses his distance from Shinto as an established religion: I don’t go to worship at a shrine at New Year. It’s because I can’t believe that the gods are inside those gaudy shrines. It seems much more likely to me that the gods of the Japanese are deep in the mountains and far-off valleys.118 If there is any association between Miyazaki’s animism and Shinto, it will be only with the ‘folk Shinto’ that has been part of ordinary people’s lives in hamlets and villages for centuries that is represented by small humble shrines. Folk Shinto is never represented by grandiose (or ‘gaudy’) ‘institutionalised Shinto’, as discussed in Chapter 3. One such ‘folk shrine’ can be seen in Totoro under a big tree on the side of the road, and another appears in Spirited Away, but this time it is run down and sandwiched between the ‘spirit world’ Chihiro found herself in (which itself was the remains of an amusement park) and the nearby newly developed residential area. Miyazaki sees animism deep inside the woods and forests: Japan’s original forests and woods are actually dark. When you enter into them, there’s something scary and exciting. It feels like an animal might be lurking just out of sight. … For Japanese … the gods are in the darkness. They may come out into the light at times, but they are usually deep in the forest or mountains. When a holy spot is created, the gods drop down onto it. That is why, in the shrines that are close to their original form that still exist in Okinawa, though there are altars in the shrines, the image of the god is just a tree or stone. And such a shrine isn’t in a bright, shining place; it’s in an overgrown dark area where the silence is deep – a butterfly might flit about, but it’s a bit eerie. When I went there with my children, they felt the eeriness and said it was scary. It felt as if something were there. This sense of dark awe is the sort of veneration that Japanese have toward certain forest and natural objects – in short, it’s a primitive religion of animism.119

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Gods (or deities/spirits) residing in the silence and darkness of woods and forests generate a sense of awe and veneration, but they also evoke a sense of fear: Many places have a ‘forest that shouldn’t be entered’. Even people who are used to working in the mountains feel there is something there. They are suddenly overcome with fear, and it becomes the custom to avoid certain places. These places exist. I don’t know what is there, but I think they are real.120 This unseen entity that evokes a sense of awe, veneration, and fear is a kami (god, deity, or spirit) for the Japanese, Miyazaki says, but he is careful not to use the words ‘kami’ or ‘Shinto’. Instead, he says that ‘there is something there’, and that although he does not ‘know what is there’ he thinks ‘they are real’. This is a very important statement, as it suggests that for Miyazaki animism is not just an abstract view of the world or universe; it is not just a philosophy or epistemology; rather, it is ‘real’. For Miyazaki, animism is ontology: It is about the real existence of things and beings in the world. And he has illustrated that ‘something’ in his films. Totoro and his little ‘associates’ are an embodiment of that something. The tagline of Totoro reads: ‘This strange being is still in Japan, maybe’. The Forest Spirit (Shishi-gami) which looks like a deer in Princess Mononoke is another embodiment of the ‘something’ which Miyazaki created based on an ancient folk dance called the Deer Dance (more on this in the Epilogue). The Nightwalker (or Didarabocchi), which Shishi-gami transforms into at night, is another expression of that ‘something’ and is also based on legends of mythical giants that are found in various places in Japan.121 This sense of ‘something’ being there in the forest is best expressed by the kodama, thousands of spirit-like beings, in Princess Mononoke. Miyazaki explains: I wondered how to give shape to the image of the forest, from the time when it was not a collection of plants but had a spiritual meaning as well. I didn’t want the forest just to have many tall trees or be full of darkness. I wanted to express the feeling of mysteriousness that one feels when stepping into a forest – the feeling that someone is watching from somewhere or the strange sound that one can hear from somewhere. When I mulled over how I could give form to that feeling, I thought of the kodama. Those who can see them do, and those who can’t don’t see them. They appear and disappear as a presence beyond good or evil.122 It is interesting that regarding kodama Miyazaki says: ‘Those who can see them do, and those who can’t don’t see them’. His explanation reminds me of Ishimure’s words about the soul. She said: ‘Those who can feel it, can feel it, but if you cannot, it can’t be helped; you probably don’t have it’ (Chapter 2). When asked whether he has ever seen or felt kodama, Miyazaki responded:

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I have felt that ‘there is something in the forest’. … Well, it’s a feeling that ‘something is there’. It might be life itself. 123 Significantly, he suggests that this ‘something’, which is unseen but present in forests, might be life itself (rather than animals or living creatures). He is implying that the unseen entity, which is generally considered to be a kami, is life itself. Sugita Shunsuke, drawing on the work of folklorist Origuchi Nobuo, points out that the ‘ka’ in ‘kami’ means ‘hidden or unseen’, and ‘mi’ means ‘life’, and that kami originally meant ‘hidden or unseen life’.124 Miyazaki also writes that ‘we are all born from the forest’.125 Animism for Miyazaki is a belief and a philosophy that is centred on the notion of life, covering not only material but also spiritual dimensions, something which might be called the ‘philosophy and ontology of the life-world’ (see Chapter 1).

Beyond dualism: ‘Life is light that shines in the darkness’126 Now that we have drawn a rough sketch of Miyazaki’s animism in the context of his biography and positioned it first in relation to Marxism, which is the Western philosophy that is closest to his heart, and second in relation to Buddhism and Shinto as he sees them, let us now go one step further and discuss the actual thesis of animism as Miyazaki actually presents it. The source that enables us to explore this in full is the manga version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which in its entirety contains over 1,000 pages. As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, the comic presents the whole gamut of Miyazaki’s philosophy, which he developed and refined during the 12 years (1982–1994) it took him to write it. The manga version of Nausicaä goes well beyond the first two (of seven) chapters on which the film version is based.127 The basic plot is that Nausicaä, the princess of a tiny kingdom called the Valley of the Wind, gets increasingly involved, in order to protect her own people, in the warfare between two dominant kingdoms, Torumekia and Dorok,128 each of which is contending with its own internal power struggles. The story is set at the end of the ‘Ceramic Era’, 1,000 years after industrial civilisation had perished in a nuclear war (‘Seven Days of Fire’).129 Industrial civilisation has not been rebuilt, and the technology available is limited to what they can find in the remains of the past civilisation, such as excavated engines130 and medieval-looking aviation ships and fighter planes. People’s knowledge of biotechnology is also extremely limited and primitive, except for workers in a secret laboratory in the ‘deep, black and enormous Crypt’131 in the Holy City of Shuwa in the Doroks. Nuclear technology is also limited to a single powerful and dangerous creation of humans, which they call a ‘God Warrior’, which has been resurrected after lying dormant for 1,000 years.132 The war between the two kingdoms, Torumekia and Dorok, involves the use of biotechnology as well as competition over who controls the God Warrior nuclear weapon.

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As the human drama unfolds, we see people’s complex relationship with nature, and this constitutes the main theme of the epic comic: human–nature relationships. Miyazaki’s animism is articulated more powerfully in the comic version than in the film; nature is not just a backdrop; it plays a central role in determining the life and death of not only humans but the earth as well. There are three main ‘characters’ from nature: the Ohmu (giant insects, which represent all insects), the Sea of Corruption (or Sea of Decay, which is a deadly toxic forest), and the gigantic Slime Mould which swallows up the world. Miyazaki uses Nausicaä’s relationship with each one of these ‘characters’ to address the theme of human–nature relationships, and the young princess’s relationship with nature is clearly different from that of the other humans in the story. As touched upon earlier, the character of Nausicaä is based partly on a princess from Greek mythology, who was closer at heart to nature than to the society of gods, and partly on an ancient Japanese story about a princess who loved insects. Nausicaä is also closer at heart to nature than humans, as indicated by the words of ‘uncle Mito’, her father-like chief fighter: ‘It seems to me that you’re more concerned about the fate of the Ohmu than about us people. … You seem to be going ever deeper into the world of the great insects, princess’. Nausicaä responds to this by saying: ‘I love the Ohmu. … I think they are the greatest, most noble creatures in all the world. But in the same way, I love all the people of our valley’.133 Nausicaä’s earliest memory, which is kept deep in her subconscious and returns to her when she is at risk of losing her life, is on a baby Ohmu. Nausicaä remembers trying to hide the baby Ohmu, which is about half her size, only to have it taken away by her parents and other adults: NAUSICAÄ:

FATHER:

NAUSICAÄ: FATHER: NAUSICAÄ:

NAUSICAÄ:

Go away! There is nothing here!

It’s an Ohmu larva. She’s been possessed by the insects. … As I feared. … Give it to me… No! It’s not doing anything wrong! Insects and humans cannot live in the same world. No! No!

Don’t kill it! Please … 134

The motif of a small child getting close to another living being only to be separated from it by adults – leaving a strong need to reconnect with it later in life – is the theme that caught Miyazaki’s attention in the animation film White Serpent. Nausicaä retains this sense of connectedness or, more precisely, oneness with other life forms by using human references for other living beings (i.e. personification) such as calling a fearsome Slime Mould ‘that child’ (ano ko あの子)135 and the main Ohmu character ‘this person’ (kono hito この人).136

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This oneness with nature gives Nausicaä the skills to decipher central mysteries about nature, and enables her to be protected by ‘many, many living things’.137 Some notable examples are Teto, the squirrel-fox, breaking the mind control of the Garden Keeper;138 the Ohmu saving her from other insects,139 as well as from the Slime Mould,140 and also healing her burns caused by the Acid Lake;141 and Kai, the horse claw (large flightless bird), helping her escape from enemies even though it is close to death itself.142 Ultimately, this oneness with nature enables Nausicaä to bring peace to the human world, even though it is a polluted world and even though the humans might all still perish in the end. The first point of animism as presented by Miyazaki is this notion of oneness with nature, with no boundary between humans and other living things. He completely negates the concepts of human–nature dualism and anthropocentrism.143 In fact, Miyazaki questions not just the human–nature dualism but also the Cartesian dualism that is fundamental to modernity. This is very clearly developed and articulated in the comic version of Nausicaä, which questions the dualisms of good and evil, pure and corrupt, poisonous and poisoned, natural and human-made, the eater and the eaten, seen and unseen, life and death, as well as light and darkness. His rejection of these dualisms makes us curious about his ethical foundation. I argue that for Miyazaki the most fundamental ethic is, to put it very simply, not to kill and to live believing in the power of life itself.144 Miyazaki’s philosophy, I argue, is very similar to that of Minamata fisherman Ogata Masato (see Chapter 1), who states that the ultimate question is where to put your ‘trust’. Like Ogata, Miyazaki puts his trust in life or, rather, the life-world as a constellation of life, soul, and nature (see Figure 1.1), and this includes all life that has lived in the past, is currently living, and will live in the future. Common to both men is the philosophy of animism where our life is a communion of all forms of life, in both the seen and the unseen world, where all life is revered, held in awe, and connected. Good and evil: Of Miyazaki’s questioning of widely believed dualisms, the most well-known is his questioning of a clear-cut distinction between good and evil; this questioning is expressed strongly in Nausicaä as well as in other films such as Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. Susan Napier, who has analysed Miyazaki fandom, argues that ‘what might be considered a non-Western worldview in which good does not always triumph over evil and the only appropriate response [to this] is to continue to look at the world “with eyes unclouded”’ is felt by many international fans to be one of Miyazaki’s major offerings to society. Napier also speculates that ‘Miyazaki’s subtle and complex worldview’, which includes his avoidance of ‘Hollywood happy endings’, is attractive to his fans because it allows them to ‘break the rules’ of Western culture, even as it touches their hearts through storytelling that is universal.145 This coexistence of good and evil in one person is repeated many times throughout the comic version of Nausicaä. The most striking example is the Dorok Emperor, who was ‘a genuinely compassionate philosopher-king’146 when he was young. He then turned into a tyrant who abused his supernatural powers

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to conquer the world, resulting in massive destruction, but he was able to find peace in the afterlife147 after being saved by Nausicaä in the darkness after death.148 Miyazaki’s notion of good and evil (or light and darkness) is expressed in the words of Nausicaä when she is talking to Selm, one of the ‘Forest People’, about the Emperor after she found a path from the ‘barren land’ (an area dominated by darkness) to the forest. This discussion happened in her mind during her near-death state. SELM: NAUSICAÄ: SELM:

NAUSICAÄ: SELM:

NAUSICAÄ:

This forest is also inside your heart. Inside my heart? And the barren land, too … inside my heart?149 So, you brought him right into the forest. Do you know who that shadow is? He’s the Dorok Emperor. He who was born from the darkness should have been returned to the darkness. But … the darkness is inside me, too. If this forest is inside me, then that desert [the barren land] is mine as well. And if that is the case, then this person is already a part of me.150

Here, Nausicaä negates the simple dualism between good (Selm, Nausicaä herself, and the forest) and evil (the Dorok Emperor and darkness) by saying that she herself has darkness inside her. This remark by Nausicaä is similar to Ogata Masato’s realisation (Chapter 1) that the polluter, the Chisso Company, which caused Minamata disease and killed his family, is actually part of himself in that (1) he is a part of our modern civilisation that demands products from companies like Chisso; (2) as such, he is part of the human world which has caused this ecological crisis and carries tsumi (sin) in regards to other living beings in nature; and (3) if he were working for Chisso, he might have done the same thing. In other words, Ogata had realised that the darkness of his ‘enemy’ was already a part of his life. Just as Ogata proclaims ‘Chisso was I’ (or ‘Chisso within’) in the title of his book, so too Miyazaki indicates through the words of Nausicaä that we all have darkness (or an ‘evil’ aspect) in our hearts, and thus negates the good–evil dichotomy. Poisonous and poisoned (or purity and corruption): In the same way, Miyazaki negates the dualism of purity and corruption (or poisonous and poisoned). With regard to the fate of the Dorok Emperor, Nausicaä has the following exchange with the new emperor after he had assassinated his brother in order to get power for himself: You disgust me, you pseudo-divine, wet-behind-the-ears little girl. I’m going to return the God Warrior and the Heedra [immortal assassin working for the new Emperor] to where they came from. EMPEROR: To where they came from? How? They came from the darkness of the human soul! EMPEROR:

NAUSICAÄ:

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No. From some place deeper, farther away. Your younger brother returned there, as did the Ohmu.

The place Nausicaä refers to, the place where his younger brother (i.e. the former Dorok Emperor) returned to, is the land that Selm showed her. It is a pure and unpolluted land covered with grass and trees, a place with birds, clean water, and regenerated soil where the ‘world is beginning to come back to life’.151 It is intriguing that Miyazaki allocated the third largest space in the 1,000-page comic to draw a field of grass in this regenerated nature. It is as if he is highlighting the significance of grass, which immediately reminds me of Ishimure Michiko’s story of the ‘ancestor of grass’ discussed in Chapter 2. In any case, the point here is that Miyazaki was showing a beautiful and pure natural environment that can support all life as the place where all life and souls return to in order to rest in peace, regardless of how ‘evil’ that particular life or soul appeared to be when it was living. As pointed out above, animism for Miyazaki is represented by ‘an intense religious sensibility’ to a pure place. Let me quote again his response to the question of what animism is for him: It is a belief that there is a very pure place deep within our country where people are not to enter. In that place, clear water flows and nourishes the deep forests. I share this feeling – an intense religious sensibility – that returning to this place of purity is the most marvelous thing.152 It is interesting that Miyazaki says ‘deep within our country’. Given his political stance about Japan as a state, this statement should not be interpreted as nationalistic. It is not clear whether (or how) Miyazaki’s notion of pure land is related to the notion of Pure Land in Buddhism. If there is a connection, it is not something he emphasises. The important point of the story, rather, is that, after being deeply moved by the sight of the regeneration of the pure land (or nature), Nausicaä decides to return to the polluted world in order to live with, and fight for, the people and other living beings she loves and to keep the pure land free of humans who would only start polluting it again. She made the same choice when she was enticed to remain in a different ‘pure land’, the secret garden of the Crypt that she chanced upon. This garden stores ‘seeds for replanting the world after it has been purified … pure specimens of uncontaminated plants and animals that were thought to be long since extinct … agricultural products … music and poetry’.153 It is a beautiful environment which was created around the time of the ‘Seven Days of Fire’ by a group of scientists who planned to use technology to bring the entire world back to life.154 Nausicaä, however, left the place, not because she wanted to avoid contaminating the ‘pure land’, but because she smelt death in the heavenly environment.155 Actually, Nausicaä learns the biggest secrets of the world she lives in while talking to the Master of the Garden. One is that ‘pure land’, be it the regenerated forest that Selm showed her or the genetically engineered garden of the Crypt, can ‘only be visited in spirit … [and] every one of them [who visited it] vomited

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blood and died’ unless a special treatment was given in advance (like the Master of the Garden did for her).156 It is because, as the Master explains, the human body has changed in order to cope with a polluted world, as have the plants and animals.157 While Nausicaä is shocked to know that humans ‘cannot live without the poison’,158 it also helps her see things more clearly. She says: I always felt that we blind ourselves by looking at the world simply in terms of ‘purity’ and ‘corruption’.159 Her point of reference was her discovery that the poisonous miasma produced by the fearsome plants of the Sea of Corruption actually came from the polluted soil and not from the plants; and conversely, for the non-toxic plants and crops in her valley to grow they need water contaminated with this miasma, rather than pure water.160 In other words, plants which are thought to be ‘corrupt’ are actually ‘pure’, and plants which are considered ‘pure’ are ‘corrupt’. This fluctuation of the pure–corrupt (or poisonous–poisoned) dichotomy is further exacerbated by the fact that the deadly Sea of Corruption actually is purifying the land by soaking up the poison from the soil in order to regenerate unpolluted nature, which is in the deepest part of the forest, the part that Nausicaä gained a glimpse of with the help of Selm. Natural and human-made: Readers find through the words of Nausicaä, however, that this purification of nature is not happening as a result of the great power of nature.161 We find, instead, that this regeneration was designed by humans, humans who 1,000 years ago created an ecosystem that would spew toxic miasma into the air while at the same time having a hidden function of purifying the soil using ‘techniques to crystallize matter and render it harmless’.162 Likewise, Nausicaä discerns that human bodies have changed not because they developed a tolerance to the miasma naturally but because ‘human beings changed themselves of their own will’.163 The ancient people used technology not only on the ecosystem but also upon themselves. Nausicaä also learns that the Doroks have developed the technology to incubate Ohmu so they can use them in wars. They also learnt how to produce slime mould out of plants from the Sea of Corruption, and this new technologically created slime mould is so much more mobile and toxic than its original form that its miasma has begun to engulf the whole world. She learns that even Ohmu, the giant insects she so loves, were in fact created by humans.164 If, indeed, the humans in Nausicaä’s era, the Ohmu, the Sea of Corruption, Slime Mould, and other living things are all created by humans,165 what is left that can be called nature? What does Miyazaki see as the distinction between natural and human-made? In the manga, he has Nausicaä say after she learnt that even Ohmu, which she feels closer to than humans, were human-made: NAUSICAÄ:

A life is a life, regardless of how it comes into being. … Every life form no matter how small contains the outside universe within its internal universe.166

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Through Nausicaä, Miyazaki is suggesting that the natural–human-made distinction does not matter as far as life is concerned. Indeed, he remarks that the human–wilderness distinction is not as clear as it is often thought. He points out, for instance, that many places in nature have actually been touched by human hands.167 It is possible that the human–nature distinction is especially blurred in Japan and that the groves surrounding village shrines may be one indication of this blurring.168 It is also likely that Miyazaki has been influenced by botanist Nakao Sasuke on the point that the differentiation between natural and human-made life is not that clear. As a specialist in cultivated plants, Nakao emphasises the close relationship between humans and nature, and contends that cultivated plants, especially wheat and rice, are perhaps the most important cultural heritage of humans. Nakao writes: One straw of wheat and one stalk of rice are … the cultural heritage [of humans] of the highest value. Some people may be sceptical about things such as grass having a cultural heritage, but it is important to understand that the ordinary wheat and rice plants we see today have actually been produced by human hands, and are totally different from those that originally existed in the wild. It is difficult to trace the origin of the cultivated plants that we see today, as we only see the end results of the thousands of years of sweat and tears put in by our ancestors to improve and develop the crops. In response to human labour and expectations, wheat and rice improved themselves while providing food to humans. 169 Although this passage is about cultivated plants, it includes two points that are key to understanding Miyazaki’s view of nature. The first is the notion that the boundary between being wild (and natural) and non-wild or cultivated (and therefore artificial) is blurred. And the second is the notion of close interactive relationships between humans and nature based on the almost equal positioning of both of them. Instead of saying simply that humans developed the technology to improve plants, Nakao writes above that the cultivated plants ‘improved themselves’ ‘in response to human labour and expectations’, thus conveying a sense of courtesy and respect for nature through personification.170 Miyazaki agrees that the most important point about life/nature is that it should be treated with respect, courtesy, reverence, and a sense of awe.171 He writes that environmental issues need to be considered with civility, and that this civility should be shown not only to other living beings, but also to the inanimate things in nature such as water, mountains, and air.172 Once again, Miyazaki’s words resonate with Ogata Masato’s philosophy of the life-world, which espouses ‘reverence for, and a sense of humility towards, all life’.173 There is no sense of hierarchy amongst living things: Humans are not above other living beings, but are part of a continuum of the life-world, a nebula of life/soul/nature that has existed since pre-historic times. Light and darkness: In the story of Nausicaä, this is precisely what she fights for: the sacredness of life. All life is equal no matter how small or big it

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is, and each life deserves the utmost respect and is entitled to live no matter how difficult it is. Put this way, it sounds normal and as if it is a matter of course, but in the comic Nausicaä discovers that ancient humans designed something quite contrary to this when she uncovers the secrets of the Crypt of Shuwa. The Crypt is the place where the ‘abominable technologies’ of the old world, which can transform life at will, are maintained.174 She also found out that it is the place where the embryos of humans who had been designed to be peaceful, intelligent, and non-violent were stored,175 so that, together with the pure breeds of animals and plants kept in the Crypt’s secret garden, they could replace all living, hence polluted, humans, animals, and plants once the construction of the pure land was complete. Nausicaä finds that this grand design is: the ultimate demonstration of contempt for life … [because on] this planet, life itself is its own miracle. No matter how wretched, every life form lives by virtue of its own power.176 At the end of the epic comic story, she finds the biggest secret of the Crypt: the Master of the Crypt. He indicates that they, those who masterminded the Crypt, gathered all human wisdom and put it in the Crypt just before their industrial civilisation collapsed. Their aim was to eventually construct a pure land, a place where there is no suffering or pollution. There is a magnificent confrontation between the Master, who represents salvation designed by humans with the help of technology, and Nausicaä, who rejects it in order to protect the present-day life which surrounds her. Her problems with the Master’s plan are that (1) it is based on the deception that all will be made good by killing ‘all (polluted) life’ for the sake of ‘pure life’; (2) for the ‘pure’ life to remain ‘pure’, it necessitates a hierarchy of life and slavery; (3) ‘both purity and corruption are the very stuff of life’;177 and (4) the plan itself (i.e. to create a pure world) contradicts the true nature of life. Miyazaki has Nausicaä shout to the Master what life is for her and what it is for him: Our bodies may have been artificially transformed, but our lives will always be our own! Life survives by the power of life. If such a morning [when the reconstruction is completed and all existing life is planned to be replaced with ‘pure’ life] is to come, then we shall live to face that morning! We are birds who, though we may spit up blood, will go on flying beyond that morning, on and on! To live is to change. The Ohmu, the mold, the grasses and trees, we human beings … we will all go on changing. And the Sea of Corruption will live on with us. But you cannot change. You have only the plan that was built into you. Because you deny death.178 Underlying Nausicaä’s rejection of the ancient people’s master plan, her proclamation to keep on living while ignoring the plan, and her point that ‘to live is to change’ confirm Miyazaki’s view that ‘ecosystems can’t possibly exist for a particular purpose’.179 At the climax of the epic, the Master of the Crypt claims he is the ‘sole light that remains in the darkness’, that without

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him ‘humanity shall surely [become] extinct’, and that Nausicaä is ‘a dangerous darkness, [and that] life is light’.180 To this, Nausicaä responds: You are wrong. Life is light that shines in the darkness.181 If you are light, then we do not need light. We can know the beauty and cruelty of the world without the help of a giant tomb and its servants. Because our god inhabits even a single leaf and the smallest insects. 182 Miyazaki has Nausicaä say that ‘life is light that shines in the darkness’ and that ‘our god inhabits even a single leaf and the smallest insects’. This is the only time in the entire epic where he uses the word ‘god’ (i.e. kami) affirmatively, and it is for a god that is unambiguously located within tiny humble beings found in nature. These gods can be found even in a single leaf or in the smallest insects. These lines crystallise Miyazaki’s philosophy of animism, and through them we can see that his philosophy is firmly based on the negation of dualism (human vs nature, good vs evil, pure vs polluted, poisonous vs poisoned, natural vs human-made) because he sees that life, by its very nature, is both pure and corrupt; it encapsulates not only the physical but also the spiritual; and it is based on the notion of the oneness of life, nature, and spirituality. In other words, it resonates with the notion of the life-world envisaged by Ogata Masato, that is, it resonates with animism.

Into a deeper realm of animism: Ohmu and Slime Mould As discussed above, Miyazaki takes seriously the question of how we face modernity, an era where human–nature relationships are crucial for the survival of the world, and he positions animism as ‘an important philosophy for human beings after the twenty-first century’.183 Now that we have analysed his notion of life and nature with regard to some of the existing dualisms that are taken for granted in the modern world, let us go one step further and explore an even deeper realm of Miyazaki’s philosophy of animism: his more abstract views of the world that are expressed in Nausicaä, especially through his illustrations of Slime Mould and the Ohmu (giant insects). Slime Mould is a character that appears only in the comic version of Nausicaä. It is one of many ‘plants’ that live in the Sea of Corruption,184 and the Doroks have been developing it as a biological weapon. But, it mutates and the mutant Slime Mould then begins spreading in the Doroks’ own territory, engulfing towns with enormous speed like a tidal wave, all the while emitting a deadly miasma which is far more potent than its original form. Here, I need to recapitulate three rather complex points I discussed in the previous chapter about the relationship between slime mould and esoteric Buddhism. The first is that slime mould is a plant (it forms spores) as well as an animal (it moves in order to find food). Thus, it does not fit into a dichotomous category, and in that sense it symbolises monism, which is a basic principle of esoteric Buddhism. The second is that the mould’s ability to

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spontaneously organise itself out of disorder, which can be interpreted as an affirmation of ‘chance’ (en) that cannot be explained by the scientific theory of cause and effect. Chance is also an important element of esoteric Buddhism. And the third is that the slime mould’s existence is entirely dependent on its local environment, and that being a part of the whole local ecology can be taken as a symbol of the ‘holistic’, which is also the basic framework of esoteric Buddhism (see Chapter 3 for further discussion on these points). Miyazaki’s depiction of his Slime Mould in Nausicaä follows these features closely. The mould spontaneously mutates into a form completely different from the original design of the scientists;185 it has no brain but it still has the ability to gather instinctively to a certain point and to merge with other moulds;186 and it is very much supported by other lives: Nausicaä discovers that the Slime Moulds’ exponential growth is sustained by eating the swarms of insects that came to help them (i.e. to be eaten).187 Ohmu also travel en masse, causing a towering tidal wave of Ohmu insects that flattens everything in its course (Daikaisho-).188 Contrary to the human understanding that the Ohmu only do this when they are enraged by humans, Nausicaä soon realises that this is not the only reason. Nausicaä finds out that the Ohmu somehow knew about the emergence of the destructive mutant Slime Mould as a mishap of the human attempt to use them as a biological weapon; the Ohmu came to help by making themselves into a seedbed for the Mould, i.e. to sacrifice themselves as food for the Mould because ‘that is the love between the insects and the plants’;189 by eating the Ohmu, the Mould transformed into a gigantic forest. Nausicaä understands that the Ohmu were ‘trying to heal the earth’s wounds’ that had been caused by humans through their development of the giant Slime Mould. Miyazaki has Selm, one of the Forest People, say: ‘To eat and to be eaten … One and the same in this world. The entire forest – one life’.190 The many layers of negation of dualism built into the story are symbolized by the Slime Mould and distilled into the words of an Ohmu. In Japanese, Ohmu is written in kanji as 王蟲, which means ‘the king of insects’, or in katakana as オー ム, which is phonetically the same as ‘Om’ or ‘Aum’, a sacred sound in Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. The Ohmu with which Nausicaä communicated taught her: ‘The one is the whole, and the whole is the one’.191 In its own words: Our race is as one. Each of us in the whole. The whole in each of us. Our hearts speak across time and space.192 This notion of ‘one is all and all is one’ is the essence of esoteric Buddhism as discussed in Chapter 3 in relation to slime mould. This seems to be at the core of Miyazaki Hayao’s philosophy. Nausicaä is the only human ‘who peeped into the abyss that is the heart of the Ohmu’.193 She could connect with the Ohmu at this level because she is actually ‘the forest in human form … [and] stands at the center of both

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worlds’. Miyazaki states that he was disconcerted by the interpretation of Nausicaä as a saviour, which is the impression the film version of the story tends to give, and he wanted to stress in the manga that she is not a saviour.195 Instead, she is presented in the manga as a disciple (shito 使徒) who is a human being196 and who connects all the relevant binaries and dualisms: humans and nature, good and evil, pure and corrupted, poisonous and poisoned, eater and the eaten, and darkness and light. As many characters in the story remark, she is the lynchpin that connects the competing worlds which, without her, are full of conflicts and cataclysms and would eventually disintegrate.197 This means that we could consider Nausicaä as the powerful core of the conceptual diagram of animism, which was presented in the previous chapter (see Figure 3.2). The Ohmu embody not only darkness but also overwhelming tenderness and loving friendship, though they have the ability to kill if necessary.198 And this is what Nausicaä stands for. Just before the last battle with the God Warrior is about to begin, Nausicaä addresses the thousands of Doroks in front of her: Has there not been enough killing!? Do we want to poison the land even further? … It was hatred that brought the world to where it is now. Hatred and revenge give birth to nothing. Not all the Dorok lands have been lost. Move to the edge of the Sea of Corruption and make a new life there. The Sea of Corruption is the product of our sins. But it is not our enemy. My clan knows how to live by sharing the burden of suffering. We can teach you the way. Choose love over hatred.199 While listening to Nausicaä, the Doroks’ head priest realized that her words also accurately described the heart of the Ohmu.200 If an Ohmu’s heart represents darkness, the call for love over hatred may be understood as a ‘light that shines in the darkness’,201 a prayer that Miyazaki injects into his world of animism. It also represents the foundation of hope, which involves ‘working and struggling along with people who are important to you’.202 He continues that this maintenance of hope is ‘what it means to be alive’.203 And this is exactly how the comic version of Nausicaä ends. Although Nausicaä knows about the master plan to bring about the death of all existing life and to replace it with new pure life, she has created a foundation that enables people to work and struggle together believing that there is hope because that is what it means to be alive. Although she finds at the very end of the story that even the Ohmu have the same blood as the Master of the Crypt, she withholds that information because that is, after all, only part of the Ohmu, and they keep changing as all life does; and because, ultimately, she learnt from the Ohmu that the ‘one is the whole and the whole is the one’.

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Injecting soul through animation In a ‘phantom speech’ which Miyazaki initially prepared, but then replaced, as his 2005 Japan Foundation Award acceptance speech, he succinctly expresses the meaning of his work at Studio Ghibli: At the core, we are extremely skeptical about the state of our modern civilization. … Today, when civilization seems to be heading toward catastrophe at an ever increasing speed, the world seems to praise our work more than ever. … Even when tragedy unfolds before us, we always feel we have had an obligation to show the beauty of the world in which it takes place. … [What is] important is that this world continues to exist, far, far behind the screen, in a place invisible to the eye … where the sun is shining, and animals, plants, and humans are alive.204 Then, towards the end of his undelivered speech, he planned to say: “What is important for the tamashii/soul?” “What is the tamashii/soul?” These are the immutable themes that we must always pursue and the questions we have been given to answer.205 In positioning the question of the soul (tamashii) as an unchanging or immutable theme, Miyazaki shares the same problem-consciousness as the other intellectuals examined in this book: Ogata Masato (Chapter 1), Ishimure Michiko (Chapter 2), and Tsurumi Kazuko (Chapter 3). In addition to the dualisms already discussed, there is another important one that Nausicaä connects to: the dead and the living, which can also be described as a binary of the seen and the unseen. Throughout the story in the manga, Nausicaä communicates with the dead and she is often protected by beings from the unseen world. She communicates with the souls of the deceased through telepathy, which is the same way she communicates with other humans and insects. Nausicaä is not the only character in Miyazaki’s stories who is firmly connected to the unseen world. This connectedness with the unseen world is at the core of Miyazaki’s stories and is represented, for instance, by the relationships between Satsuki, Mei, and Totoro the tree spirit (My Neighbour Totoro); San, Ashitaka, and Shishi-gami the spirit of the forest (Princess Mononoke); Sen (or Chihiro) and Haku the dragon spirit of the river (Spirited Away); and Ponyo, So-suke, and Granmamare the spirit of the sea (Ponyo). The seen and the unseen worlds in these stories are connected by the tamashii (souls) of the characters, souls which derive from the philosophy and techniques of Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, the creators of the films. An example that illustrates the centrality of the soul in Miyazaki’s work, both as philosophy and technique, can be found, for instance, in his interaction with his son, Goro-, when Goro- was struggling as the director of From up on Poppy

Inspiring modernity with animism 195 Hill. Miyazaki was mercilessly criticising the images produced by Goro- and his team, saying: ‘There is no point in drawing a picture like this which doesn’t have tamashii (soul)’.206 In the end, Miyazaki drew one still picture for Goro- – a drawing of the protagonist, Umi, walking to school in the morning sun, looking so much alive: walking fast and taking big steps with her torso slightly tilted forward and her eyes fixated ahead. She was full of energy and tamashii – unlike the image of her as a sad-eyed girl previously drawn by Goro-. All it took was one drawing by Miyazaki, a picture that had soul imbued in it, to crystallise the image of the protagonist and reset the whole project. ‘Animate’, the verb form of the word ‘animation’, means to ‘give spirit’ or to ‘breathe life into’, and it is derived from the Latin word ‘anima’, which means ‘air, breath, life, soul, or spirit’.207 Anima is also part of the etymology of ‘animism’, and the Oxford English Dictionary defines animism as: Belief in the existence of a spiritual world, and of soul or spirit apart from matter; spiritualism as opposed to materialism. The dictionary has a second definition for animism, which is: The attribution of life and personality (and sometimes a soul) to inanimate objects and natural phenomena. The first definition represents Miyazaki’s view of the world and the second definition represents what he does, only in the opposite direction: Instead of attributing life to inanimate objects, he creates life from nothingness by drawing lines on paper. As Sugita Shunsuke points out, if animation is a way of reproducing animism in modernity, Miyazaki has endeavoured to do it more earnestly than anyone else.208 Miyazaki much prefers pencil-and-paper drawings, keeping his use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) to the bare minimum, probably because the traditional method directly connects his mind to his drawings. Unlike other films which use images that already exist in the world, animation films are constructed from naught. When it is an original story, and not an adaptation of an existing story, it comes entirely from the imagination (i.e. from inside the mind and heart) of the person who creates it. Miyazaki emphasises, however, that his stories come from ‘outside his brain’; they come from a place he accesses through his subconscious mind when he is under pressure. He states: I often tell people that films are something that exist not in your mind, but somewhere above you [points above head]. … And the trick thus becomes finding it. … You won’t find it inside your head. … It’s one of the reasons I spend a lot of time on continuity sketches [i.e. storyboards] when making a film. It’s something that you have to face directly and can’t run from. You just have to wrestle with it. And when you’re stuck,

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Animism by film director Miyazaki Hayao something deep in your brain will start thinking for you. … And it’ll probably pop out all of a sudden. … [In that sense] I’m not making a film; instead, it feels like the film is making me.209

He is saying, in other words, that he is like a medium who connects the ‘story’ to our world, and he does this by engraving the story by using pencil and paper, by drawing lines. Saying that his ideas come from a place outside him seems extraordinary, so let me present his words on this point again: The film can’t be completed unless you think with your subconscious. … The film tries to become a film. The film-maker just becomes a slave to the film. The relationship is not one of me creating the film, but rather of the film forcing me to create it.210 As an example of a scenario emerging through him, Miyazaki talks about how the scene of Nausicaä’s secret room in the castle where she grows toxic plants from the Sea of Corruption was created: As for me, [Nausicaä’s raising those plants outside the Sea of Corruption] didn’t occur to me until I got to that panel. I hadn’t thought at the start what the inside of the castle, with Nausicaä’s secret room, would even look like. When I was wondering, ‘Where would Nausicaä be at that particular point in time?’, I found she was in that room. I only realized this afterward.211 ‘I only realized this afterward’ backs up his account that ‘the relationship is not one of me creating the film, but rather of the film forcing me to create it’. Just as Miyazaki believes that there is no pre-established harmony in nature (予定調和的な自然などない),212 he seems to feel that he allows the film, or story, to take its own course by using him as its medium. Miyazaki, for instance, said soon after completing Princess Mononoke that he had not yet summarised what he had made, a comment which makes it seem as if it were someone else’s story.213 He also said after completing Spirited Away that he ‘frankly felt like [he] was lifting the lid on areas of [his] brain that [he] wasn’t supposed to expose’,214 which is ‘the door to his subconscious mind’.215 So, what does Miyazaki really think the source of his stories is? What is he accessing through his subconscious? Generally, our subconscious mind is considered to store long-forgotten ‘primitive’ instinctual memories. With regard to these memories, he states: I sometimes think that there’s something piled up in the human mind, something that is in our memory that we can’t recall but haven’t forgotten, or something buried even deeper, like the stones that make up a foundation. It might include things like our DNA, something at the extremities, something that we don’t understand very well at all, something connected to

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something else that is completely mysterious. … I think that the memories we recall may come from something we experienced momentarily as babies, but a lot of them may also come from something much more ancient, from before we were even born.216 Memories buried deep in our DNA, memories which were there even before we were born, memories carried forward from ancient times: It sounds very much like Miyazaki is talking about accessing information in a way that can now be explained by epigenetics. There is a biological mechanism deep in our DNA that carries memories of previous generations (see Chapter 3), but perhaps on a much larger scale (i.e. beyond individual genetic history). This memory is what Ishimure Michiko calls ‘soul’ (see Chapter 2) and what Ogata Masato calls ‘memories of life’ (inochi no kioku いのちの記憶) (see Chapter 1), and this seems to be the ‘something’ which Miyazaki accesses when he writes his storyboard. Miyazaki suggests that trees might also be doing the same thing – that is, searching deep into their memories to find ways of survival. He refers to his observation of elm trees that were affected by abnormally hot weather one year and that then recovered the following year even though it was just as hot. He suggests that they were less effected by the hotter weather in the second year because they had learnt how to cope with the extreme weather by connecting to their ancient memories.217 Miyazaki’s underlying perspective here is the same as Nausicaä’s: He is putting trees at the same level as himself, as sentient beings which have access to memory of life as he himself does. They belong in the same world – the life-world – the world of animism. Miyazaki’s account of how his scenarios come from a place outside of his mind reminds me of Ogata’s remark that the ‘memory of life’ (kept in the lifeworld as soul) throws questions at us, making us converse with it. Miyazaki seems to be saying the same thing. It sounds as if he tunes into the deepest part of his subconscious in order to receive messages from the life-world in order to embody these messages in his animation films. Ogata maintains that dialogue with the life-world has a ‘corrective function’ in our lives. Ishimure also provides a powerful story for change by connecting to souls in the lifeworld. As a writer, she has played the role of a shaman who conveys messages from the ‘soul’ (or the ‘ancestor of grass’) in order to provide a new foundation of ethics based solidly on life. Miyazaki does the same, only with a different method. He conveys magnificent and powerful images of the life-world, the world of animism, through his animation films by connecting himself with the life-world and receiving stories from it. Then, by ‘drawing lines’, animating them, and making them move, he imbues soul into his images.218 Miyazaki thus gives us a vivid image of the life-world, the world of animism, that exists both as a seen world in front of us, and as an unseen world of life and soul beyond our normal human perceptions. By doing so, he brings happiness to his audiences, especially to children and young people, and his stories inspire them to think more

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about life and the world. Miyazaki’s ability to touch our hearts, our minds, or our souls at such a profound level may be an indication that his stories resonate with something we have inherited from our ancestors. A memory of his story might even be stored in our DNA in such a way that it responds to his problem-consciousness about modernity, bringing about a gradual but steady and fundamental change in our senses and perceptions through our own power of life, which is carried forward by the epigenetic mechanisms of life.

Embodying animism There can be no question that animism is the central theme of the films produced by Miyazaki Hayao. Animism, for which the concepts of soul, nature, and life are key, has also been indispensable to his life and work as an animator. Miyazaki’s initial connection to his own soul happened when he was watching White Serpent, an animation film with a strong theme of animism, which in turn helped him find a cause for his own work: to help (young) viewers establish a connection with their own souls. Another life-altering experience occurred when he realised that nature, in particular broadleaf evergreen forests, link Japan with other parts of Asia, hence creating a common culture zone. This realisation not only liberated Miyazaki from his angst about being Japanese, thus releasing his creativity, it also gave an innovative strength to his movies: He began to pay equal attention to nature in his films. Underlying this decision is the notion that humans are an integral part of nature, and vice versa, which is a key concept of postmodern animism. Finally, Miyazaki feels a sense of purpose that he is conveying a story of the life-world, which comes from his subconscious, in his endeavour to connect to what he calls ‘something like the memory of life of mitochondria’.219 And he is a genius at converting this memory of life into ‘real’ life that moves, through his exceptional talent as an animator. For Miyazaki, animism is at the core of his life at both the personal and professional levels. He is closely connected to its key aspects, soul and nature, which in turn enable him to develop his innate talent in full, to animate and give life, or movement, to the memory of life, which is another key element of animism. And, as argued above, one of the special characteristics of Miyazaki’s films is that they always reflect ‘the spirit of the times’. Could Miyazaki Hayao be a real-life Nausicaä, a messenger that the life-world has sent to the earth to help us survive the Anthropocene?

Notes 1 It was produced by Top Craft, but it is listed as the first animation feature film by Studio Ghibli on its website (). 2 Miyazaki Hayao 2013, Kaze no kaeru basho [The place where the wind returns], collection of interviews by Shibuya Yo-ichi conducted in 1990–2001, Bungeishunju-, Tokyo. See especially p.232.

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3 Miyazaki Hayao 2008, Turning Point: 1997–2008, trans. Beth Cary & Frederik Schodt, Viz Media, San Francisco, p.413. 4 Eriko Ogihara-Schuck 2014, Miyazaki’s Animism Abroad: The Reception of Japanese Religious Themes by American and German Audiences, McFarland & Co., Jefferson, NC. 5 Said by Shibutani Yoichi, quoted in Suzuki Toshio 2011, Ghibli no tetsugaku [The philosophy of Ghibli], Iwanami shoten, Tokyo, p.272. 6 Isao Takahata 1996, ‘Afterword: The firework of eros’, in Miyazaki Hayao, Starting Point: 1979–1996, trans. Beth Cary & Frederik Schodt, Viz Media, San Francisco, p.457. 7 For the full list of awards that Miyazaki’s films have received, see IMDb, viewed 15 March 2017, . 8 Ko-gyo- Tsu-shinsha 2017, ‘Shinema Rankingu Tsu-shin: Rekidai Rankingu’ [Cinema ranking communications: All-time ranking], viewed 13 March 2017, . 9 Studio Ghibli 2014, ‘Ghibli no rekishi’ [Ghibli’s history], viewed 13 March 2017, . 10 See, for instance, Lars-Martin Sørensen 2008, ‘Animated animism – The global ways of Japan’s national spirits’, Northern Lights, vol.6, pp.181–196. 11 Miyazaki, Kaze no kaeru, pp.226–227. 12 ibid., p.241. 13 ibid., p.199. 14 Miyazaki Hayao & Ernest Callenbach 1985, ‘“Kaze no tani” no mirai o kataro-. Hi o suteru?’ [Let’s talk about the future of the ‘Valley of the Wind’: Discarding the fire?] Asahi Journal, 7 June, reprinted in Miyazaki Hayao, Shuppatsuten [Starting point], Tokuma shoten, Tokyo, pp. 334–343 (citation on p.341). 15 Miyazaki, Kaze no kaeru, p.199. 16 ibid. 17 Studio Ghibli, ‘Ghibli no rekishi’. 18 NHK 2006, Professional shigoto no ryu-gi [Professional work style], Suzuki Toshio, TV programme, broadcast 6 April 2006. 19 Miyazaki Hayao 2012, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Comic version: Deluxe edition 1), trans. David Lewis & Toren Smith, Viz Media, San Francisco, vol.1, p.24. 20 Miyazaki, Nausicaä comic, p.3. The quotation is from the comic version, but the beginning of the story is the same for both the comic and movie versions. 21 ibid. 22 Miyazaki Hayao 1996, Starting Point: 1979–1996, trans. Beth Cary & Frederik Schodt, Viz Media, San Francisco, p.284. 23 Miyazaki & Callenbach, ‘Hi o suteru?’, p.342. The validity of the news and to what extent it reflects the reality today are separate questions. The ocean catch is seriously depleted in the Shiranui Sea including Minamata Bay, just as it is elsewhere in Japan. 24 Miyazaki Hayao 2013, Zoku kaze no kaeru basho [The place where wind returns – The sequel] Rockin’ on, Tokyo, p.198. 25 Mami Sunada 2013, The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, documentary film, distributed by Madman, counter 21:00. 26 Miyazaki, Zoku kaze no kaeru, pp.215–216. 27 ibid., p.198. 28 Miyazaki, Zoku kaze no kaeru, p.220. 29 ibid., p.217. 30 NHK stands for Nippon Hoso- Kyo-kai (i.e. national broadcasting association). Its official English name is the Japan Broadcasting Corporation. 31 Sunada, Kingdom, 46:24:00.

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32 Jeff Kingston 2017, ‘Introduction’, in Jeff Kingston (ed.) Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan, Routledge, London and New York, p.1. 33 A podcast recording of a round-table discussion with Ko-no Taro-, Miyazaki Hayao, Suzuki Toshio, Ohnishi Kensuke, and Kawakami Nobuo available at ‘Suzuki Toshio no Ghibli ase mamire’ [Suzuki Toshio’s sweaty Ghibli], viewed 24 March 2017, . 34 Roland Kelts 2013, ‘Backlash against Miyazaki is generational’, The Japan Times, 8 October. 35 Cinema Today 2011, ‘Miyazaki Hayao “Genpatsu nuki” no chiisana demo! Studio Ghibli ga o-danmaku ni kometa omoi Suzuki Producer “kaisha to shite genpatsu ni hantai”’ [Miyazaki Hayao’s small demonstration for ‘No Nukes!’ The thoughts Studio Ghibli expressed in its banner – Producer Suzuki said ‘We are against nuclear power as a company’], 25 August, viewed 25 March 2017, . 36 Takahashi Genichiro- 2011, ‘Yawarakasa no himitsu’ [The secret of being soft], Asahi Shimbun, 25 August. A database search was conducted with ‘Miyazaki’ and ‘genpatsu’ as keywords for the period of 11 March 2011 to 31 December 2011. 37 Sunada, Kingdom, 1:40. The translation of ‘stabbing’ has been changed slightly to make it closer to his original words. 38 Kenji Yamagishi 2013, ‘Statement protesting the railroading through the Special Secrets Bill’ [Presidential statement of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA)], JFBA, viewed 30 March 2017, . 39 JFBA 2017, ‘Himitsu hogo ho- no Mondaiten wa’ [What are the problems with the Special Secrets Bill?] viewed 30 March 2017, . 40 Sunada, Kingdom, 1:54. 41 NHK 2016, Owaranai hito Miyazaki Hayao [Never-ending man: Miyazaki Hayao], broadcast 13 November 2016. 42 Sunada, Kingdom, 46:24. 43 NHK 2013, Miyazaki Hayao no Shigoto, Professional Shigoto no Ryu-gi Tokubetsu-hen [The work of Miyazaki Hayao, special issue of Professional – My style of work], DVD, Dir. Arakawa Itaru. 44 Sunada, Kingdom, 46:24. 45 Miyazaki Hayao 2011, ‘Kazetachinu kikakusho’ [The wind rises: Project proposal], Studio Ghibli, viewed 23 March 2017, . 46 As suggested by Miyazaki in Sunada, Kingdom, 1:45. 47 Miyazaki Hayao & Chikushi Tetsuya 1996, ‘Kuni no yukue’ [The future of the country], in Miyazaki, Shuppatsuten, pp.12–40 (citation on p.18); Miyazaki Hayao & Murakami Ryu- 1996, ‘Misshitsu kara no dasshutsu’ [An escape from a locked room], in Miyazaki, Shuppatsuten, pp.353–365 (citation on p.355). 48 Oizumi Mitsunari 2002, Miyazaki Hayao no Genten [The starting point of Miyazaki Hayao], Ushio Shuppan, Tokyo, p.26. 49 Oizumi, Genten, p.26. 50 ibid., p.27. 51 ibid. p.28. 52 Miyazaki, Kaze no kaeru, pp.46–47. 53 Oizumi, Genten, pp.20–21. 54 Miyazaki, Starting Point, p.200. 55 Miyazaki, Shuppatsuten, pp.265–266. 56 Sugita Sunsuke 2014, Miyazaki Hayao ron: Kamigami to kodomotachi no monogatari [A theory on Miyazaki Hayao: The story of deities and children], NHK Books, Tokyo, p.42. 57 Miyazaki, Turning Point, p.168. See also Miyazaki, Kaze no kaeru, p.47. 58 Miyazaki, Kaze no kaeru, p.47.

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Miyazaki, Shuppatsuten, p.266. Miyazaki, Kaze no kaeru, p.313. Miyazaki, Starting Point, p.70. ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. Miyazaki, Kaze no kaeru, pp.313–314. (Original interview by Shibuya Yo-ichi, ‘Kaze no tani kara aburaya made’ [From the valley of the wind to the Aburaya], recorded January 2001). Miyazaki, Starting Point, p.18. ibid. This reminds me of William Wordsworth’s ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’ (1804). Xan Brooks 2005, ‘A god among animators’, The Guardian, 14 September. Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd. (emphasis added). Miyazaki, Shuppatsuten, p.372. Miyazaki, Turning Point, p.167. Miyazaki, Starting Point, pp.49–50. Reprint of ‘My point of origin’, Lecture, Joint Animation Studies Groups at Waseda Univeristy, Tokyo, 5 June 1985. Oizumi, Genten, pp.104–105. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry [1939] 1967, Wind Sand and Stars, trans. Lewis Galantiere, Harcourt Brace Javanovich, New York (emphasis added). Oizumi, Genten, p.106 (emphasis added). Miyazaki, Turning Point, p.122. Miyazaki, Kaze no kaeru, p.83 Miyazaki & Chikushi, ‘Kuni no yukue’, p.14. Brooks, ‘A god among animators’. Miyazaki, Turning Point, p.394. Oizumi, Genten, p.10. Sunada, Kingdom, 1:54. See, for instance, Miyazaki, Turning Point, p.40. Brooks, ‘A god among animators’. Miyazaki, Turning Point, p.90. I am referring to the scene where the hero, Jiro, finds his future wife, Naoko, in the forest, and the scene of the Great Kanto Earthquake. Miyazaki, Turning Point, p.90 (emphasis added). Miyazaki, Shuppatsuten, p.265. Nakao Sasuke 1966, Saibai shokubutsu to no-ko- no kigen [The origin of cultivated plants and agriculture] Iwanami Shinso, Tokyo; Miyazaki, Starting Point, p.356; On p.357 of Starting Point, Miyazaki says that ‘broadleaf evergreen forest culture’ was a term coined by Nakao when Miyazaki was about 30 years old. But this is obviously an error, as Nakao’s book that contains the term was published in 1966 when Miyazaki was 21 years old. The context suggests that he read it in his early thirties. Miyazaki, Starting Point, p.357. ibid., pp.357–358. ibid., p.358. Miyazaki, Shuppatsuten, p.267; Miyazaki, Starting Point, p.358. Miyazaki, Shuppatsuten, p.267. Miyazaki, Turning Point, p.356. Miyazaki, Shuppatsuten, p.267. The impact of Nakao’s thesis on Miyazaki is reflected by the fact that he used two kanji characters from ‘broadleaf evergreen

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Animism by film director Miyazaki Hayao forest’ (照葉樹林) in one of his pseudonyms: ‘terecomu’ (照樹務) (Japanese Wikipedia on Miyazaki Hayao, ). As indicated by Spirited Away (by the robbing of the real name of the protagonist, Ogino Chihiro (荻野千尋), which was changed to Sen (千) by the Witch Yuba-ba), name change carries a great significance for Miyazaki. This pseudonym suggests that Nakao’s thesis had a breakthrough impact upon Miyazaki’s sense of identity. Miyazaki, Starting Point, p.356. Brooks, ‘A god among animators’. Miyazaki, Kaze no kaeru, p.268. ibid., p.102. Miyazaki, Shuppatsuten, p.267. Oizumi, Genten, pp.155–156. See, for instance, Sunada, Kingdom, 1:43. Miyazaki, Starting Point, pp.92–94. ibid., p.107. Miyazaki, Kaze no kaeru, p.232. Miyazaki, Starting Point, p.107. Miyazaki, Kaze no kaeru, p.314. ibid., p.199. Miyazaki, Starting Point, p.333. Miyazaki & Callenbach, ‘Hi o suteru?’, p.341. Oizumi, Genten, p.139. ibid., p.38. Miyazaki, Turning Point, p.88. Oizumi, Genten, p.141. Miyazaki, Starting Point, p.360. ibid., p.359 (emphasis added). ibid.; the same point is expressed in Miyazaki, Turning Point, pp.82–83. Miyazaki, Turning Point, p.82. ibid. ibid (emphasis added). Sugita, Miyazaki Hayao ron, p.76. Miyazaki, Starting Point, p.140. Miyazaki, Nausicaä comic, vol.2, p.511. Based on the content and the publication dates available on p.136 of vol.2 of Kaze no Tani no Naushika [Nausicaä of the valley of the wind], Animage Comics Waido-ban, Tokuma shoten, Tokyo, [1983] 2014. In the film version, it is the war between Torumekia and Pejitei. Miyazaki, Nausicaä comic, vol.1, p.24. ibid., vol.1, p.48. ibid., vol.2, p.372. ibid., vol.1, p.74. ibid., vol.1, p.222–223. ibid., vol.1, p.127–128. ibid., vol.1, p.544. ibid., vol.1, p.132. In the English translation, it is, ‘I recognize this one [Ohmu]’, whereas in the Japanese original it is, ‘I recognised this person (konohito)’: See Japanese version vol.5, p.136. ibid., vol.1, p.497. ibid., vol.2, p.418. ibid., vol.1, p.307. ibid., vol.2, p.181. ibid., vol.1, p.206. ibid., vol.1, pp.406–411.

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143 Lenora Ledwon 2015, ‘Green visual rhetoric: The human/nonhuman connection in “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind”’, Journal of Animal & Environmental Law, vol.7, no.1, pp.1–38. 144 Miyazaki, Turning Point, p.169. 145 Susan Napier 2006, ‘The world of anime fandom in America’, in Frenchy Lunning (ed.) Mechademia 1: Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp.47–63. 146 Miyazaki, Nausicaä comic, vol.2, p.299. 147 ibid., vol.2, p.273. 148 ibid., vol.2, p.223. 149 ibid., vol.2, p.220. 150 ibid., vol.2, p.223. 151 ibid., vol.2, p.238. 152 Miyazaki, Turning Point, p.88. 153 Miyazaki, Nausicaä comic, vol.2, p.444. 154 ibid., vol.2, p.441. 155 ibid., vol.2, p.409, p.429, & p.445. 156 ibid., vol.2, pp.438–439. 157 ibid., vol.2, p.439. 158 ibid., vol.2, p.439. 159 ibid., vol.2, p.439. 160 ibid., vol.2, p.440. Nausicaä’s discovery about the miasma is also depicted in the film version in the scene where she shows her laboratory to Lupa, her mentor. 161 This may sound contradictory to the sense of revelation Miyazaki felt when he heard the news of the recovery of the Sea of Shiranui that had been polluted by methyl mercury. While the news was inspirational to Miyazaki, he is sceptical of the Gaia hypothesis, and it seems that his scepticism increased during the 12 years he worked on the comic. 162 Miyazaki, Nausicaä comic, vol.2, p.441. 163 ibid., vol.2, pp.440–442. 164 ibid., vol.2, p.442 & p.532. 165 Nausicaä lives in a world where a ‘horse’ is a bird-horse that can both run and fly, and chickens are bred to be enormous in order to produce the maximum amount of meat (see Nausicaä comic, vol.1, p.271). 166 Miyazaki, Nausicaä comic, vol.2, p.443. 167 Miyazaki, Starting Point, p.144. 168 See the discussion on chinju-no-mori (sacred grove) in Chapter 3 and in the Epilogue about their revitalisation in post-triple-disaster Japan. 169 Nakao, Saibai shokubutsu, pp.2–3 (emphasis added). 170 Miyazaki, Shuppatsuten, pp.265–267. 171 Miyazaki, Turning Point, pp.169–173 & p.220. 172 Miyazaki, Starting Point, p.214. 173 Oiwa Keibo & Ogata Masato 2001, Rowing the Eternal Sea: The Story of a Minamata Fisherman, trans. Karen Colligan-Taylor, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, p.173. 174 Miyazaki, Nausicaä comic, vol.2, p.483. 175 ibid., vol.2, p.521. 176 ibid., vol.2, p.482. 177 ibid., vol.2, pp.508–510. 178 ibid., vol.2, p.508. 179 Miyazaki, Starting Point, p.170. 180 Miyazaki, Nausicaä comic, vol.2, p.511. 181 ibid. 182 ibid., vol.2, p.518 (emphasis added).

204 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219

Animism by film director Miyazaki Hayao Miyazaki, Kaze no kaeru, p.199. Miyazaki, Nausicaä comic, vol.2, p.544. ibid., vol.1, p.540. ibid., vol.2, p.81. ibid., vol.2, p.82. ibid., vol.1, pp.215–217; vol.2, p.52. ibid., vol.2, p.82. ibid., vol.2, p.169. ibid., vol.2, p.442. ibid., vol.1, p.125. ibid., vol.2, p.183. ibid., vol.2, p.181. Oizumi, Genten, p.148. Miyazaki, Nausicaä comic, vol.1, p.498; vol.2, p.71. ibid., vol.1, p.222; vol.2, p.366. ibid., vol.1, p.207; vol.2, p.71. ibid., vol.2, pp.282–283. ibid., vol.2, p.284. Miyazaki, Nausicaä comic, vol.2, p.511. Miyazaki, Starting Point, p.170. ibid. In Miyazaki, Turning Point, p.339. ibid. In the published English translation, the word ‘spirit’ is used as the original Japanese word ‘tamashii’. However, ‘spirit’ was replaced with ‘soul’ here, as it sounds too impersonal compared with the connotation of the original Japanese word. NHK 2012, Futari: Kokuriko-zaka – chichi to ko no 300 nichi senso- [From up on Poppy Hill – 300 days of war between father and son], DVD, dir. Arakawa Itaru, 12:26. ‘Anima’ 1989, in Edmund Weiner & John Simpson (eds) Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Sugita, Miyazaki Hayao, p.127. Miyazaki, Starting Point, pp.110–111. ibid., pp.429–430. ibid., p.429. Oizumi, Genten, p.147. On this point, his notion of nature is very different from that of Gaia. Uratani Toshiyoshi 1998, Mononokehime wa koushite umareta [The making of Princess Mononoke] DVD, Disc 3, 2:05:00. Miyazaki, Turning Point, pp.226–227. ibid., p.227. ibid., p.225. ibid. The most striking example of how Miyazaki imbues soul and movement in a character can be seen in the documentary film by Uratani (see above, note 213), Disc 2, 2:14:00. This is most clearly articulated in his interview in a documentary film by NHK 2008, NHK Hyakunen intabyu- [100-year interview], broadcast 20 November. The interviewer was Watanabe Ayumi.

Conclusion Postmodern animism for a new modernity

Intangible cultural heritage Antonio Negri visited Japan for the first time in 2013, two years after the triple disaster, and wrote that the tragedy exposed the necessity of finding a new way to coexist with nature, stressing the need for a critical reappraisal of our civilisation.1 Negri suggested that Japan’s powerful cultural traditions which manage to coexist with super-modernity have the potential to solve this conundrum.2 The reality of the Anthropocene also confronts us with the dilemma of how to coexist with nature. In this book, I have pursued this Zenlike question of how this may be possible by exploring the new discourse of animism which has emerged in contemporary Japan. I want to emphasise that this book is about the animism which has emerged in contemporary Japan and that my primary focus has been the question of human–nature relationships in modernity. I explored the discourse on animism presented by four intellectuals – Ogata Masato, Ishimure Michiko, Tsurumi Kazuko, and Miyazaki Hayao – all of whom had animism at the core of their life projects. Instead of trying to grasp signs of animism directly in sociological phenomena, I delved into the ‘unseen’ (e.g. soul, life), using the words of these intellectuals as my source. This strategy enabled me to illuminate, first, the interplay of modernity and ‘traditional culture’ as it happened in their minds and, second, how this infusion led them to the notion of animism. In other words, this book has shown how the notion of animism emerged from the intellectual journeys of the four individuals as they each questioned human–nature relationships in modernity. Animism as discussed in this book does not represent ‘Japanese animism’, if such a thing exists. Rather, following Tsurumi Kazuko and John Clammer, I consider animism to be diverse and elusive.3 This is because animism is ‘intensely local’.4 Kami, for instance, are ‘specific to a particular place’, and exist there as a ‘numinous entity – as the site and source of the spiritual and regenerating forces of nature’.5 Hence, expressions of animism found in Japan are also diverse, elusive, and ubiquitous, as may be seen, for example, in folklore (e.g. stories such as To-no monogatari and dances such as the Deer Dance; see the Epilogue), the notion

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of yo-kai (supernatural monsters and spirits) in folklore and pop culture (e.g. Gegege no kitaro-), as part of religion (e.g. the concept of certain animals being the messengers of kami, such as foxes in Inari shrines), and traditional arts (e.g. visual arts, crafts, and theatrical presentations like Noh). These numerous yet nebulous cultural heritages, as well as certain aspects of Shinto and Buddhism, as discussed in other chapters in this book, inspire animistic images in those interested and immersed in ‘Japanese culture’. The four intellectuals I researched had lifelong exposure to animism from Shinto and Buddhism (as they understood them), from stories they heard from their parents, from childhood memories, and also from their sense of beauty in nature. I have analysed both how these intellectuals processed the cultural heritages in their own minds and how, at the same time, they were firmly committed to exploring human–nature relationships in modernity. It is not my contention that Japanese culture, or even Japanese Buddhism or Shinto, as a whole is animistic. Rather, I am arguing that certain aspects thereof can be considered animistic. The presence of animistic cultural references in Japan does not automatically suggest that there is something that could be called ‘Japanese animism’. Certainly, animism is widespread in Japan, but without further research we cannot say whether or not it is a special kind of animism unique to Japan.6 This book is about one strand of the discourse on animism that emerged in contemporary Japan and was articulated by the four intellectuals under study, who used various cultural references to grapple with the question of modernity. So what sort of cultural references did they use? In the case of fisherman Ogata Masato (Chapter 1), the ‘cultural’ reference that he used was his ‘memory of life’, or how life was in the 1950s before his family was stricken with Minamata disease, and, in particular, memories of his father before his death from the disease in 1959: how his father lived, his principles and values, the way he related to others and the world at large, and his perceptions of life, soul, time, and nature (e.g. the sea, tides, fish, climate, and weather). Ogata’s memories are of ‘pre-modern’ life in a fishing village in Minamata. The ‘memory of life’ came to him during a nervous breakdown and enabled him to connect in a most profound way with his own self, with nature, and with the ‘life-word’, a spiritual world where life=soul=nature, a world which exists beyond time and space. Ogata felt connected to a ‘memory of life’ that was beyond his own personal memory, and this ‘memory of life’ is shared with all other beings, those that have lived in the past, those that are living now, and those that will live in future, all in the vast continuum of life. Writer Ishimure Michiko (Chapter 2) also used her childhood memories as the cultural reference for the construction of an animistic world, and she did so in her literary work. Her memories included her activities as a child, playing on the seashore and in the mountains, as well as things she saw and heard from her grandmother, Omoka-sama, who was ‘blind and half-mad’ and who lived at the periphery of society somewhat closer to the ‘other world’.7 Ishimure, as a child, spent a lot of time with her grandmother as her ‘carer’. Ishimure, as an adult,

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made it her life project to illustrate the ‘other world’ (or life-world), where life, soul, and nature are connected, using animism as the common thread. Sociologist Tsurumi Kazuko (Chapter 3) drew on three sets of cultural references in her consideration of animism. The first was the dying culture of Minamata, which she researched in her fieldwork. She also ‘discovered’ animism in Minamata through her interactions with people like Ishimure and Ogata. Her second cultural reference was the knowledge and insight of ‘Japanese folklore’ which she acquired from her pioneering study of two eminent folklorists: Yanagita Kunio and Minakata Kumagusu. Through her work on these folklorists, Tsurumi gained access to grassroots cultural heritage. Her third reference was her familiarity with the traditional high culture of Japan, such as classical dance, tanka (short poems), and her expert knowledge of traditional kimono. Although Tsurumi did not elaborate on the relevance of animism in these traditions, she dropped hints about their connectedness,8 and it is likely that her background prepared her to be more attuned to the grassroots discourse on animism – a proposition to be pursued in future study. For animation director Miyazaki Hayao (Chapter 4), the most important cultural references he used in his intellectual journey towards animism were his own senses, that is, what he saw and heard, what he considered to be beautiful or awesome, especially in nature, and what he heard from his mother – for example, stories of her childhood in a mountain village in Shinshu. Cultural references underlying his notion of animism were not limited to those from Japan, however. As discussed in Chapter 4, Miyazaki had an eye-opening experience when he first watched The Tale of the White Serpent (Hakujaden), an animation film based on a Chinese love story between a man and a serpent. This experience freed Miyazaki from the nihilism of his alienated youth and also showed him that the human–nature boundary is not unassailable. The work and life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry also inspired Miyazaki, especially his remark that the souls of children have innate potential. Botanist Nakao Sasuke helped rid Miyazaki of his image of Japan as an oppressive nation-state. More specifically, Nakao’s depiction of a ‘broadleaf evergreen forest culture’ which emphasised cultural continuity between Japan and other parts of Asia, rather than the cultural distinctiveness of Japan, made a strong impression on Miyazaki and enabled him to find his Japan, a Japan he could love with its climate, nature, and people, including its ancestors. His sense of liberation from his negative feelings about Japan and his delight in discovering a Japan he could love are best expressed in the movie My Neighbour Totoro. The cultural references used by the four intellectuals in their discourse on animism had a lot to do with their childhood memories, knowledge they inherited from their families and ancestors, things they experienced when young, as well as what they learnt as adults in their interactions with diverse cultures outside of Japan. The cultural references are amorphous, but all of them seem to be based on what each of these intellectuals felt they had inherited from previous generations.

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These cultural references fit the concept of ‘intangible cultural heritage’ as proposed by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization: The practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills … that communities, groups and … individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.9 Furthermore: Cultural heritage does not end at monuments and collections of objects. It also includes traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.10 UNESCO’s definition continues: ‘While fragile, intangible cultural heritage is an important factor in maintaining cultural diversity in the face of growing globalization’. It claims that ‘an understanding of the intangible cultural heritage of different communities helps with intercultural dialogue, and encourages mutual respect for other ways of life’.11 This notion of intangible cultural heritage highlights three key features of animism, which have been discussed in this book: 1

2

3

The discourse on animism presented by the four intellectuals is not only based on the intangible cultural heritage available to them, but it is a kind of intangible cultural heritage in and of itself. This is because intangible cultural heritage refers to a lived heritage that is ‘constantly recreated’. The intellectuals’ discourse on animism is a typical form of intangible cultural heritage in that it was created ‘in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history’, and the discourse was their own expression of ‘knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe’ as quoted above. Nature and the universe are the main features of intangible cultural heritage. Their animism, as a form of intangible cultural heritage, has the potential to connect diverse cultures by encouraging intercultural dialogue and creating mutual respect for other ways of life, hence creating a force to counter the flattening impact of globalisation.

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Coming back to Negri’s conundrum as to whether powerful cultural traditions that coexist with super-modernity in Japan can teach us how to coexist with nature, the answer suggested by the four intellectuals would be a cautious ‘yes’: Animism could bring about a fundamental rethink of the modern world. However, with regard to the ‘cultural traditions’ that enabled them to come up with this answer, their thought processes were far more complex and nuanced than perhaps imagined by Negri or suggested by advocates of the Japanological discourse on animism (see the Introduction). What was common in the discourse on animism presented by the four intellectuals was a firm adherence to grassroots cultural references that emerged as a counter-discourse to modern projects that had been driven by the state of Japan. For Ogata (Chapter 1) and Ishimure (Chapter 2), the modern project they contested was the reckless industrialisation for economic development which devastated their hometown of Minamata. For them, ‘Tokyo’ represented ‘Japan’ as a state (kokka 国家), in contrast to their place (or ‘country’ in a narrow sense) of birth (sho-goku 生国).12 Their animism emerged as a counterdiscourse from their hometown, which was on the periphery of Japan. Minamata, a place close to the ‘life-world’ was pitted against the power represented by the state which fomented violence on their life-world. Tsurumi’s discourse on animism (Chapter 3) was inspired by the Minamata discourse on animism as a grassroots critique of industrial nationalism, but her criticism was deepened by another modern project, the Meiji government’s merger of Shinto shrines. Tsurumi’s study of folklorists Yanagita and Minakata clarified that this modern project, which aimed to construct a spiritual/ideological foundation for the new nation, was really an attempt to put countless vernacular Shinto shrines, and their kami, which would otherwise be hard to control, under state control. Her research revealed that there is a stark difference between the dogmatic, organised, and fabulously funded Shinto, as promoted by the state, and the amorphous, humble, yet ubiquitous folk Shino. Tsurumi’s discourse on animism emerged as a critique of these projects of modernity at two different historical times: industrial nationalism in Minamata in the Showa Period and the so-called ‘rationalisation’ of shrines in the Meiji Period. For Miyazaki Hayao (Chapter 4), underlying his discourse of animism was a strong aversion to the nation-state of Japan as the military aggressor in Asia and a more general scepticism towards industrial civilisation as a whole. Although Miyazaki’s animation films depict many aspects of Japanese life and culture, he has maintained a very clear distance from the state of Japan. Modern projects enacted by the Japanese state – whether in the form of industrial nationalism, the construction of a national ideology, or a war – were all supported by the state’s administrative, legal, physical, and ideological power, and seriously impacted people with a mighty force. What we have seen in this book is how the contemporary discourse on animism emerged as a response to these negative dimensions of modernity, a discourse that was propelled by a state with a fundamental agenda to be modern (and strong).

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To reiterate what I said above, animism as presented in this book should not be seen as ‘Japanese animism’. The book is not about Japan vs a vaguely labelled ‘West’, and it is definitely not about Japan vs monotheistic Christianity as has been suggested in the Japanological discourse on animism (see the Introduction). Instead, the book has shown, by using Japan as a reference, (1) how ‘new animism’ is relevant for clarifying that ‘the project of modernity is ill-conceived and dangerously performed,’ as pointed out by Graham Harvey;13 and (2) what its ‘new programme’ would be, namely, a more creative and constructive content that goes beyond a critique of modernity. I argue that both features are represented by the notion of postmodern animism.

Postmodern animism The discourse presented in this book is definitely part of ‘new animism’, but it is perhaps better summarised as ‘postmodern animism’, since the experience of modernity is a precondition for its existence. As Ishimure points out, although animistic cosmology existed in pre-modern times, the concept did not exist in people’s minds at the time.14 They did not need to think about animism because they lived it and because they were firmly part of the animistic ontology. In the discourse presented in this book, animism is a concept that is discerned, thought about, and appreciated through our modern lens. In that sense, it is also profoundly modern, or at least it is deeply ‘indebted’ to the modern, and hence a very different kind of animism as described by Edward Tylor for the understanding of ‘pre-modern’ societies. Importantly, all four intellectuals were thinking about animism for the future. They saw animism as a way to survive modernity, and reached this conclusion by combining their critique of modernity with local intangible cultural heritages. They pursued animism and expressed it in citizens’ movements (Ogata), literature (Ishimure), sociology (Tsurumi), and popular culture (Miyazaki). I have used a biographical approach to show how they reached the conclusion that animism is essential for our future. With the exception of Ishimure, whose first book, published in 1969, does contain the term ‘animism’ as a keyword,15 the three other intellectuals did not think about animism in the early stages of their adult lives. For Ogata, Tsurumi, and Miyazaki, animism was something they reached as a result of ‘paradigm shifts’ which are all associated with significant life events. Fisherman Ogata Masato (Chapter 1) reached the philosophy of life-world (or animism) after mulling over two questions: ‘If not money, what?’ and ‘What would I do if I were working for Chisso?’ These questions caused him great distress because he had taken a leadership role in the compensation movement for Minamata disease sufferers, and it resulted in a nervous breakdown. Before the breakdown, he did not think about nature at all and did not think that it had anything to do with him. He thought he could live without nature. When he began to focus on his inner mind, however, he felt connected first with his own self, then with nature around him, and finally with soul as the common medium

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between himself, nature, and all life. This was his ‘discovery’ of animism or the ‘life-world’, as he called it (see Figure 1.1). Each new awakening represented a ‘paradigm shift’ in his epistemology and ontology, how he perceived the world, and how he understood the workings of the world. In the case of writer Ishimure Michiko (Chapter 2), it is not clear whether she needed to experience a ‘paradigm shift’ in order to ‘discover’ animism, as she seems to have been endowed with a strong shamanistic sensitivity from an early age. Her notion of animism, nonetheless, reached a new level after an out-of-body experience. Although her work is full of animistic ambiance, Ishimure suggested in our interview that she actually ‘found’ her own ancestor during her near-death experience. She found the ‘ancestor of grass’, or rather the ancestor of all living things (sho-rui no oya 生類の祖),16 the origin of all life, the original DNA, or the core of the life-world, in a mysterious ‘ancient forest’ she travelled to while in a coma.17 Sociologist Tsurumi Kazuko (Chapter 3) had her ‘paradigm shift’ when, after returning from study in the United States, she visited Minamata for the first time. She discovered that the social-scientific knowledge she had learnt was inadequate for explaining what she was witnessing. Rather than helping or teaching the locals as she had planned, she felt that, instead, she was the one to be taught by them. The knowledge she thus gained challenged the legitimacy of Western-made theories and more fundamentally the grand premise that these Western theories could be used to explain the development of other societies. Tsurumi also ‘discovered’ the importance of nature and questioned why it had been excluded in previous analyses of human society. Her fieldwork in Minamata also led her to question the authority of researchers, including herself, and she became much more attuned to people at the grassroots level. This helped her to discern, through her work on two folklorists (Yanagita Kunio and Minakata Kumagusu) the difference between folk and institutionalised Shinto, a difference which is essential for understanding animism in the Japanese context. As with that of Ishimure, Tsurumi’s understanding of animism was deepened by a near-death experience. After a stroke in 1995, she had an extraordinary experience: the continuous overflowing of words in 5-7-57-7 syllable tanka in her mind, each summarising different milestones in her life. The following years of living with disability further helped Tsurumi deepen her understanding of animism and the life-world.18 Animation film director Miyazaki Hayao (Chapter 4) also recognised animism after going through some ‘paradigm shifts’ in his life. To reiterate, the first paradigm shift was instigated when he was deeply moved by an animation film, The Tale of the White Serpent, where ‘inter-species’ love between a man and serpent overcame all forces which separated them, forces which were enforced by humans who lived only in the anthropocentric world. This helped give Miyazaki courage to stand up for what he believed in. The second shift was sparked by his encounter with the works of Saint-Exupéry, and gave Miyazaki a cause for his work, namely, enlivening the souls of children. Miyazaki holds that children maintain a close connection with the life-world

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when they are young, and this connection tends to fade as they grow older due to the influence of ‘system society’, to use Ogata’s terminology. His third ‘paradigm shift’ was triggered by the work of plant-cultivation specialist Nakao Sasuke, who enabled Miyazaki to ‘discover’ nature as a medium. Nakao’s research helped Miyazaki ‘discover’ and connect to a Japan which is firmly linked to other parts of Asia via vegetation-zone-based culture. Until that point, nature to Miyazaki was simply a symbol of underdevelopment which caused him a sense of shame. For Miyazaki, this ‘discovery’ of nature was arguably the most significant ‘paradigm shift’ in his life. It freed his mind from negative thoughts about Japan, enabled him to discover a new Japan close to his heart and to see the beauty of nature around him for the first time. For him, this connectedness with nature – a nature in which his parents and ancestors lived, a nature that allows human–nature ‘cooperation’, especially through the cultivation of plants over thousands of years, a nature where ‘something’ awesome and fearful yet bountiful and generous resides, a nature where the source of life, or life itself, exists, a nature that is equal to life and soul – became the signature of his work: taking the illustrations of nature (air, wind, light, water, sky, clouds, fields, mountains, rivers, rocks, soul, and spirits) in the background as seriously as the human story which unfolds within it. Through these ‘paradigm shifts’, I argue, Miyazaki built his philosophy of animism, which he compiled into the massive comic (manga) version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Miyazaki was not the only one for whom the ‘discovery’ of nature was the most significant paradigm shift: Ogata did not think about nature before his breakdown, but once he was awoken to it, he felt that he had been ‘let live’ by nature, and this in turn led to his philosophy of the life-world; Tsurumi by default had excluded nature from her sociological thinking, but once she became aware of its significance, it inspired her theory of endogenous development, which had animism as its spiritual core. Thus, Ogata, Tsurumi, and Miyazaki all experienced a ‘Big Bang of Life’ (see Figure 1.1) in their quest for the answer of how to survive modernity. Their Big Bang of Life involved: 1

2

noticing the presence of nature around them; realising that humans are an integral part of it, and that nature is part of humanity in the sense that humans have influenced nature throughout history in both good and bad ways; and understanding that nature is not just the tangible and physical entity we see in front of us and knowing that this material aspect is only a manifestation of the vitalistic force behind nature, and that life itself is a collective entity where there is no distinction between human and nonhuman, the animate and the inanimate.

Another ‘paradigm shift’ closely related with their experiences of the Big Bang of Life, and especially well articulated by Ogata and Miyazaki, was the ‘discovery’ of soul. Ogata started to think about soul after his breakdown,

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realising that it is in essence the same as life and nature, and that the most fundamental question of modernity is how to address the question of the soul. Miyazaki decided that the aim of his work was to enliven the souls of children after being stimulated by Saint-Exupéry’s work, and he reflected this in the name he chose for his company, Studio Ghibli. As with Ogata, the question of how to address the soul has been central to Miyazaki’s work. More specifically, he questioned how to express soul, as well as how to imbue modernity with soul through his films. Ishimure did not need a ‘paradigm shift’ to become curious about the concept of the soul, as she was born that way. As a child, she innately knew about and was closely connected to soul,19 and this was undoubtedly a driving force behind her work as a writer. Whereas Tsurumi may not have directly addressed the question of soul in her academic writing, her interactions with people in Minamata indicated that she was attuned to ‘soul’;20 and after being incapacitated by a stroke, she came to understand even more about soul.21 As Tsurumi pointed out, anima means soul in Latin.22 The etymology of anima brings together key concepts which the four intellectuals each took very seriously. In classical Latin, anima means not only ‘soul and spirit’, but also ‘life’ and ‘vital principle of life’, as well as ‘air, wind, breath’, all of which are key to Miyazaki’s anime.23 In Jungian psychology, anima also means ‘the true inner self that is in communication with the unconscious,’24 and this resonates easily with Tsurumi’s theory of endogenous development. What needs to be emphasised here, though, is the oneness of nature and anima (= life and soul). This is what animism means. By going through two major ‘paradigm shifts’, one with regard to nature, and the other, soul, which inevitably involved a major rethink about the nature of life, the four intellectuals eventually reached animism (or the philosophy of the ‘life-world’), where nature = life = soul. The self was there as the entity which did all the thinking and questioning precisely because it is the only medium they had to connect to the life-world, and the self is also the entity which embodies the connectedness of all three concepts: life, nature, and soul. Jean-François Lyotard writes in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, that ‘little narratives’ exist outside scientific knowledge,25 which are closely related to the knowers and to their internal equilibrium26 and which are free from the question of legitimacy, argumentation, and proof.27 It is ‘the quintessential form of imaginative invention’28 that can create a dissonance or ‘paralogy’, a creation of meaning that emerges from the movement against an established way of reasoning, a basis for a new kind of knowledge which produces not the known but the unknown,29 the kind of knowledge that has until now been outside the legitimate sphere of (social-) scientific knowledge. The life stories of the four intellectuals, which are woven together in this book, constitute classic ‘little narratives’ in the sense that each of them was searching for internal equilibrium after being confronted with the contradictions that are embedded in modern society (i.e. dissonance, cacophony, or ‘paralogy’). They found a way to resolve these contradictions by stepping

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outside the boundaries of conventional knowledge and by doing a fundamental rethink of the taken-for-granted knowledge base (on nature and soul), which then led to a ‘paradigm change’ in their intellectual and spiritual lives. It is my contention that their ‘little narratives’ converge into a bigger narrative, one which constitutes a ‘new (yet old)’ knowledge of the lifeworld, or postmodern animism. It is something which each of them spun from an intangible cultural heritage in their search for a more sustainable modern society. The amount of communication amongst the four intellectuals varied. Ogata and Ishimure were ‘comrades’, who devoted their lives to expressing the Minamata incident in ways that reached beyond mere compensation. They shared the same ontology. Tsurumi, as a researcher, was closely connected with both Ogata and Ishimure, and, as such, related with animism more objectively and with a more scholarly lens. Miyazaki worked independently from the others, but he would no doubt have been influenced by the Minamata incident, as it was a major issue in Japan during his early working years. Despite different levels of interaction amongst the four, and despite different intellectual trajectories, their views of the life-world are remarkably consistent. They complement each other and converge into a philosophy of postmodern animism. Importantly, their philosophy of the life-world, or postmodern animism, returned to the original meaning of animism as a combination of nature and anima (which, as I mentioned, in classical Latin means ‘life’ and ‘soul’). Their postmodern animism, though, is somewhat ‘wiser’ than ‘old’ animism after being infused with modernity. It is a new, evolved version of animism. It is something we can think about and which we may even be able to feel, and, as such, something which we can associate with at different levels: as a concept, philosophy, epistemology, or ontology – whichever level we are comfortable with. The key is that postmodern animism explains inter- and inner-connectedness between life, nature, soul, and self, something which has become increasingly difficult to sense in modern society because we did not give it a paradigmatic foundation and because we live further and further away from nature, further and further away from the memory of life. Postmodern animism, I argue, has significant implications for the Anthropocene. As discussed in the Introduction, there seem to be two contrasting theoretical approaches concerning how to respond to the apparently untenable premise of the nature vs culture/human/society dichotomy.30 One is to materialise human society even more with technological and engineering advancements and ultimately to control nature. The other is to re-enchant modernity, to reconnect humanity with the spiritual facets of nature and the earth, by shedding the obsolete, modernist straight-jacket of the human– nature division, and by opening up our (social-) scientific knowledge to new philosophical, epistemological, and ontological possibilities, that is, to start building new knowledge for a new modernity.

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But perhaps imagining the Anthropocene with this division of materialisation vs enchantment is itself modernist and limiting. After all, the fundamental critique of modernity presented by these four ‘postmodern animist thinkers’ regards dichotomous thinking. In more practical terms, then, what are the specific theoretical implications of postmodern animism? How is animism relevant for envisaging new knowledge in the ‘real world’? I argue that postmodern animism suggests the need to incorporate the life-world into ethics, democracy, and spirituality.

Three challenges for the social sciences Ethics: Prioritise the life-world The rematerialisation vs re-enchantment dichotomy parallels Ogata’s notion of system society vs life-world in its relationship with anthropocentricity (Chapter 1). In Ogata’s case, the realisation that he, a victim of industrial pollution, ‘was Chisso’, the polluter, was a life-shattering but awakening experience. Instead of just being a victim, he, as a human being, felt responsible for the damage done to the rest of the life-world. This was an ethical breakthrough for him, and while he lives in our system society, he stresses that his soul and ethical foundation are firmly in the life-world. During his quest for a way to survive modernity, Ogata found, in the life-world, a new ethical foundation that supersedes the previous essentially anthropocentric foundation of ethics. The writer, Ishimure, shares the same ethical foundation as Ogata. In her literary works, she illustrates how the notion of the authority of the elites (e.g. the emperor, ministers, government officials, the highly educated) lost legitimacy in the minds of the Minamata disease sufferers as they became disillusioned by the lack of caring of those in power. Ishimure’s ethical allegiance is with the common people, who she depicts in her novels as having deeper souls (魂が深い). Her ethical foundation became even stronger after her blissful experience of visiting, in her coma, an ‘ancient forest’ where she sensed the presence of the ‘ancestor of grass’ as her own ancestor. It was the encounter with the essence of the spiritual world that she had illustrated over the years. It was where she found the ethical foundation of her life-world. Tsurumi’s intellectual journey towards animism paralleled the ‘collapse’, in her mind, of the legitimacy of Western-made theories and the idea that they were universally applicable. She felt that anthropocentricity was no longer a given in the social sciences, and that researchers were beginning to lose their status as the main producers of knowledge. Her intellectual journey led Tsurumi to construct the theory of endogenous development, which legitimises local areas: the people, nature, and grassroots traditions, including the spiritual power of the land, as epitomised in folk Shinto. Animism is the spiritual core of her theory of endogenous development and as such provides its ethical foundation.

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Amongst the four animist thinkers, Miyazaki delivers the most direct critique of the anthropocentricity of the modern world, which is symbolised by the defeat of the omnipotent human-faced God that appears at the end of the comic version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. This human-faced God represents technology-based knowledge, and this knowledge gives the God the power for his grand design to ‘save the world,’ to purify it by purging ‘polluted’ life and replacing it with incubated ‘pure’ life. Nausicaä confronts and defeats the God using her faith in small life, such as ‘a single leaf and the smallest insects’31 that she could see all around her. Miyazaki thus presents a view of the post-anthropocentric world whose ethical foundation is the life-world rather than the anthropocentric God. Like Ogata, though, Miyazaki is not suggesting an either-or solution. At the very end of the epic, Nausicaä finds that the creature (the Ohmu) she believed to be the ultimate symbol of the life-world had the same ‘blood’ as the God who symbolised the anthropocentric world, indicating the commonality (or oneness) of the two. This can be interpreted on two levels. Similar to Ogata’s realisation that ‘Chisso was I’ (or ‘Chisso within’), we live in both the anthropocentric system society and the life-world. Our life is sustained by both, and we need both. However, when it comes to the final analysis of ethics, Miyazaki would agree with Ogata that our pivotal foot should be in the life-world. At a more philosophical level, the oneness of the Ohmu and the God epitomises Miyazaki’s radical philosophy of the negation of dichotomy: ‘one in all and all in one’ resonates with esoteric Buddhism. Miyazaki is not alone in placing the negation of dichotomy at the core of animism. It was indirectly discussed by Tsurumi through her work on biologist-cum-folklorist Minakata Kumagusu, and slime mould, as repeatedly referred to in this book, embodies the negation of dualism. In the sense that this negation of dichotomy also negates the foundation of the logic on which our civilisation stands, it is perhaps the biggest challenge for society and in that sense is the most ‘postmodern’ aspect of the discourse on animism discussed in this book.32 All four ‘postmodern animists’ have addressed issues associated with the anthropocentricity of ethics, which has strong implications for our increasingly globalising world risk society. In relation to the nuclear crisis at Fukushima, for instance, unless we find ways to live independently of nuclear power companies such as TEPCO, we can be regarded, strictly speaking, as ‘another TEPCO’. It will eventually be impossible to live independently of electricity generated by nuclear power unless it is banned completely at the world level. Our laptops, for instance, must have used nuclear-power-generated electricity at some stage in their conceptualisation, manufacturing, marketing, sales, or transportation. Everything is connected, and increasingly so in our ever more globalising world. In that sense, we are all responsible, for instance, for the random genetic mutations amongst tiny pale-grass-blue butterflies caused by the nuclear accident in Fukushima, which resulted in abnormalities in their eyes, wings, and antennae.33 Thinking this way, of course, does not reduce the responsibility of those directly involved in the decision-making

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regarding the operation of the crippled plant. In the broader spectrum of the life-world, however, we are all responsible in one way or another for making the earth not a ‘world risk society’, which is anthropocentric by default, but a ‘risk world’ for all its inhabitants. Climate change presents an even starker example of how the collective worldwide impact of our way of life in the Anthropocene could lead to catastrophe, even though it hardly stirs up a real sense of responsibility in our everyday lives.34 At the same time, however, it seems fair to say that ‘world-risk’ issues, whether they pertain to nuclear accidents or climate change, have already prodded us into thinking more about the life-world precisely because of the scale of the problems. Within the context of the environmental history of Japan, for instance, Fred Notehelfer points out that the ‘modernization dilemma’ meant there was ongoing conflict between economic development and respect for human life ever since the country’s first case of industrial pollution at the Ashio Copper Mine (1880–1900), and that this conflict continued even after four big cases of industrial pollution in the 1960s, including the case of Minamata disease.35 Japan’s environmental discourse has been ‘decidedly anthropocentric’ for a long time, as pointed out by Simon Avenell.36 But when Japanese citizens protested against the restarting of nuclear power plants in 2012, calling for the ‘prioritisation of life over money’, it is unlikely they were only referring to human ‘life’. The nature and the scale of the disaster in Fukushima made it hard not to comprehend its impact well beyond human–nonhuman boundaries. The decision by one man, Matsumura Naoto, to stay alone in the prohibited nuclear exclusion zone and risk his life to care for abandoned pets and farm animals presents a case in point.37 His story has touched the hearts of countless people around the world,38 which suggests that this belief that we, as human beings, have a responsibility which covers more than just ‘environmental impact assessments’, is widely shared. In fact, it seems as if anthropocentric ethics have already been challenged in unprecedented ways, although the task of establishing a new vocabulary for a new paradigm may be lagging behind. Even the Vatican publicly announced in 2015 a need to re-interpret the human–nature relationships in the Bible.39 It is also noteworthy that in 2017, for the first time in the world, the Whanganui River in New Zealand was granted the same legal status as a person. 40 This was followed by a high-court decision in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, India, to grant legal personhood to two rivers (the Ganges and the Yamuna).41 While the increasing economic power of Asia is being felt all over the world, as yet no ethical framework for the region’s sustainable development has been identified. If the German Ethics Commission for a Safe Energy Supply is correct in its view that environmental ethics should be drawn from a spiritual tradition (as discussed in the Introduction), postmodern animism may be the solution. It may present an appropriate basis for a new kind of ethics emerging from Asia, where the threat of ecological crises on a grand scale is a reality and where environmental ethics are very much in need.

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Integrating the life-world as the foundation of our ethics in the public sphere would be a daunting task, but I agree with Jedediah Purdy, who, in an article addressing law teachers, which surely can be extended to social scientists, wrote that ‘we are teaching responsibly only when we emphasize to our students that this field is one in which once-unthinkable ideas have become conventional, not one time only, but repeatedly, through imagination, argument, and politics’.42 Democracy: Include the nonhuman The discourse on the life-world also has theoretical implications for democracy, not as a political system, but in its broadest sense as a principle of equality. Etymologically, democracy is anthropocentric: It comes from the ancient Greek words demos, meaning ‘people’ or ‘community’, and kratos, meaning ‘power’ or ‘rule’. However, democracy was originally conceived as a countermeasure to aristocracy (rule of the ‘best’), monarchy (rule of the one), and oligarchy (rule of the few); it eschewed hierarchy and concentration of power, and had equality as a principle (at least amongst ‘citizens’). It was driven by an imperative to survive and to break free from conventional systems and knowledge.43 The question is how deep we are prepared to go with this principle of equality, if not in practice immediately, but at least in our thinking to begin with. I contend that postmodern animism has four interrelated implications for democracy. The first implication is to include the nonhuman in the scope of democracy. The philosophy of the life-world (or postmodern animism) is based on the idea that all ‘life’ is equal, with ‘life’ referring not just to human life but to nonhuman life as well. The nuclear disaster in Fukushima exposed the senselessness of separating one from the other, human from nonhuman, as it made it clear that all are affected and connected. It was not only pets and farm animals that were affected, some abandoned to starve to death and others ‘euthanised’ in the nuclear exclusion zone, but other life in the ‘wild’ (if there still is such a thing) as well. Studies have already demonstrated that the impact was especially severe on birds and butterflies in Fukushima with potentially significant harm to other insects, rodents, microbes, and trees as demonstrated by research at Chernobyl44 which showed that the effect of radiation on mutations was greater for plants than for animals.45 Interestingly, nuclear radiation has made the interrelationships and oneness of all living things painfully clear, not in a positive way, but rather in a negative way by showing how all life can be harmed. Humanity has been shown how limiting (and selfish) it is just to think about human life, human culture, human society – our anthropocentric world. Calls for ‘leveling the hierarchical divide between human and nonhuman by blurring that boundary’ are already part of current political thought, not only in new animism, but also in post-humanism, ecocentrism, and the politics of nature, as pointed out by Purdy, who asks the question: ‘What kind of democracy’ is needed for the Anthropocene?46 He argues that Anthropocene

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democracy is ‘at least in part a democracy open to the strange intuitions of post-humanism: intuitions of ethical affinity with other species, of the moral importance of landscapes and climates, of the permeable line between humans and the rest of the living world’.47 Postmodern animism or the philosophy of the life-world presented in this book is very much a part of this new thinking and has strong implications for Anthropocene democracy. It is important to note that the philosophy of the life-world does not mean ‘being human’ is extended to include all living things, nor is the human–nonhuman boundary weakened. Rather, human and nonhuman are both part of the same entity, the life-world, and share the same essence whereby life = nature = soul. In that sense, postmodern animism may be more radical than post-humanism, ecocentrism, or the politics of nature. In the animistic world of pantheism, there is not even the slightest hint that humans are above other living things: humankind is humble. The responsibility of humans – who nonetheless have the power to destroy nature – emanates from within the ‘life-world’, rather than from a position external to it. This notion of a life-world is quite different from modern discourse on human rights, animal rights, and environmental ethics. The second implication of postmodern animism for democracy is its fundamental allegiance to the ‘smaller life’ at the grassroots level in the periphery. The philosophy of the life-world emerged as a grassroots response to the ecological crisis in Minamata from the perspective of the victims of industrial pollution. It emerged as the voice of those who were closest to nature, who worked in the fields and on the sea, who led a humble life close to the lowest social stratum. Ogata, a fisherman, was able to articulate the feelings of these people, Ishimure honed their voices in her literary works, and Tsurumi translated their voices into the language of sociology. For Miyazaki, his allegiance to ‘smaller life’ is made obvious, for instance, by his admiration for small children, his adoption of slime mould, which normally lives at the bottom of forests, as a key character, as well as his depiction of a young princess who loves insects and who chooses ‘polluted’ life over artificial ‘pure’ life and who flies like a bird with a little squirrel-fox on her shoulder. As symbolised by Nausicaä, being small, or standing on the side of the small, by no means suggests weakness or vulnerability. Similarly, Ogata’s life is a story of the utmost resilience and transcendence, and Ishimure’s literature has had a significant influence on Japanese society, constituting what I call the ‘Ishimure Michiko phenomenon’. Tsurumi’s theory of endogenous development had a tremendous impact on environmental activism in Japan, and the influence of Miyazaki’s animation films on a global audience has been immeasurable. Postmodern animism is the message of all four intellectuals to the world, and one of the core threads of their message is to cherish and believe in the power of small life. This is epitomised by the words of Nausicaä:

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Postmodern animism for a new modernity Our god inhabits even a single leaf and the smallest insects.48 A life is a life, regardless of how it comes into being. … Every life form, no matter how small, contains the outside universe within its internal universe.49

Radiation causes mutations in DNA. It damages the connectedness of life at its smallest level, with the greatest impact on the small: babies and children. Focusing on the ‘small’ is perhaps more relevant and necessary for survival today in our increasingly irradiated, post-Chernobyl, post-Fukushima world. The third implication of postmodern animism for democracy has to do with the creation of knowledge: the democratisation of knowledge production. This is closely related to the second point, but the focus here is on political significance, rather than content, in the realm of the sociology of knowledge. Postmodern animism, as Minamata discourse, arose from what Arif Dirlik calls the ‘place consciousness’ of people who addressed the issues associated with the hegemony of capitalist developmentalism. It represents a counterdiscourse to American and European scientism, in the words of Dirlik.50 While animism has a broad applicability to indigenous belief systems, it is very much a local thing, as it is essentially a belief system supported by the notion of direct, vitalistic, ontological connectedness with a specific place with its own ecology, landscape, people, history, and numinous power. The fourth implication has to do with the meaning of ‘grassroots’ in postmodern animism, which has evolved to a new level. Focusing on the grassroots has been the basic framework of this book. The original core was burnished with strong images of grass, in particular, with Ishimure’s image of the ‘ancestor of grass’ and Miyazaki’s use of grass as the first sign of a revitalised world. Some readers may also recall the majestic image of new grass shooting up and flourishing at each step of Shishi-gami, the deer-like spirit of the forest in Princess Mononoke. The discourse on animism presented by these four intellectuals has revitalised the concept of ‘grassroots’, enchanting it with spirit and empowering it by connecting it with the life-world. I contend that postmodern animism’s appreciation of intangible cultural and indigenous heritages, even in modernity, can function as a basis for a new knowledge to connect multitudes of localities around the world. Postmodern animism links them all with a common, but loosely held, theoretical thread, while leaving it to each locality to plan its own endogenous development which reflects its own way of life. In other words, postmodern animism represents a place-based, down-toearth philosophy which has a renewed and enhanced meaning of ‘grassroots’, and it is in this sense that it has strong implications for democracy and politics. By its very nature, postmodern animism is oriented towards diversity rather than uniformity, and thus counters the flattening, standardising forces of nationalism, capitalism, and globalist developmentalism, which all have inequality as a core structural weakness. This leads to the question of how to envisage what Dirlik calls ‘translocal alliances’ of multitudes of places51 which have the potential to create new knowledge whereby place-based knowledge gains ‘first order significance’.52

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Pondering the possibility of ‘translocal alliances’ conjures up an image of the thousands of star sands scattered around the world. They are made up of the starshaped external shells of certain types of Foraminifera (Baculogypsina and Calcarina) which are microscopic single-cell organisms. These Foraminifera live in the sea, and their fossilised shells, found in many places around the world including beaches in Okinawa, are so small that they look like sand.53 The oldest star sands have been dated to the Pliocene Epoch (5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago),54 but recent studies in molecular biology have indicated that early forms of Foraminifera first appeared between 690 million and 1,150 million years ago, that is, approximately one billion years ago.55 Astonishingly, Baculogypsina and Calcarina are still with us today, not as fossils but as living creatures.56 The question is whether these species will be able to survive the Anthropocene, and whether humans will ever have the chance to explore their memory of life. Though minuscule in size, spikes of a star sand extending from its centre look as if they are waiting to connect. Imagine thousands or millions of star sands scattered all around the globe and imagine further that each grain of star sand is a hotspot of thinking about animism. A hotspot could be a place like Minamata, which came up with its own discourse on animism. It could also be a place already studied by anthropologists for its animistic tradition. It could also be groups of people acting together to practise deep ecology or to promote intangible cultural heritage. It could be individual thinkers like the four intellectuals discussed in this book, a researcher working on animism, a fan of Miyazaki anime, or a reader of this book. Imagine they are all waiting and wanting to connect to create a complex network of alliances, translocal alliances of multitudes of places exploring the potential to create new knowledge for a new kind of modernity. Each person who thinks about animism will engage with critical and reflective thinking in their own mandala-like space, with their own self at the core, that travels between existing binaries, such as, between human and nature, seen and unseen, East and West, grassroots and elitist, etc., as illustrated in Figure 3.2. I have an image of each ‘thinking hotspot’ creating energy and working like a mini-attractor, gathering energy for a gradual and collective rethink about the world we live in, until one day animistic thinking becomes part of a new modernity. To quote Lyotard again: ‘A self does not amount to much, but no self is an island; each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever before. Young or old, man or woman, rich or poor, a person is always located at “nodal points” of specific communication circuits, however tiny these may be’.57 Here, Lyotard brings us back to the question of modernity: Is animism compatible with modernity at all? Are they not contradictory concepts? Most significantly, how can we address the question of spirituality and the soul in social science? This is a question that challenges the fundamental premise of social-scientific knowledge: secularisation and disenchantment.

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Soul: Connect with the life-world The significance of addressing the question of spirituality in social science is well articulated by Ulrich Beck, who says that social science is based on two grand assumptions. The first is that ‘modernization as it emerged in the European context … is a universal process which leads to similar developments all over the world’.58 The second is that ‘secularization is inseparable from modernization’, and it is ‘a constitutive premise of both democracy and modernity’.59 To put it simply, Beck is saying that our social-scientific paradigm is founded on a theoretical tripod of ‘Westernisation-modernisation-secularisation’. Questioning the premise of secularisation therefore means, Beck continues, to ‘desire to uncouple modernity and Westernization and to withdraw from the West its monopoly of modernity’.60 Indeed, to adopt postmodern animism is to ‘uncouple modernity and Westernization and withdraw from the West its monopoly of modernity’, and in that sense it could be subversive not only academically, but also politically. As sociologist Mita Munesuke points out, however, contemporary civilisation probably needs something totally different to be able to go to the next stage of development.61 It is my contention that postmodern animism suggests a direction for a new kind of knowledge, and in order to pursue said knowledge it is essential to address spirituality as well as matters of soul and the unseen within the paradigm of social science. As pointed out by Ogata Masato, the biggest and most fundamental question that Minamata disease, as a negative by-product of modernity, confronted us with is how to address the question of tamashii (soul) in modernity (see Chapter 1). However, challenging the secularisation premise of social science and advocating the need to re-enchant social science does not indicate a ‘desire’ to replace the Western monopoly of modernity with that of the East. Viewing the challenge through an East vs West dichotomy is unproductive because (1) it could obscure the issue concerning knowledge (e.g. the inability to address spirituality) by turning it into a political and ideological argument; (2) empirically, the most aggressive Westernisation-styled modernisation has occurred in Asia; and (3) modernisation has been critiqued by scholars in the West as well as in the East (see Chapter 3). Rather, the inclusion of the unseen in the social-scientific paradigm should be taken as a major step forward for both the West and the East. After all, there has been a definite trend in the modern world of enriching one’s soul;62 and, as discussed in the Introduction, there has been a strong interest in matters spiritual since the 1960s as indicated by the ‘New Age’ culture and deep ecology, for instance. The discourse on animism presented in this book is very much part of this worldwide trend, which can be categorised as ‘postmodern’ or ‘post-materialist’. Beck also remarks that the use of ‘“new” in ‘New Religious Movements’ [including ‘New Age’ and deep ecology] points yet again to a Eurocentric approach [because] to non-Western eyes, and especially the eyes of the pantheistic religious traditions of Asia, this “postmodern” religiosity turns out to

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be a familiar story’. In this book, I have attempted to share this ‘familiar story’ from contemporary Japan, a country which has experienced the full range of modernity and a country where the sense of connectedness was first severed in Minamata and then again in Fukushima sociologically, psychologically, institutionally, and also biologically. The keywords for the story were moyai (tying boats together) and kizuna (bonds). And underlying the reconstruction of this ‘familiar story’ was a desperate search for a new sense of connectedness, which is hard to come by as it goes counter to the increasing trend of individualisation64 and ‘new individualism’65 in the globalising, latemodern world. So, what sort of ‘familiar story’ have the four intellectuals reconstructed? What are the theoretical implications of their postmodern animism in relation to soul and spirituality? Soul and spirituality are central for postmodern animism, as they are for animism in general. As Tylor explained originally, animism is the belief that the souls of individual creatures continue to exist after the destruction of the body66 and that all nature is pervaded and crowded with spiritual beings.67 The centrality of soul and spirituality persists in more recent definitions of animism. To revisit the Oxford English Dictionary, animism is ‘belief in the existence of a spiritual world, and of soul or spirit apart from matter; spiritualism as opposed to materialism’; ‘the attribution of life and personality (and sometimes soul) to inanimate objects and natural phenomena’; ‘any of various theories postulating that an animating principle, as distinct from physical processes (chemical, mechanical, etc.), directs energy that moves living beings and governs their growth and evolution = vitalism’. These are consistent with other definitions, such as the one that says animism is ‘the belief that inside ordinary visible, tangible bodies there is [a] normally invisible, normally intangible being: the soul’68 and the one that says animism is ‘the belief that all life is produced by a spiritual force, or that all natural phenomena have souls’.69 Indeed, soul and spirituality are central to the postmodern animism presented in this book. It should be emphasised, however, that none of the four intellectuals considered animism to be a religion. Ogata contended that, as a legacy of the Minamata incident, soul is a question that should be addressed in social sciences. He never considered it to be a religious issue. Ishimure, in her treasury of literary work, connected readers to the world of soul, but her writing never had religious connotations. Her starting point was that the Minamata incident marked the end of established religion.70 Tsurumi envisaged the soul as the core of self, and rather than seeing soul as a religious element she saw it as the source of endogenous development,71 the notion she developed through her study of the Minamata incident.72 As for Miyazaki Hayao, even though questions of soul are central to his work he positions himself at a point furthest from established religion. One of the key differences between the postmodern animism presented in this book and the conventional or Tylorian notion of animism is that postmodern animism is neither a religion nor a philosophy of religion. 63

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Postmodern animism is a philosophy of the life-world How then did the four intellectuals address the question of soul without resorting to religious discourse? For a start, they all took the meaning of ‘life’ (inochi いのち or 命) more seriously than those involved with earlier discourses on animism. For postmodern animism, which is a philosophy of the life-world, life is not just the opposite of death. Life means ‘life’ as a vitalistic force of the living and of the dead, as well as of the lives of those yet to emerge. Life emerges from a rhizome-like and chaos-like world, where it eventually returns only to reemerge later again and again as part of an endless cycle. It is a world that can give us a sense of connectedness to a whole universe of eternal life that exists beyond time and space. In postmodern animism, nature is spirituality, and spirituality is nature, and it is the soul that connects the two, according to Ogata. He also says that the soul is ‘another name of life’. The world is crowded with many kinds of spirits, living and dead, human and nonhuman. The nonhuman include plants and inanimate entities such as rocks and mountains, rivers and the sea, the wind and sky, rays of light and darkness, all of which are connected by a common equation, namely, ‘soul = life’ (see Figure 1.1). Needless to say, this notion of the life-world is different from the Habermasian concept of lifeworld in sociology,73 which is based on an anthropocentric view of the world. Instead, for the life-world of postmodern animism, matters covered in such fields as biology, biohistory,74 and ecology could be as relevant as the affairs of human-kind. In postmodern animism, matters of soul (and life) are not monopolised by humans. Postmodern animism decentres humanity while it simultaneously recentres nature.75 In this post-anthropocentric and non-religious conceptualisation of the lifeworld, what does ‘soul’ mean more specifically? For the four intellectuals, the soul may be summarised first as a memory of life that they found deep in their subconscious. For Ogata, he felt it as a sense of being rescued by childhood memories, by the sensation of being connected with the grass, the trees, fish, birds, and the sea, and the sound of the wind. It also meant being reconnected to the soul of his deceased father by reliving childhood memories, especially a memory of his father’s soul being ‘passed on’ to him. Childhood memories also contributed to Miyazaki Hayao’s memory of life. In his case, it was the stories he heard repeatedly from his mother about her own childhood and the stories transmitted from her ancestors. These personal memories of life seem to have given them a gateway to connect to the life-world, which exists at a deeper level beyond personal memories, as shown in Figure 1.1. Ishimure’s travel to the ancient forest to meet her ‘ancestor of grass’ during her coma gave her a ‘first-hand’ experience of being connected to the memory of life and the life-world. In contrast to this memory of life that was felt to be innate, all four postmodern animists also describe a ‘soul’ that exists outside of themselves (separate to their body and mind), an external entity, or ‘something out there’. Ogata Masato refers to it as something that asks the very question of what soul is, as something that initiates this dialogue and keeps on asking and demanding a

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response. He understands it to be the function of life, which is trying to make some kind of correction, and suggests that this ‘something’ manifests itself as words, not only as questions, but also as statements in, for example, a 5-7-5 syllable haiku poem, which, in his case, apparently announced the end of his nervous breakdown. A torrent of 5-7-5-7-7-syllable tanka poems also transformed Tsurumi, who felt that they restored her life while she was hovering between life and death after having a stroke. This ‘something out there’ may be felt as kehai (気配), a very slight, almost imperceptible sign or hint of the presence or movement of an intangible soul. Tsurumi states that soul dwells not only in humans but also in all living and non-living things, that it is our own soul that gives us the ability to sense its presence,76 and that animism means connecting to the external soul through our own soul,77 which is possible because they are essentially the same thing. In other words, she suggests that soul is the medium which connects us to the lifeworld that exists both internally and externally to each one of us. Ishimure refers to this soul (or tamashii) also as anima,78 which is immortal and is at one with the life of the universe. Namely, she too considers that soul = life.79 This notion of soul (or anima) seems consistent with what Tim Ingold calls the ‘animacy’ of the ‘lifeworld’, which is ‘the dynamic, transformative potential of the entire field of relations within which beings of all kinds, continually and reciprocally bring one another into existence … [which is] ontologically prior to [the] differentiation [between spirit and agency]’.80 For Ingold, animism means to be ontologically ‘alive to [the life-world], characterized by a heightened sensitivity and responsiveness, in perception and action, to an environment that is always in flux, never the same from one moment to the next’ (see Chapter 3 for further discussion).81 Scenes suggesting the presence of kehai are ubiquitous in Miyazaki Hayao’s animation films. Sometimes, the presence is suggested by the movement of air, while at other times it is suggested by the expressions of characters who notice it, which is illustrated, for example, by a slight movement of hair, a change in the look in someone’s eyes, or a breath that someone takes. Many of the scenes have ‘a heightened sensitivity and responsiveness, in perception and action, to an environment that is always in flux, never the same from one moment to the next’, to borrow Ingold’s words again. They are animistic in that they are very much alive to the life-world. The question of soul is at the core of Miyazaki’s films. Just like Ogata, who remarked that the question of soul comes to him or that he is asked a question (of soul) by the soul itself, Miyazaki states that his film comes to him from something that is somewhere slightly above him (see Chapter 4 for details). Miyazaki says that he is motivated to make a film because of this ‘something’, and that he makes a film by ‘casting a net deeper and deeper into his subconscious’ to find something like ‘the memory of life of mitochondria’.82 In other words, his motivation to create films derives from a memory of life from primordial times, which he is somehow able to connect with. It sounds as if Miyazaki creates his animation films by accessing the

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ancient life-world. It is possible, then, that the creativity of two of the most outstanding artists in contemporary Japan, animation film director Miyazaki Hayao and writer Ishimure Michiko, derives from their sense of being connected with the life-world.83 Soul in postmodern animism conveys an image of ‘spirituality’ quite different to the divine and supreme. Instead, it carries an image of something more humble and ‘down to earth’, literally, like memories of worms and trees, mitochondria, and DNA, something much closer to the earth and nature. And it appears as if natural science, especially biological science, is moving in the same direction. Scientists seem to agree that there is a common ancestor of all living things, and that we humans are connected with all other living forms through this common origin, which some scientists refer to as the ‘Last Universal Common Ancestor’ (LUCA).84 Recent developments in epigenetics suggest that there is a biological mechanism which carries experiences to future generations, indicating that it might be possible to transmit ‘memory of life’ through physical and chemical processes.85 Meanwhile, there is a curious intersection between science and esoteric Buddhism with regard to slime mould as seen in the work of biologist Minakata Kumagusu and physical chemist Ilya Prigogine, who were interested in the moulds from the viewpoint of chaos theory and thermodynamics.86 Exploring the relationship between postmodern animism and natural science is clearly beyond the scope of this book, but these examples suggest the possibility that we, as living life, are all connected to the memory of life in one way or another, and it is worth rethinking the role we play as human beings in the broader, non-anthropocentric design of the life-world. Problems of the age of the Anthropocene are widely recognised in academia, and there is a general perception that the human–nature relationship underpinning our civilisation needs to be reconsidered in a fundamental way. While the problem-consciousness regarding our civilisation is widespread, there is a question as to whether the global north/west can provide a frame of reference powerful enough to establish a new knowledge base that is significantly different from the existing one. It is not easy to imagine a new paradigm by drawing upon the very cultural framework that produced the existing system. Through an exploration of animism, which has until now been considered as the antithesis of modernity, I have attempted to present a new vista of social science from the viewpoint of post-Minamata and post-Fukushima Japan with a view to building a new kind of knowledge for the future. Every philosophy and every social theory is culturally and historically specific. It is my hope that the discourse on postmodern animism or the philosophy of the lifeworld presented in this book may contribute to a collective rethink in social science that will help to build a different kind of modernity. Doing this may demand a fundamental epistemological change, a change in the way we look at the world in the social sciences. But perhaps there is nothing new in that. Sociology did not exist before Émile Durkheim established the concept, and the existence, of social phenomena ‘sui generis’ that are independent of the actions and intentions of individuals in society.87 Would it be going too far to say that recognition of the existence

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‘sui generis’ of the life-world might be the precondition for a new modernity where a post-anthropocentric sustainable future is possible?

Notes 1 Antonio Negri 2014, ‘3.11-go no nihon ni okeru maruchichu-do to kenryoku’ [Multitude and power in post-3.11 Japan], trans. Miura Nobutaka, in Antonio Negri, Ueno Chizuko, Kan Sanjun, Ichida Yoshihiko, Osawa Masachi, Ito Mamoru, Shirai Satoshi, & Mori Yoshitaka, Neguri nihon to mukiau [Negri faces Japan], NHK Shuppan shinsho, Tokyo, pp.78–103 (citation on p.79). 2 Antonio Negri 2014, ‘Abenomikusu to kazetachinu – Nihon kara kaette kangaeta ikutsuka no koto’ [Abenomics and “Wind Rises” – Some thoughts after returning from Japan], trans. Miura Nobutaka, in Antonio Negri, Ueno Chizuko, Kan Sanjun, Ichida Yoshihiko, Osawa Masachi, Ito Mamoru, Shirai Satoshi, & Mori Yoshitaka, Neguri nihon to mukiau [Negri faces Japan], NHK Shuppan shinsho, Tokyo, pp.162– 184 (citation on p.165). His thinking, however, seems still very much limited to the conventional framework of human society and the seen world. 3 Ishimure Michiko & Tsurumi Kazuko 2002, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa Mandara: Ishimure Michiko [Tsurumi Kazuko’s Mandala dialogue with Ishimure Michiko] Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo, p.282; John Clammer 2004, ‘The politics of animism’, in John Clammer, Sylvie Poirier, & Eric Schwimmer (eds) Figured Worlds: Ontological Obstacles in Intercultural Relations, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, pp.83–109 (citation on p.95). 4 Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’, p.95. 5 ibid. 6 To elaborate further on this point, I will use slime mould as an analogy. Slime moulds are closely connected to a particular ecology of a particular place, and over 500 varieties have been found around the world (see p.137). Even if, hypothetically, 300 of them are found in Japan, that does not allow us to make a claim that there is a special Japanese slime mould. The fact that these (hypothetical) slime moulds are found in Japan does not necessarily mean that they all have a common feature that is only found in Japan. Theoretically, it is possible that such a feature exists, but such a claim can be made only after careful and systematic comparative research. In the same way, in order to claim that there is such a thing called ‘Japanese animism’, a particular kind of animism with features identifiable only in Japan, we would have to conduct careful and systematic study focused on this point. And to say that animism is the fundamental world view of Japan (or Japanese Buddhism, or Shinto) would require equally systematic and comparative research focused on that point, and this has not been the objective of this book. 7 Ishimure Michiko 2009, Ayatori no ki [Memories of cat’s cradle], Fukuinkanbunko, Tokyo. 8 See, for instance, Tsurumi Kazuko 1993, Kimono Jizai [Kimono as freedom], Sho-bundo-, Tokyo. 9 UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), n.d. ‘Convention for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage 2003’, , viewed 16 December 2017. 10 UNESCO, n.d. ‘What is intangible cultural heritage?’, , viewed 16 December 2017 (emphasis added). 11 ibid. 12 Interview with Ogata Masato, 15–17 January 2012. 13 Graham Harvey 2005, Animism: Respecting the Living World, Hurst & Co., London, p.xii. 14 Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.278.

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15 Ishimure Michiko 2011, Kukai Jodo [Paradise in the sea of sorrow] Sekai Bungaku Zenshu- [World Literature Series] III-04 edn. compiled by Ikezawa Natsuki, Kawade shobo-, Tokyo, p.44. 16 Ishimure Michiko 2011, ‘Sho-ji no oku kara’ [From behind the sliding-paper screen of life and death], in Ishimure Michiko, Kukai Jo-do, p.755. 17 This is different from ‘parent of grass’ (kusa no oya 草の親 instead of 草の祖), which appeared in her first book (Ishimure, Kukai Jo-do, p.145). 18 Fujiwara Yoshio 2006, Kaisei: Tsurumi Kazuko no Yuigon [Regeneration: The will of Tsurumi Kazuko], documentary film by Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo. 19 See her notion of takazareki, a word often used to describe her as a child. It refers to a person whose soul has the tendency to wander around without returning to the body. See, for instance, Ishimure, ‘Sho-ji’, p.754. 20 Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.20. 21 ibid., p.59. 22 ibid., p.218. 23 ‘Anima’ 1989, in Edmund Weiner & John Simpson (eds) Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford. 24 ibid. 25 Jean-François Lyotard 1979, The Postmodern Condition, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, p.7. 26 ibid. 27 ibid., p.27 28 ibid., p.60 29 ibid. 30 See, for instance, the contrast between plans to use geo-engineering to combat climate (e.g. launching ‘orbiting mirrors to reduce the earth’s solar exposure’) and discomfort towards the plan because ‘such an engineered atmosphere lacked beauty, integrity, and stability’, as discussed by Jedediah Purdy 2010, ‘The politics of nature: Climate change, environmental law, and democracy’, Yale Law Journal, vol.119, no.6, pp.1122–1209 (above citation is on p.1202). 31 Miyazaki Hayao 2012, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Comic version: Deluxe edition 1), trans. David Lewis & Toren Smith, Viz Media, San Francisco, vol.1, p.518. 32 Scott Lash points out that ‘vitalism normally presupposes philosophical monism’ and discusses vitalism in the context of Western philosophical thought. See Scott Lash 2006, ‘Life (Vitalism)’, Theory, Culture & Society, vol.23, nos.2–3, pp.323–329 (citation on p.324). 33 Atsuki Hiyama, Chiyo Nohara, Seira Kinjo, Wataru Taira, Shinichi Gima, Akira Tanahara, & Joji Otaki 2012, ‘The biological impacts of the Fukushima nuclear accident on the pale grass blue butterfly’, Scientific Reports (Nature), vol.2, no.570. 34 See, for instance, Jedediah Purdy 2015, After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene, Harvard University Press, Cambridge & London (see p.250). 35 Fred G Notehelfer 1975, ‘Japan’s first pollution incident’, Journal of Japanese Studies, vol.1, no.2, pp.351–383 (citation on p.352). 36 Simon Avenell 2017, Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, p.213. 37 Nakamura Mayu 2014, Naoto hitorikkiri [Alone in Fukushima], Documentary film, Omphalos Pictures, Tokyo. 38 See his reception in France, for instance, which is mentioned in the film above. 39 Pope Francis 2015, Encyclical Letter Laudato Si of the Holy Father Francis on Care for Our Common Home, Vatican Press, Vatican City. 40 Radio New Zealand News 2017, ‘Whanganui River to gain legal personhood’, 16 March, viewed 24 May 2017, . I owe this point to Dane Fewtrell.

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41 Radio New Zealand News 2017, ‘Two sacred Indian rivers get “living human” status’, viewed 24 May 2017, . 42 Purdy, ‘The politics of nature’, p.1207. 43 For more on democracy in ancient Greece, see Kurt Raaflaub, Josiah Ober, & Robert Wallace 2008, Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece, University of California Press, Berkeley. 44 Timothy Mousseau 2017, ‘Nuclear energy and its ecological by-products: Lessons from Chernobyl and Fukushima’, in Peter Van Ness & Mel Gurtov (eds) Learning from Fukushima, ANU Press, Canberra, pp.261–283. See also the documentary film series by Iwasaki Masanori (2013 to 2017), Fukushima: A Record of Living Things, vols. 1 to 5, annual release, Gunzo-sha, Tokyo. 45 Mousseau, ‘Lessons’, p.266. 46 Purdy, After Nature, p.271. 47 ibid., p.281. 48 Miyazaki, Nausicaä (comic), p.518. 49 ibid., p.443. 50 Arif Dirlik 2005, ‘Globalism and the politics of place’, in Kris Olds, Peter Dicken, Philip Kelly, Lily Kong, & Henry Wai-chung Yeung (eds) Globalisation and the Asia-Pacific: Contested Territories, Routledge, London & New York, pp.37–54. 51 Dirlik, ‘The politics of place’, p.53. 52 ibid., p.47. 53 See ‘Foraminifera’ in ‘Ocean Portal’ of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, , viewed 20 March 2018. 54 Ruth Todd 1960, ‘Some observations on the distribution of Calcarina and Baculaogypsina in the Pacific’, Science Reports, Tohoku University, 2nd Ser, (Geol), Spec. vol., no.4, pp.100–107. 55 Jan Pawlowski, Maria Holzmann, Cédric Berney, José Fahrni, Andrew Gooday, Tomas Cedhagen, Andrea Habura, & Samuel Bowser 2003, ‘The evolution of early Foraminifera’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 30 September, pp.11494–11498 (citation on p.11496). 56 See, for instance, ‘Baculogypsina sphaerulata’ and ‘Calcarina gaudichaudii’, in Jan Pawlowski & Maria Holzmann (eds), ForamBarcoding: Molecular Database of Foraminifera, Department of Genetics and Evolution, University of Geneva. 57 Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, p.15. 58 Ulrich Beck [2008] 2010, A God of One’s Own, Polity, Cambridge, p.21. 59 ibid. 60 ibid. The two works Beck refers to in this context are Jürgen Habermas 2007, Die revitalisierung der Weltreligionen – Herausforderung für ein säkulares Selbstverständnis der Moderne? Starnberg: Unpublished MS; and Jürgen Habermas 2008, Between Naturalism and Religion, trans. Ciaran Cronin, Polity, Cambridge. 61 Mita Munesuke 2006, Ningen to shakai no mirai [A future of humans and society], Iwanami, Tokyo. 62 Beck, A God of One’s Own, p.26. 63 ibid., p.27. 64 Ulrich Beck & Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim 2001, Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences, Sage, London. 65 Anthony Elliott, Masataka Katagiri, & Atsushi Sawai 2012, ‘The new individualism in contemporary Japan: Theoretical avenues and the Japanese new individualist path’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, vol.42, no.4, pp. 425–433. 66 Edward Tylor 1871, Primitive Culture (seventh edition), John Murray, London, 2 vols. (citation from vol.1, p.390). 67 ibid., vol.2, p.185.

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68 Marvin Harris 1983, Cultural Anthropology, Harper & Row, New York, p.186, quoted in Nurit Bird-David 1999, ‘“Animism” revisited: Personhood, environment, and relational epistemology’, Current Anthropology, vol.40, supplement, February, pp.S67–S91, p.S67. 69 Webster’s New World Dictionary 1989, as quoted by Bird-David, ‘“Animism” revisited’, p.S67. 70 Ivan Illich & Ishimure Michiko [1986] 2004, ‘“Kibo-” o kataru’ [Discussing ‘hope’], in Ishimure Michiko, Shiranui, Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo, pp.244–256 (citation on p.247). 71 Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.101. 72 As suggested, for instance, by the subtitle of the volume on Minamata, ‘Tamashii no maki’ [The volume on soul] in the compilation of her work, that is, Tsurumi Kazuko 1998, Tsurumi Kazuko Mandara VI: Minamata, animizumu, ecorojí [Tsurumi-Kazuko Mandala VI Minamata: An approach to animism and ecology], Fujiwara shoten, Tokyo. 73 Jürgen Habermas 1984, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume Two: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans. Thomas McCarthy, Beacon Press, Boston. 74 See the image of ‘Biohistory’ available at the JT Biohistory Research Hall and the discussion on biologist Nakamura Keiko in Chapter 1. 75 I owe this expression to Simon Avenell. 76 Ishimure & Tsurumi, Tsurumi Kazuko Taiwa, p.196. 77 ibid., pp.155–157. 78 ibid., p.247. 79 ibid., p.248. 80 Tim Ingold 2006, ‘Rethinking the animate, re-animating thought’, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, vol.71, no.1, pp.9–20 (citation on p.10). 81 Tim Ingold 2013, ‘Being alive to a world without objects’, in Graham Harvey (ed.) The Handbook of Contemporary Animism, Routledge, London & New York, pp.213–225 (citation on p.214). 82 NHK 2008, NHK Hyakunen intabyu- [100-year interview], broadcast on 20 November. The interviewer was Watanabe Ayumi. 83 Ogata believes that some people may have a stronger connectedness to the ancient memory of life in their DNA (from my conversation with Ogata Masato on 22 April 2018 in Minamata). 84 Nicholas Wide 2016, ‘Meet Luca, the ancestor of all living things’, The New York Times, 25 July. It refers to Madeline Weiss, Filipa Sousa, Natalia Mrnjavac, Sinje Neukirchen, Mayo Roettger, Shijulal Nelson-Sathi, & William Martin 2016, ‘The physiology and habitat of the last universal common ancestor’, Nature Microbiology, vol.1, no.9, article no.16116. 85 Sarah Williams 2013, ‘Epigenetics’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 26 February, vol.110, no.9, p.3209; Kylie Andrews 2017, ‘Epigenetics: How your life could change the cells of your grandkids’, ABC Science, 21 April, , viewed 22 April 2018; Jeneen Interlandi 2013, ‘The toxins that affected your great-grandparents could be in your genes’, Smithsonian Magazine, December, , viewed 22 April 2018. 86 Ilya Prigogine & Isabelle Stengers 1984, Order out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature, Bantam Books, New York, p.159. 87 Émile Durkheim [1895] 1986, ‘The rules of sociological method’, in Robert Jones (ed.) Emile Durkheim: An Introduction to Four Major Works, Sage, Beverly Hills, CA, pp.60–81.

Epilogue The re-enchanted world of post-Fukushima Japan1

Time passes and things change even after an apocalyptic disaster, which, at the time, looked like the end of the world. Seven years after the triple disaster – the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident that hit north-east Japan on 11 March 2011 – it still feels too early to fully understand its sociological, economic, and political impact, let alone its philosophical and spiritual significance. At the same time, however, there is a sense that too much has already been forgotten, memories of life have begun to fade away as debris is cleared, the ground is levelled, new roads are constructed, the coast is lined with concrete fortresses, radioactive soils are moved, and the crippled nuclear power plant buildings are covered over with a shiny new roof and enclosed by a subterranean wall of ice. Will modern technology along with a huge influx of public funds allow things to ‘get back to normal’? Or is something deeper going on in the hearts and minds of the local people? I argue that animism has regained relevance in post-3.11 Japan, and that, as in Minamata, there are subtle signs of animism re-emerging as a grassroots response to the triple disaster which, even though it was initially caused by nature, was ‘mutated’ by humans and became a bigger and more terrifying disaster due to radioactive pollution.2 In this Epilogue, I will discuss three developments that point to a renewed appreciation of animism in the disaster-stricken areas. The developments are in relation to (1) folk festivals; (2) local shrines; and (3) sacred forests.

Folk festivals Folklorist Akasaka Norio (赤坂憲雄), who specialises in Northeastern Japan, points out that folk art and folk festivals (minzoku geino- 民俗芸能), though they had been in decline before the triple disaster, were the very first things to be revived in many tsunami-damaged communities.3 Akasaka introduces the case of the Deer Dance in Minami-sanriku, which is particularly relevant here. Minami-sanriku is in the area where the tsunami was most ferocious, and in this town alone more than 800 people, or one twentieth of the population, lost their lives. The whole town was reduced to rubble, and the community was decimated. How was it possible to reconstruct a local festival in such a

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situation? Akasaka writes about a local fisherman, Muraoka Kenichi, who lost everything and wandered through the rubble for months, searching for anything related to his life. He found only two things. One was a shell ring he had made for his wife, and the other was a taiko drum used in the traditional Deer Dance.4 Before the tsunami, Muraoka had played a key role in preserving the dance. He thought that the taiko would have been washed away because of its light weight. When he found the drum in the mud, he thought: ‘Okay, I might be able to start again’.5 Eventually, locals managed to find all but one of the drums along with costumes and outfits for the dance, all having been buried in the mud. The first person keen to do the Deer Dance was a 12-year-old boy, Onodera Sho-, who persuaded his friends, who were scattered amongst various shelters, to learn the dance together.6 When the revived Deer Dance was finally performed, local residents watched it with tears in their eyes.7 Akasaka remarks that folk art and folk festivals played a significant role in uniting people in the disaster-stricken communities, people who were divided by the ways in which they were affected: Some people lost many family members, some had not managed to find their dead loved ones, and some had lost their family homes. Festivals were particularly effective in uniting people because acts of sacrament for the dead as well as repose for the dead’s souls are strong themes of local festivals in Northeastern Japan. Also, the festivals are open to everyone unlike Buddhist funerals, which are strictly a family matter.8 Significantly, the dead souls in this context included those of animals. Concerning the Deer Dance, for instance, a memorial stone erected approximately 300 years ago reads: ‘This dance is dedicated to the repose of the souls of all creatures living or dead’.9 In addition to the Deer Dance in Minami-sanriku, there are various other versions of the dance as well as other animal-related festivals and art in the region. Akasaka holds that animism is an intrinsic part of the festivals and that it is also associated with the Buddhist notion of shikkai jo-butsu (悉皆成仏).10 In Japanese Buddhism, shikkai jo-butsu, the long version of which is sansen so-moku shikkai jo-butsu (山川草木悉皆成仏), refers to universal enlightenment not only for humans but for all entities, living and dead (humans, animals, birds, insects, etc.), including grass and trees as well as other nonhuman features of the environment such as mountains and rivers. To what extent people engaging in the recovery of folk festivals and art were conscious of such cultural traditions is unknown. As pointed out by Akasaka, however, folk festivals and art functioned as a latent cultural mechanism connecting people divided by the disaster.11

Shrines as tsunami markers Imamura Fumihiko (今村文彦), a specialist in tsunami engineering and disaster archives, presents a picture of a tiny wooden shrine surrounded by several trees standing miraculously undamaged in the middle of a vast sea of mud left by the tsunami.12 He points out the significance of local shrines acting as ancient landmarks of safe havens during tsunamis and stresses the

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Figure 6.1 A small village shrine stands intact in the area completely devastated by the tsunami, including the tide-water control forest, in the coastal area of Wakabayashi Ward in Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture. Courtesy of Imamura Fumihiko, Director, International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS), Tohoku University (©Imamura Fumihiko).

importance of transmitting the memory of disasters to descendants as part of disaster prevention measures.13 The example Imamura draws on is the Namiwake shrine (浪分神社), the name of which suggests a place where ‘waves are divided’ (i.e. stopped). Local legend is that the god of the sea appeared on a white horse at the time of the Jo-gan tsunami (860 AD) and controlled the surging wave by diverting it to the north and to the south. Imamura’s research team’s analysis of alluvial deposits found data consistent with the legend. The Jo-gan tsunami stopped just a few hundred metres from the shrine.14 A striking illustration showing the significance of shrines as landmarks of the ‘tsunami line’ was broadcasted by TBS TV soon after the triple disaster (Ho-doTokushu-, 21 August 2011). The report was based on the investigation carried out by a local environmental surveyor Kumagai Wataru, who became curious about the fact that many shrines withstood the tsunami. Further investigation of an area stretching 30 kilometres to the north from Minami-so-ma, the area most affected by the tsunami, revealed that out of 84 shrines in the area 67 stood undamaged. These undamaged shrines were almost exactly on the line which

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showed how far inland the tsunami came.15 They were all small ‘village shrines’ (sonsha 村社), many of which were nameless and consisted of no more than tiny wooden structures, which had been cherished and cared for by local people for hundreds of years. Data available from the Association of Shinto Shrines (Jinja Honcho-) further indicated that it was the old shrines which tended to survive the 2011 tsunami. Of 100 shrines in the disaster region that were listed in the imperial survey of Shinto shrines compiled in 927 AD (meaning that these shrines are more than 1,000 years old), only three were damaged by the 2011 tsunami. A public relations officer from the Association hypothesises that the Jo-gan tsunami of 860 AD influenced the location of these ancient shrines.16 Research on the Jo-gan tsunami deposit has revealed that the frontline of the area inundated by the tsunami more than 1,000 years ago is almost exactly the same as that inundated in 2011.17 It is not yet clear whether the small shrines located on the tsunami line were built to mark the safe haven, or if they are there because they survived the devastation of the tsunami of over 1,000 years ago. Either way, what is significant here is the meaning people find in this line of surviving shrines. This is clearly expressed in the words of the mayor of So-ma, a city also devastated by the 2011 tsunami. In his own neighbourhood, many people survived by escaping to a local shrine which was believed by the locals to house ‘the god of tsunami’. Many ran to the shrine following the teaching of their ancestors: ‘Tsunamis come up to the shrine, and if you reach the shrine you are saved’. The mayor describes the shrine as a monument of past tsunami experience and says it is there to transmit knowledge to future generations. As for him, he ‘felt most grateful to the ancestors’.18 As with the case of the local folk festival, the significance of this post3.11 experience lies in the sense of being connected with the past by realising anew the significance of the old and often small and nameless shrines while at the same time feeling the sense of care provided by ancestors. It is possible that, in the disaster-stricken areas where much was lost, quite paradoxically people found a deeper sense of connectedness with the past. Shrines can at times be associated with state Shinto, but in this context the political dimension is hardly relevant. Rather, the meaning of shrines as a symbol of folk religion and local community comes across strongly. The (re)discovery of the significance of shrines in the aftermath of the 3.11 disaster is all about the nexus between nature (tsunami), life (of the living), and the souls of the dead (people and all other forms of life that once existed), and in that sense it strongly represents the animistic essence of folk Shinto. In the recovery effort after the triple disaster, another significance of these shrines came to be appreciated once again, and it provided both the theory and practice for a new project that aims to protect future generations. Shrines have provided a foundation for the project, which now constitutes a new trend in civil society Japan. It is the appreciation of the trees surrounding the shrines, the sacred forests or chinju-no-mori.

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The Sacred Forests Project A project to create a green seawall along the coast of the tsunami-affected region began soon after the disaster. It is called the Chinju-no-mori (Sacred Forests 鎮守 の森) Project.19 It is a grand-scale project that aims to create a 20–25-metre-high and 300-kilometre-long seawall, which has been likened to the Great Wall of China. It is a combination of public works, to create the five-metre-high mound using a gigantic amount of tsunami debris that is otherwise hard to dispose of, and volunteer work, to plant local trees on top of the mound. This organic seawall is expected to grow up to 20 metres high to provide a flexible, robust, and beautiful, low-maintenance, and sustainable buffer to mitigate tsunami impact and to prevent people and objects from being washed away into the sea. The project consists of independent sub-projects led by different administrations, such as prefectural governments, the Forestry Agency, and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism, all of which are in charge of the public works to prepare the mound. The volunteer work, on the other hand, includes gathering local seeds and nuts, preparing seedlings, planting them, and removing weeds. Between 2012 and 2016, a total of 38,451 people participated in the project as volunteers, collecting local seeds and nuts, and nurturing and planting 336,200 trees.20 The impetus for the project comes from ecologist Miyawaki Akira (宮脇昭), professor emeritus at Yokohama National University, who has devoted his life to tree-planting movements around the world. He is Vice-President of the Chinjuno-mori Project, which is a public interest incorporated foundation (ko-eki zaidan ho-jin) presided over by former prime minister Hosokawa Morihiro. It is an umbrella organisation which arranges tree planting after receiving requests from governments, corporations, and/or citizens’ groups. Miyawaki received the GotoShinpei Award in 2015, one year after Ishimure Michiko had won it. Miyawaki had always stressed the importance of a forest having a mixture of native trees indigenous to the area, especially evergreen broadleaf trees such as castanopsis, machilus, and oak. The impact of the tsunami confirmed his theory to a much greater extent than he originally had anticipated. He witnessed that the native machilus (Japanese bay trees) not only survived the tsunami but were able to regenerate and regrow. In clear contrast, not only were monoculture forests of non-indigenous trees such as the pine forest along the coast of Minami-sanriku destroyed completely by the tsunami, but the severed tree trunks became projectiles that harmed people and damaged buildings. The non-indigenous forests also failed to stop people being washed away into the sea, and they were unable to regenerate themselves.21 Miyawaki calls forests that consist of a mixture of indigenous evergreen broadleaf trees ‘inochi no mori’ (‘forests of life’ いのちの森). He argues that these forests preserve DNA specific to the local area, cultivate the sensitivity, creativeness, and intelligence of local people, help to stimulate the local economy, and collectively contribute to a sustainable global ecology. He also argues that these forests tend to survive natural disasters (such as earthquakes,

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typhoons, fires, and tsunamis) and live for thousands of years because they are anchored around a group of tall trees whose roots go deep into the ground. These anchor trees are surrounded by multiple layers of trees of varying heights, which in turn are surrounded by shrubs and grasses.22 Miyawaki emphasises that the prototype of the ‘forest of life’ is the chinju-no-mori, the sacred grove that surrounds shrines, which consists of a mixture of broadleaf evergreen trees and shrubs indigenous to the local area. As he remarks, the sense of sacredness is also significant, as it prevents trees from being cut down.23 Just as shrines were built to protect their descendants from tsunamis, people are building forest seawalls using the knowledge gained from the sacred groves surrounding local shrines. This movement is the complete opposite of the national government’s project to build a gigantic concrete seawall along the coast of the Tohoku region. Many people feel that a concrete seawall is an imposition of a huge costly construction project that cuts the connectedness between people and nature (especially those who work at sea). Concrete seawalls become old and weak with time, whereas forest seawalls grow bigger and stronger. Forest seawalls reconnect people with nature and will protect them for generations to come. It is possible that the project represents a new phase of civil society Japan where the administration, citizens, and cultural heritage are all connected to the theme of protecting life. The celebration of local festivals distinguishes folk Shinto from institutionalised Shinto.24 It is notable that folk Shinto played a pivotal role in all the previously discussed post-triple-disaster recovery efforts: the Deer Dance was a local folk festival that belongs to folk Shinto; most of the shrines on the tsunami frontline were small ancient shrines representing folk Shinto; and sacred groves represent the ecology of folk Shinto as indicated by Minakata Kumagusu (see Chapter 3). Folk Shinto provided a way, after 3.11, for people to reconnect with each other (through the folk festivals), to connect with their ancestors (by becoming aware of the significance of ancient shrines as tsunami markers), and to form a connection with their descendants (by constructing the great forest seawall using the seeds from, and knowledge of, the sacred forests surrounding folk shrines). The keywords used here are exactly the same as the descriptors of the ecology of folk shrines: ‘local’, ‘small’, ‘diverse’, and ‘grassroots’. As has been argued in this book, folk Shinto is nothing but a sophisticated example of animism.25 All three examples give us a sense of wonder: the Deer Dance costume being found in the tsunami mud and debris, the string of 67 small ancient shrines on the tsunami line, and the miraculous survival of local machilus trees, a species that constitutes sacred groves. This sense of wonder was felt not only by locals but also by visiting specialists: the folklorist Akasaka, the tsunami engineer Imamura, and the ecologist Miyawaki. So, do these examples suggest the presence of mysterious forces that can pass through into the human realm? We do not have the answer to this question, but these episodes indicate the strong relevance of animism and the presence of a re-enchanted world in post-Fukushima Japan and perhaps beyond.

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Notes 1 This Epilogue contains materials published in Shoko Yoneyama 2017, ‘Animism: A grassroots response to socioenvironmental crisis in Japan’, in Tessa MorrisSuzuki & Eun Jeong Soh (eds) New Worlds from Below: Informal Life Politics and Grassroots Action in Twenty-First-Century Northeast Asia, ANU Press, Canberra, pp.99–130. Permission to reuse this material has been obtained from ANU Press. 2 See, for instance, NHK 2018, Hibaku no Mori [Radioactive forest], TV documentary, broadcasted on 7 March. 3 Akasaka Norio 2012, 3.11 kara kangaeru ‘kono kuni no katachi [Post-3.11 reflections on the way we are in this country], Shincho- Sensho, Tokyo, p.85. 4 Akasaka, 3.11 kara, pp.84–85 & pp.154–155. 5 Ishino Nahoka 2014, ‘Furusato ni hibike, bokura no kodo- to yakudo-’ [May our heart beat and our energy reverberate in our hometown], Kokoro Puresu [The Heart Press], viewed 2 July 2016, . 6 Ishino, ‘Furusato ni hibike’. 7 Akasaka, 3.11 kara, p.155. 8 Akasaka, 3.11 kara. 9 ibid., p.158. 10 ibid., p.159. 11 ibid., p.161. 12 Imamura Fumihiko 2012, ‘Miyagiken Sendaishi Wakabayashiku engan shu-hen’ [The coastal area of Wakabayashi Ward in Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture: Photo Image], Gakujutsu no do-ko-, July. 13 Imamura Fumihiko 2012, ‘Daishinsai no jittai to kyo-kun no seiri ni mukete’ [Facts about the Great Earthquake and lessons to be learned], Presentation at Higashinihon Daishinsai Shakai Shihon Saisei Fukko- Shinpojium [Northeast Japan Disaster Symposium for Social Capital Reconstruction and Recovery] (Miyagi Prefectural Office). 14 Takase Hiroshi, Yoshida Kazushi, & Kumagai Wataru 2012, Jinja wa keikoku suru [The warning from shrines], Ko-dansha, Tokyo, p.76. 15 Takase, Yoshida, & Kumagai, Jinja, p.38. 16 Takase, Yoshida, & Kumagai, Jinja. 17 ibid., p.93. 18 ibid., pp.54–55. 19 The name of the project was changed from the ‘Great Forest Wall Project’ to the ‘Chinju-no-mori Project’ in June 2016. 20 ‘Chinju-no-mori Project’ 2016, viewed 19 June 2016, . 21 Miyawaki Akira 2011, Gareki o ikasu ‘mori no bo-hatei’ ga inochi o mamoru [Forest seawall built on debris protects life], Gakken Shinsho, Tokyo; Miyawaki, Akira 2014, ‘The Japanese and Chinju-no-mori: The tsunami-protecting forest after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011’, Phytocoenologia, vol.44, no.3–4, pp.235–244. 22 Miyawaki, Gareki, pp.33–34. 23 Miyawaki, Gareki. 24 John Clammer 2004, ‘The politics of animism,’ in John Clammer, Sylvie Poirier, & Eric Schwimmer (eds) Figured World: Ontological Obstacles in Intercultural Relations, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, pp.83–109 (citation on p.90). In this article, he talks about ‘state/shrine Shinto’ and ‘state and sect Shinto’. 25 See also Clammer, ‘The politics of animism’, p.102.

Index

Page numbers in bold refer to figures, page numbers in italic refer to tables. 11 March triple disaster earthquake, tsunami and nuclear incident. see triple disaster, 11 March 2011 1955 system 10–11 Abe Shinzo 165, 166–167 Aboriginal Australians 117 acetaldehyde 95 Akasaka Norio 231–233, 236 alaya consciousness (alaya-vijnana) 140 alternative development 120. see also endogenous development Amaterasu-Ōmikami (the sun goddess) 128 ancestor of grass 92, 93, 148, 187, 197, 211, 215, 220, 224; as a story for change 99–103, ancestor/parent of grass (kusa no oya) 23, 228n17. see also oyasama ancestors and ancestor worship 92–93, 126, 130–131 anima 136, 145, 195, 213, 214, 225 animacy 135–137, 145, 225 animals, personhood 83–84. see also personhood; personification animation, and soul 194–198 animism 3, 17–20; and Buddhism 20, 26–27; conceptual mandala 148–149, 148; as counter-discourse 147, and deep ecology 122; definition 17–18, 26, 195, 223; discourse 205–210; and esoteric Buddhism 112, 139–140; expressions of 205–206; folk Shinto 146–147; grassroots discourse 24–28, 25; and indigenous paradigm 125, 125; Ingold's interpretation 135–137; as intangible cultural heritage

208–210; Ishimure Michiko 79–80, 81, 81–84, 93, 100–103, 209, 210, 211; Japanese 126–128, 205–206, 210, 227n6; Japanological discourse 20–23, 25; of the life-world 63, 144–146; localism 205; as localist and non-anthropocentric counter-discourse 147, Miyazaki Hayao 159–161, 162, 179–193, 197, 198, 207, 209, 210, 211–212; and modernity 18, 143, 209–210, 210, 221; new 3, 17, 18–20, 93, 103, 116–118, 144, 210; Ogata Masato 209, 210, 210–211; as ontology 26–27; particularism 126; place consciousness 146–147; politics of 27–28; as positive sociology 145–146; postmodern 30, 73–74, 210–215, 217, 219–220, 222–223, 224–227, 226; and the question of self 147–148; as relational epistemology 19; relevance 215, 215–223, 231; relevance of Japan 19–20; renewed interest in 17, 117, 143, 205; and Shinto 20, 126, 126–135, 145, 160; and social science 73; sociological discourse 143–149; and soul 91; studies 4; as a theory of place 146–147, as a theory of self and social change 147–148, Tsurumi Kazuko 111, 113, 116–118, 125, 131, 143–149, 207, 209, 210, 211 animistic sensitivity 111 Anthropocene, the 3–4, 116, 119, 121, 143, 214–215, 226; democracy 218–219; reality of 205 anthropocentricity 215–217, 224, 226; anthropocentric vs

Index non-anthropocentric axis 124, 125; anthropocentrism 180, 185. see also non-anthropocentric discourse; post-anthropocentric world anthropology 73 anthropomorphism 144, 152n48 anti-nuclear demonstrations 2 Århem, Kaj 152n48 Asahi Newspaper 84, 86, 166; Asahi Shimbun newspaper 96 Ashio Copper Mine 217 Asia as Method 118 Asia-Pacific War 168–171. see also Second World War Association for the Original Vow, The (Hongan no kai) 64–65, 101–102, 131 Association of Shinto Shrines (Jinja Honchō) 25, 126, 127, 128, 234 Atomic Energy Basic Act 10–11 Aum Supreme Sect 88 authority, disenchantment with 93–98 autonomy, local 72; thinking as basis of 67 Avenell, Simon ix, 11, 33n7, 44, 75n20, 123–124, 153n70, 217, 230n75 awe, sense of 72, 73, 81, 82, 181, 182, 185, 189 Baker, Wayne 8 Bauman, Zygmunt 6 Beck, Ulrich 1–2, 5, 6, 8, 15, 19, 20, 59, 71, 116, 222–223 Berger, Peter 7 Berger, Ronald 16 Big Bang of Life 61, 62, 178, 212 Big Four litigation cases 45. see also industrial pollution; pollution worst cases of biohistory 58, 76n80, 224, 230n74 Bird-David, Nurit 17, 18, 19, 116 Birkeland, Inger 71 Blok, Anders 24 Boro the Caterpillar (film) 167 Breen, John 128, 129, 134 British Association for the Study of Spirituality 8 broadleaf evergreen forest (shōyō jurin) culture 177–178, 198, 201–202n98, 201n91, 207 Brumfield, Geoff 5–6 Brundtland Report 116, 120

239

Buddhism 10, 130, 141, 206; and animism 20, 26–27, 139–140; animistic underpinnings 4; en 145; banbutsu busshō (universal Buddhahood) 181; esoteric 112, 138–140, 141, 192–193, 193, 216, 226; Kegon (Flower Garland) School 141; Mahavairocana Buddha 140; Mahayana Buddhism 141, Miyazaki Hayao and 181; and the question of self 140–142; sansen sōmoku shikkai jōbutsu 233; shinnyo (tathata) 26; sōmoku jōbutsu (enlightenment of grass and trees) 26, 39n180, 131, 154n124; sōmoku kokudo shikkai jōbutsu 20; yuishiki 140 Cabinet Office of Japan 9, 14 Calgary, University of 14 capitalism 80, 116, 120, 143 capitalist developmentalism 123, 220 Carson, Rachel 79 Cartesian dualism 145; Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (manga) 185–191; negation of (by Miyazaki Hayao) 185–191; Cartesian human-nature dichotomy 17, 18–19, 102–103, 111, 117, 159; Cartesian human-nature dualism 185 Castle in the Sky (film) 159 Catholicism 131–132, 217 Certification Applicants’ Council 44, 48 chance 146. see also en chaos theory 138–139, 145–146, 226 Chen Kuan-Hsing 118 Chernobyl nuclear accident 5–6, 98, 116, 161, 218 children: radiation level 98; souls 171–175, 178, 211–212; and television 168 China 10,12, 16, 21, 56, 72, 168, 170, 175, 235 chinju-no-mori (sacred grove/forest) 132,146, 234–236 Chisso 10, 13, 46, 47, 51–52, 60, 67–68, 95, 215 Christianity 6, 20–21, 24, 210 Christians, clandestine 132 Chua Beng Huat 118, 152n48 civilization of the forest, the 21, 22 Clammer, John 17, 19–20, 23, 24, 25, 26–27, 27–28, 126, 127, 134, 145, 147, 205 Clause 9, Japanese Constitution 166 climate change 1, 21, 44, 228n30

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Index

coincidence 138, 142. see also en colonialism 118; colonial prejudice 17–18, 19 comparative perspective 22–23; comparative sociology x, 113; comparative research 227n6 Complete Works of Ishimure Michiko (Ishimure) 79 Confucianism 21 connectedness 22–23, 23; breakdown of 13–14; with the deceased 17, 22, 47, 59, 61, 63, 65, 68, 90, 131, 194, 224; emergence of 14–15; importance of 101; kizuna (bonds) 14, 223; with the life-world 225–226; loss of 53, 115–116; with nature 52–58, 93, 101, 115–116, 145, 210–211; with the past 234; search for 74; with self 49–52; with soul 58–61, 65; with the unseen world 194. see also moyai; moyau constitutional reform 166–167 corruption 186–188, 190 cosmology 27, 79, 84, 101, 102, 103, 125, 138, 141, 210 critical-ecological discourse 23 criticality incident 14, 47 critical social theory 23; critical social science 15; critical thinking 149 Crutzen, Paul 116 cultural discourse 22–23, 119, 206–207. see also theory of Japaneseness (nihonjinron) cultural heritage 102, 206. see also intangible cultural heritage Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, What Now? Another Development 116, 119–120 dead and the living 194 deceased, connectedness with the 17, 22, 47, 59, 61, 63, 65, 68, 90, 131, 194, 224 decision-making 216–217 decolonisation 19 deep ecology 121–122, 125, 125, 222 Deer Dance 205, 231–233, 236 deforestation 133 democracy, implications for 218–221 Descola, Philippe 3, 4, 116, 152n48 de-spiritualise cultures 7, 73 developmentalism 122, 123, 220 dialogical relationship 47, 49, 68, 73, 101–102 dialogue, sense of (taiwasei) 64–65

dichotomy, negation of 216. see also dualism; monism Dirlik, Arif 122–123, 124, 126, 143, 146–147, 220 disenchantment of the world 7, 18, 31, 98, 111, 118, 145, 221 DNA 1, 14, 99–100, 101, 196–198, 211, 220, 226, 235 dreams 140, 142, 148, 171 dualism, negation of 185–192, 216. see also Cartesian dualism; monism Durkheim, Émile 18, 226 earthquake, 11 March 2011 1. see also triple disaster Ebisu 56–57 eco-anthropology 117 ecology, introduction of term to Japan 139 eco-nationalism 128 economic development and growth 10–11, 12, 119; scepticism of 88 Economic Planning Agency 10 embodied life 145 emperor worship 127, 128 en (chance/coincidence/karmic force) ix, 64, 145 enchantment of modernity 3–5 endogenous development 116–118, 118–126, 129, 142, 143–144, 152n60, 215, 219; and animacy 136; definition 118–119; relevance 119, 124–125, 125; spirit of 147 energy: natural 71–73; solar 72 Enlightenment, the 3 environmental, activism 219; Environmental Agency 44; environmental consciousness, emergence of 44; environmental ethics 56; and spirituality 6–7 environmental injustice paradigm 123–124, 124, 125–126, 125. see also anthropocentric vs nonanthropocentric axis environmental problems, root of 20–21 epigenetics 101, 102, 146, 174, 197, 226 esoteric Buddhism 112, 138–140, 141, 192–193, 193, 216, 226 ethics 97, 215–218 Ethics Commission for a Safe Energy Supply, Germany 6, 7, 9, 217 Euro-American hegemony 122 Euro-American scientism 122–125, 143, 220

Index Eurocentric bias 9 Europe 6, 21, 24, 119, 152n60, 177, 222 European modernity/civilization 22 evil, good and 185–186 fisherman, sustainable practices 56 folk festivals 231–233 folklore 205–206 folk Shinto 23, 126–127, 129, 130–134, 130, 181, 215, 236; animism 146–147; appropriation of 27; conceptual map 134, 135; definition 24–25; essence of 26–27; focus on the local 25–26, 27; threat of 27 Foraminifera 221. see also star sands forest 21–22, 22, 23, 99–100, 101, 115, 133, 137, 140, 143, 159, 161, 175–179, 180–183, 186–188, 192, 198, 207, 211, 215, 219, 224, 231; of life 235–236. see also chinju-no-mori forest civilization, theory of 22 Forestry Agency 235 forest seawall 235–236 forest spirit (Shishi-gami) 175, 194, 220. see also Shihi-gami forgetting, pressure to 60 frame of reference 9, 20, 22, 28, 71, 73, 102, 134, 226; Japan as 24 Francis of Assisi, Saint 24 freedom of expression, suppression of 165–167 freedom, pursuit of 73, 136, 138, 171; media freedom 162; freedom of expression 165 167 From up on Poppy Hill (film) 194–195 Fujimori Eiichi 178, 179 Fukushima nuclear disaster 1–2, 4, 15, 44, 47, 143, 161, 216, 217, 218; animal deaths 53; cancer cases 12; causes 12–13; community rifts 13; comparison with Minamata incident 13, 16; deaths 12; devastation 12; disenchantment with authority 98; evacuation 1; fallout 5–6; Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant 5, 12, 36n85, 47, global impact 13; impact on nature 53; Ishimure Michiko 88; legacy 13–15; and Miyazaki Hayao 163–164; radiation level 98; severity 5–6; silent spring 1; social impact 12 Gaia hypothesis 203n161 gakkō-yuki (school goer) 97–98 Ganges, the 217

241

genetic mutations 1, 53, 216, 218, 220 genome 58 geo-engineering 228n30 George, Timothy 46, 60 Germany, Ethics Commission for a Safe Energy Supply 6, 7, 9, 217 Giddens, Anthony 6 Gill, Tom 141 global financial crisis 1, 44 globalisation 122, 208 global warming 44 gō 26 gods 181–182, 191. see also kami; guardian deity good and evil 185–186 gotagai 54 Gotō Shinpei 84. 112, 235 grass 1, 26, 54, 73, 92,131, 187, 189, 220, 224, 233; Amakusa (heaven’s grass) Island 81, 94; the enlightenment of grass and trees 20, 26, 124, 131, 233; by Ishimure Michiko 220; by Miyazaki Hayao 220; pale-grass-blue butterfly 1, 216. see also sōmoku jōbutsu; ancestor of grass; parent of grass (kusa no oya) grassroots 43, 62, 79, 112,123, 211, 215, 219, 220, 221; and animism 4, 7, 23, 24, 25, 28, 30, 31, 41, 88, 93, 102, 103, 125, 126, 134; as focus 3, cultural heritage 207; cultural references 209; lived experiences 122; revitalization of the concept of grassroots 220, Shinto 132, 236 green energy, see natural energy green leviathan 44–45 guardian deity, of birthplace (ubusuna) 132, of boart (funadama) 82–83, 114, 144, of sea (Ebisu) 55–57, 144, of dragon (ryushin) 81, 194, of rice paddy (ta-no-kami) 114, of mountain (yamagami) 83, 115, 143 Haku (in Spirited Away), as dragon spirit 194. see also guardian deity (dragon/ ryushin). haiku 225 Hamilton, Clive 3 Hanshin–Awaji earthquake 88 Harada Masazumi 87 Harvey, Graham 17, 18–19, 19, 83, 116, 144, 210 Hashimoto Ryūtarō 96 hikikomori 70

242

Index

Hinduism 21 Hirohito, Emperor 87, 234 historical memory 172, 174 holism 139, 140, 145, 146 Homer 162 Hongan no Kai 90 Hosokawa Morihiro 235–236 Howl’s Moving Castle (film) 160 human development 120; Human Development Index 120 humanity, conceptualisation of 44 human–nature, connectedness 115–116; human–nature dichotomy 17, 18–19, 31, 102–103, 111, 116, 184; human–nature dualism 117, 144, 159, 185; human–nature relationship 160, 217, 226 human needs, basic 120 human, responsibility of being 50 humans: as force of nature 3; and nature 3; responsibility of 53 ibasho (place to be) 91 Imada Takatoshi 10 Imamura Fumihiko 233–234, 236 Imperial Rescript on Education, 1890 128 India 21 indigenous, communities 19; indigenous paradigm 125, 125; indigenous people 60, 114, 117, 121 individualisation 6, 209, 223 industrial pollution (kōgai) 3, 4, 11, 14, 44, 53, 123, 143, 215, 217, 219 Inglehart, Ronald 8 Ingold, Tim 134, 135–137, 138, 139, 145, 225 institutionalised Shinto 23, 25, 31, 128, 129, 130–131, 130, 132, 134, 135, 146, 181, 211, 236 intangible cultural heritage 3, 205–210, 208–10 intangible life 63 interconnectedness, of all life 54–55, 63, 83, 122; with nature 63 International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) 20 invisible religion 8 Irokawa Daichiki 43, 113, 150n12, 150n17 Ise Shrine 128 Ishimure Michiko 23, 30, 30–31, 64, 79–103, 114, 145, 214, 225–226; ancestor of grass notion 99–103, 215, 220, 224; animism 79–80, 81, 81–84, 93, 100–103, 209, 210, 211; awards 84;

Complete Works of Ishimure Michiko 79; connectedness 101; critique of modernity 79; cultural reference 206–207; death 88–89; ethical foundation 215; Fukushima nuclear disaster 88; imagery 84; and language 80–81; and Minamata disease incident 79–103; Minamata Tokyo Exhibition, 1996 86; near-death experience 99–100, 142, 211; and nonhumans 219; Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow 79, 84, 93–95; and paternalistic authority 93–98; purpose of work 81; relevance 88; The Sea of Camellias 81, 82–84; sociological significance 84, 85, 86–89; status 79, 219; and Tsurumi Kazuko 84, 90–91; view of soul 79, 89–93, 100–101, 197, 213, 223; Villages of the Gods 81–82, 96–98 Ishimure Michiko phenomenon 84–89, 219 itai-itai [it-hurts, it-hurts] disease 11 Iwata Keiji 139–140 Japan: animism discourse 20–23, 24–28, 25; contemporary challenges 2; diversity 22; environmental injustice paradigm 123–124; ethical foundation 7; experience of modernity 4–5; as frame of reference 24; grassroots 3; historical crossroads 2; isolation 177; as kadai senshinkoku 2; and nature 17; New Age culture 10; outside European modernity/ civilization 22; positioning 22–23; postFukushima 164–167, 168, 226, 231–236, 232; post-industrial society 87; postMinamata 226; postmodern transition 9–10; as reference 210; relevance of 19–20; theory of 22 Japanese animism 126–128, 205–206, 210, 227n6 Japanese culture 22–24, 112, 126, 127, 160, 206 Japan Federation of Bar Associations 167, 194 Japanological discourse 20–23, 209, 210 Japan Times, The 166 Japan–US security treaty 2 JCO 47 Jensen, Caster 24 Jung, Carl and Jungian psychology 140 kadai kaiketsu senshinkoku, Japan as 2 kadai senshinkoku, Japan as 2 kami 19, 26, 27, 81, 82, 83–84, 94, 114, 127, 134, 139, 144, 182–183, 191, 205.

Index see also local kami; guardian deity; gods karmic force (en) ix, 64, 145 Kawakatsu Heita 141 kehai 136, 225 Kimura Hiroko ix, 106n79 Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, The (film) 164–167, 168, 175 Kingston, Jeff 165 kizuna (bonds) 14, 223 knowledge, local 123 Kobe 88 kodama (tree spirits) 175, 182 Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) 25 Komiyama Hiroshi 2 Kōno Tarō 165, 165–167 Korea 21, 23 Kuhn, Thomas 147 Kumagai Wataru 233 Kumamoto District Court 46 Kumamoto Gakuen University 87 kuni 26 language 80–81 language games 29 Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) 101, 226 late modern/modernity 6 Latour, Bruno 3, 4, 28, 116 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 18 Liberal Democratic Party 10–11, 128, 165, 167 life: definition 224; intangible 63; interconnectedness of all 54–55, 63, 83, 122; life=soul=nature 206; memory of 65–67, 101–102, 146, 206, 224; and modernity 2–3; and money 47–49; price of 44–47, 50; prioritisation of the economy over 2; prioritisation over economy 29, 217; respect for 55, 189–190; rhythm of 101; soul another name for 63–64, 67, 69; and soul (tamashii) 64; tangible 63; tendency to move 67; working of life (inochi no hataraki) 63, 64 life=soul=nature 206 life stories 28–29 lifeworld, Habermasian 224–226 life-world, the 23, 49, 49–74, 100, 148, 185, 189, 197, 210–211, 214, 224–227; animism 54, 63, 144–146; connectedness with 225–226; connectedness with nature 52–58, 61; connectedness with self 49–52; connectedness with soul

243

(tamashii) 58–61, 65; core of philosophy 55; democracy 218–219; development of 61, 62, 63–70; essence of 57; and ethics 215–218, 218; key concepts 63; memory of life 65–67, 101–102; origin of phrase 75n36; and questions 67–70; raison d’être 72; sense of dialogue 64–65; and system society 70–73 light and darkness 189–191 liquid modern/modernity 6 Little, Frederick 138, 141–142 little narratives 16, 28, 59, 73–74, 213–214 local, autonomy 72, 120, discourse 25, festival 130, 231–233 localist, perspective 123–125. see also non-anthropocentric paradigm 144, 147 localism 125, 126, 205 local kami 84, 114, 129,134, 143, killing of local deities 132 local knowledge 114–115, 123, 144, and theory of endogenous development 118 local shrines 129, 130, 231, 233, 234, 236 local, the 122–123, 143, 146–147, conceptualization of 122–123, focus on 25–26, translocal alliances 123, 125, 220–221. see also folk Shinto Luckmann, Thomas 8 Lyotard, Jean-François 16, 28–29, 30, 59, 73–74, 141, 213, 221 McCormack, Gavan 2 MacWilliams, Mark 19 mandala 140–142, 147, 148, 149, 221. see also Minakata-mandala Maruyama Masao 112 Marxism 183 materialism 70 material wealth 9–10 Matsumura Naoto 217 Meiji, government 27, period 127, 130, 132, 134 Melucci, Alberto 29 memory 196–197; childhood 207, 224; historical 172, 174; of life 65–67, 101–102, 146, 206, 224 Menchú, Rigoberta 121, 125 Merkel, Angela 6 metamorphosis, process of 137–138 methodological secularism 7 methodology 28–29 methyl-mercury 11, 13, 43, 45, 64, 82, 90, 95, 113, 162, 203n161 Michiko, Empress 84, 86, 89, 112

244

Index

micro-organisms 140, 221. see also mitochondria; single-cell organisms; slime moulds; star sands Minakata Kumagusu 31, 111–112, 137, 148, 207, 209, 211, 216, 226; Buddhism 138; intellectual curiosity 138; rationalization of shrines (Imperial Ordinance of 1906) 132–134; and the question of self 140–142; study of slime moulds 137–139; suiten 141–142 understanding of ecology 139 Minakata-mandala 141 Minamata City Hospital 93–95 Minamata cosmology 101, 102 Minamata Disease Certification Applicants’ Council 44 Minamata disease incident 4, 10–11, 15–17, 43, 217, 219; 50th anniversary 58; animistic tradition 54; Catholicism and 131–132; cats affected 52; causes 10; certified patients 115; characteristics of 55; comparison with Fukushima nuclear disaster 13, 16; compensation 45, 47, 48, 60–61; condolence money 47; crisis of subjectivity 46–47; discrimination against sufferers 57; effects 10; impact on nature 52–53; imperial visit 86; Ishimure Michiko and 79–103; language 80–81; legacy 14–15, 65, 90; litigation 45–47; narratives 4–5; Nausicaä connection 162; negative legacy 16; official recognition 10–11, 44, 60, 86, 95; Ogata Masato 43, 44, 52, 65, 69; political closure 11–12; political economy 28; positioning of 102; positive heritage 28; positive legacy 16–17; relevance 102–103; role of 69; soul narratives 17; studies 15–16; suicides 55; sympathy payments 60; treasure children 57; Tsurumi Kazuko and 113–116, 143–144, 147, 207, 211; vantage point 15; victim numbers 11 ‘Minamata for New Genesis’ 102 Minamata Forum 86, 89 Minamata movement 44, 45, 48, 61, 66, 69, 86–87, 101 Minamata Studies 15–16, 87 Minamata Tokyo Exhibition, 1996 86, 89–91 Minami-sanriku 231–233, 235 Minami-sōma 233–234 Ministry of Health and Welfare 95, 96, 97 Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism 235

Ministry of the Environment 44 Mita Munesuke 88, 222 mitochondria 198, 225–226 Mitsui Mining & Smelting Corporation 11 Miyamoto Ken’ichi 124 Miyawaki Akira 235–236, 236 Miyazaki Hayao 5, 17, 23, 30, 31–32, 159–198, 214; aims 171; on animation 172; animism 159–161, 162, 179–193, 197, 198, 207, 209, 210, 211–212; anti-nuclear position 165–166; audience 159; awards 84, 159–160; Boro the Caterpillar 167; and Buddhism 181; Castle in the Sky 159; childhood 207, 224; and constitutional reform 167; critique of anthropocentricity 216; cultural references 207; and dead and the living 194; ethics 170; experience of war 168–171; feeling of guilt 170; and Fukushima nuclear disaster 163–164; and the Gaia hypothesis 203n161; and good and evil 185–186; Howl’s Moving Castle 160; The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness 164–167, 168, 175; liberation 176–179; and light and darkness 189–191; logic of works 160; Marxism 179; Minamata disease incident influence 162; My Neighbor Totoro 159, 168, 172–173, 175–176, 178–179, 181–182, 194, 207; and natural and human-made 188–189; and nature 176–179, 198, 212; Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 100, 159, 164, 175, 176; Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (manga) 160–161, 183–193, 194, 195, 212, 216, 219–220; and nonhumans 219; nostalgia 174–175; phantom speech 194; philosophy 160–161, 185, 193; Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea 159, 163, 176; popularity 160; Porco Rosso 159; and Post-Fukushima Japan 164–167, 168; premonition of war 167–168, 171; Princess Mononoke 159, 160, 173, 175, 176, 177–178, 181, 182, 185, 196, 220; protagonists 172–173; and purity and corruption 186–188, 190; relevance 161; retirement announcement 167; and Shinto 160, 181; and soul 194–198, 211–212, 223, 225–226; Spirited Away 84, 159, 160, 173, 175, 181, 185, 196, 202n98; The Tale of the White Serpent 171, 172, 173–174, 178,

Index 198, 207, 211; understanding of soul 212–213; and the unseen world 175; view of human–nature relationship 160; view of nature 189; The Wind Rises 159, 163–164, 166, 168, 176 modernisation 15; negative consequences of 2, 53; negative legacy 16; positive legacy 16–17 modernisation/globalisation paradigm, critiques of 124–126, 125 modernisation theory 31, 111, 114, 119, 143–144 modernity 31, 102, 140, 180; and animism 18, 143, 209–210, 210, 221; Cartesian dualism 185; contemporary challenges 2; destruction of soul 59; enchantment of 3–5; Ishimure Michiko's critique of 79; Japanese experience of 4–5; late modern 6; and life 2–3; liquid modern 6; nature in 3; Ogata Masato's critique of 58, 59, 74, 79, 143; scepticism about 17; second modern 6; and secularization 7–8; self-reflexive critique 117; and soul 222; and spirituality 73; Tsurumi Kazuko's critique of 143; weakening of connectedness 14 modernization 8, 24, 27, 44, 222 modernisation dilemma 217 Modō 115 money, and life 47–49; and Ogata Masato 45–49; and soul 61 monism 138, 139, 145, 146 Monnet, Livia 81, 84 monopolistic capitalism 80 monotheism 20–21 moral power 94 Morris-Suzuki, Tessa 22, 128, 154n109 moyai (tying boats together) 14–15, 57, 223 moyau 14–15, 57 Murakami Haruki 166 Muraoka Kenichi 232 Mutual Help Society 96 My Neighbor Totoro, (film) 159, 172–173, 176, 178–179, 181, 182. Naess, Arne 121–122, 125, 146 Nakamura Keiko 58 Nakaoka Satsuki 93–94, 96 Nakao Sasuke 176–179, 201n91, 201, 202n98, 207, 212 Nakasone Yasuhiro 20 Nakazawa Shinichi 4

245

Namiwake shrine 233 Napier, Susan 185 narrative, analysis 29; knowledge 28–29 nationalism 127, 128, 160, 209; technological 95 national spirit 127 natural and human-made 188–189 natural energy 71–73 nature 5–6: connectedness with 52–58, 61, 93, 101, 115–116, 145, 210–211; definition 3; humans and 3; interconnectedness with 63; and Japan 17; life=soul=nature 206; Miyazaki Hayao and 176–179, 189, 198, 212; in modernity 3; oneness with anima 213; in postmodern animism 224; purification of 188; relationship with 17, 82–83, 176–179, 184–185, 198; Shinto's relationship with 132; and spirituality 74 nature-culture dichotomy 3–4, 17, 71, nature-human dichotomy 4, nature vs culture/human/society dichotomy 214. see also human-nature dichotomy; human-nature dualism; human-nature relationship Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (film) 31–32, 100, 160, 175; clouds of poison 161; creation 162; depiction of nature 176; Minamata connection 162; post-apocalyptic future 161–163; and present times 164; protagonist 161–162; tagline 164; theme 159; Valley of the Wind 161–162 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (manga) 160–161, 183–193, 212, 219–220; Cartesian dualisms 185–191; characters from nature 184; the Crypt of Shuwa 190–191; dead and the living 194; the Dorok Emperor 185–186, 186–187; ending 193; God 216; and good and evil 185–186; light and darkness 189–191; natural and human-made 188–189; Nausicaä’s secret room 195; negation of dualism 193; the Ohmu 184, 188, 192–193, 216; plot 183; protagonist 184–185; pure land 187–188, 190; purity and corruption 186–188, 190; relationship with nature 184–185; Sea of Corruption 184, 188, 192; setting 183; Slime Mould 184, 191–192 negation, of dualism 191–192, 216 Negri, Antonio 88, 205, 209 neo-liberalism 88

246

Index

Neppū (hot wind) 166 New Age culture 8, 10, 222 new animism 3, 17, 18–20, 93, 103, 116–118, 144, 210 new individualism 223 new spirituality 8, 10, 17, 24, 87 New York Times, The 101 New Zealand, Whanganui River 217 Nichibunken (International Research Center for Japanese Studies) 20 Nichi-getsu maru (Sun-moon boat) 86, 89–91 Nihonjinron (theory of Japaneseness) 20, 24, 31, 128 Nihon Kenkyu [Japanese Studies] 20 Nihonshoki (The Chronicles of Japan) 25 Niigata, methyl-mercury poisoning 45 non-anthropocentric, discourse 147; paradigm 124–125; design of the life-world 226; view of the world 124, 144. see also post-anthropocentric world nonhumans 144–145, 217, 218–221 nostalgia 174–175 Notehelfer, Fred 217 nuclear-accident-related death, risk of 12 nuclear accidents. see Chernobyl nuclear accident; Fukushima nuclear disaster nuclear catastrophe. see Fukushima nuclear disaster nuclear crisis 16, 21 nuclear lobby 16 nuclear refugees 12 Nuclear Safety Commission 5 nuclear village, power of 13 Obon (honoring the dead) 131 Ogata Fukumatsu 44, 47, 50, 60, 224 Ogata Masato 29–30, 43–74, 131, 178, 214; animism 209, 210, 210–211; autobiography 43, 48–49, 87; background 43–49; childhood 44, 51; and Chisso 51–52; Chisso wa watashi de atta [Chisso within, or Chisso was I] 51, 87; connectedness 101; connectedness with nature 52–58, 61, 210–211; connectedness with self 49–52; connectedness with soul (tamashii) 58–61, 65; core of philosophy 55; crisis of subjectivity 46–47; critique of modernity 58, 59, 74, 79, 143; cultural reference 206; death of father 44, 47; dialogical relationship 68; essence of philosophy 57;

ethical breakthrough 215; health deterioration 48; inner self 67; intense thinking 50; Ishimure Michiko memorial service speech 89; life-world philosophy 23, 30, 49, 49–74, 62, 100, 145, 148, 185, 189, 210–211, 215; memory of life 146, 197, 206, 224; Minamata disease 43, 44, 52; Minamata disease incident 65, 69; Minamata Tokyo Exhibition, 1996 86, 89; and money 45; nervous breakdown/period of madness 48–49, 49–50, 51, 59, 60, 61, 100, 142, 148, 206, 210; new 65–66; and nonhumans 219; notion of life 63; objective of his life 66–67; and questions 67–70; rejection of money 47–49, 50; relationship with father 50; repositioning of selfhood 68; search for answers 43–44; search for connectedness 74; sense of connectedness 59–60; sense of dialogue 64–65; sense of responsibility 53; sense of self 102; soul-imbuing experience 54; status 43; tanka-poems 75n36; understanding of soul 69, 212–213, 222, 223, 224–225; use of moyai 14–15 Ohmu 184, 188, 192–193, 216 Ōizumi Mitsunari 173 Omoka-sama 83, 206–207 Onodera Shō 232 organic mercury compounds 43, 44, 74n2, 76n82 original DNA 99–100, 101, 211 original sin (genzai) 64 original vow, the 64, 65 Origuchi Nobuo 183 other world, the 83, 100, 175, 206–207. see also the unseen world Ōuchi Hisahi 14 oyasama 92–93, 97–98, 99–100 Pacific Ocean, radioisotope contamination 5–6 Pálsson, Gìsli 116, 152n48 pantheistic 19, 21, 26, 27, 127, 139, 157, 219, 222 paradigm: environmental injustice 123–124, 124, 125–126, 125; indigenous 125, 125; modernisation/ globalisation 124–126, 125 paradigm shift 210–213 Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow (Ishimure) 79, 84, 93–95 paralogy 30, 59

Index parent figures (oyasama) 23 parent of grass (kusa no oya) 23, 228n17 paternalistic authority, fall of 93–98 perspectivism 152n48 personhood: animals 83–84; of rivers 217. see also personification personification 184, 189. see also animals; personhood place consciousness 122–123, 143, 146–147, 220 place, spirituality of 27 place to be (ibasho) 71, 91 place where one can search for the salvation of one’s own soul 52 Plumwood, Val 117, 144 poetry: haiku 225; tanka 101, 112, 142, 147–148, 207, 225 pollution, worst cases 11. see also industrial pollution; Minamata disease incident; Yokkaichi city, air pollution; itai-itai [it-hurts, it-hurts] disease polytheistic 20, 26, 27, 127, 139, 157n202 Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (film) 159, 163, 176 Porco Rosso (film) 159 post-anthropocentric world 89, 227 post-Cartesian social science 3, 116 post-colonialism 119 post-Fukushima era 164–167, 168, 226, 231–236, 232 post-humanism 218–219 post-industrial society 87–88 post-materialist society 9–10, 87 post-Minamata Japan 226 post-war reconstruction 10–11 postmodern animism 30, 198, 205, 210–215, 217–220, 222–224, 226; and lacuna of social sciences 73; and natural science 226; not religion or philosophy of religion 223; as a philosophy of the life-world 224–227 postmodern religion 8 postmodern values 4 postmodernism 16, 29, 73–74, 119 prayers 65, 92 price of life 44–47, 50 Prigogine, Ilya 138, 226 Princess Mononoke (film) 159, 160, 173, 175, 176, 178, 181, 182, 185, 196, 220 Privy Council 134 Protect Fukushima Children from Radiation Meeting, 2011 98 Purdy, Jedediah 218, 218–219, 228n30

247

pure land 187–188, 190 purity and corruption 186–188, 190 quantum physics 139, 146 questions: Ogata Masato and 67–70; and soul (tamashii) 69 Quinney, Richard 16 radiation 5, 12–13, 14, 53, 98, 163–164, 167, 218, 220 re-enchantment 3–4, 231–236 relational epistemology 19, 147, 152n48 religion, Eurocentric bias 9 religiosity, postmodern 19, 222–223 Reporters Without Borders 165 respect 19; for life 55 responsibility 67, 68, 219 reverse-Orientalism 22 rivers 82–83; personhood of 217 Sacred Forests (Chinju-no-mori) Project 235–236 sacred groves/forests (chinju-no-mori) 146, 236 Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de 173–174, 207, 211, 213 Sakagami Yuki 95, 96 Sakurai Tokutaro 129, 146 sarin gas attack, Tokyo 88 Sasaki Nobutsuna 112 Science of Thought, The 112 scientism 122–125, 143, 220 Sea of Camellias, The (Ishimure) 81, 82–84 Sea of Corruption (fukai), 184, 188, 192; Sea of Decay 162, 184 seawalls 235–236 second modern/modernity 6 Second World War 25 secularization 7–8, 222 self, the 28–29; connectedness with 49–52; inner 67–68, 69; question of 140–142, 147–148; return to 52; sense of 102; and social change 147–148; as the core of mandala-like conceptualization of animism 149, 148 selfhood 50, 68, 74 Sen, Amartya 120 Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands issue 167 senzo (ancestors) 92–93 Setouchi Jakushō 84 shaman 74, 80–81, 102, 197; shamanism 21, 27; shamanistic 134, 211 Shimazono Susumu 10

248

Index

Shinto 10, 206; ancestor worship 130–131; and animism 20, 126, 126–135, 145, 160; animistic underpinnings 4; characteristics 130, 130; definition 126; folk 23, 24–28, 129, 130–134, 130, 135, 146–147, 215, 236; folk and institutionalised Shinto (conceptual map) 130, 134, 135; folk Shintoism 126–127, 181; grassroots 132; institutionalised 23, 25, 31, 128, 129, 130–131, 130, 132, 134, 135, 146, 181, 211, 236; key narratives 25; local shrines 129, 130, 231, 233, 234, 236; and Miyazaki Hayao 160, 181; rationalization of shrines (Imperial Ordinance of 1906) 132–134; relationship with nature 132; shrine 24–25, 128, 132, 209; state 24, 24–25, 26, 128, 234; survival of 129; village shrines 189, 232, 234. see also kami Shinto Political League 128 Shiranui-kai Fishing Dispute 93–95 Shiranui Sea, the 43, 81, 83, 162, 199n23 Shiranui Sea Comprehensive Academic Research Team 113–114 Shishi-gami, the deer god of the forest (in Princess Mononobe) 175, 182, 194, 220; as Nightwalker or Didarabocchi 182 Shiva, Vandana 120, 125 Shōwa Denko 11 shrines 181, 209, 236; chinju-no-mori (sacred grove/forest) 146; local 129, 130, 231, 233, 234, 236; loss of 134; rationalisation 132–134; as tsunami markers 232, 233–234; village 189, 232, 234 shrine Shinto 24–25, 128, 132, 209 shukkongi (ceremony to invoke the spirit of the deceased) 90 silent springs 1–3 single-cell organisms 137, 221. see also mitochondria; micro-organisms; slime moulds; star sands slime moulds 137–139, 192–193, 219, 226, 227n6; Slime Mould (in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, manga version) 184, 191–192. see also Minakata Kumagusu Smith, Eugene 15 social change 87; and the self 147–148; suppression of 47 social class 9, 22, 80, 81, 94, 126

social science: and animism 73; language 80–81; limit of 16; post-Cartesian 3, 116; question of soul 59; and soul 91, 222–223; and spirituality 222–223; spirituality in 7–10 sociological imagination 31, 149n1 solar energy 72 something out there 224–225; ‘something’ 67, 136, 139, 182–183, 197 Sonoda Sunao 94–95 soul-imbuing (tamashiire) 5 soul narratives, Minamata incident 17 soul (tamashii) 5, 43, 87, 90; and animation 194–198; and animism 91; another name for life 63–64, 67, 69; of children 171–175, 178, 211–212; connectedness with 58–61, 65; definition 92; dialogue with 64–65; enrichment of 8, 59; Ishimure Michiko's view of 79, 89–93, 100–101, 197, 213, 223; and life 64, 224; life=soul=nature 206; Miyazaki Hayao and 194–198, 212–213, 223, 225–226; and modernity 222; and money 61; Ogata Masato's understanding of 69, 212–213, 222, 223, 224–225; in postmodern animism 226; question of 59, 194–198; and questions 69; return to 69; salvation of 52, 61, 65; and social science 91, 222–223; as something out there 224–225; and spirituality 117; tendency to move 67; and thinking 67; Tsurumi Kazuko's view of 90, 136, 213, 223 Special Secrets Bill 167 Spinoza 153n72 Spirited Away (film) 17, 84, 160, 173, 175, 181, 185, 196, 202n98; (film) 159, 160 spirit, language of 81 spirits 126 spiritual community 57 spiritual intellectuals 10, 20 spiritualism 18, 195, 223 spirituality 5; and connectedness 15; emerging interest in 8–9, 143; and environmental ethics 6–7; Eurocentric bias 9; literature 8; marginalisation of 8; and modernity 73; and nature 74; new 8, 10, 17, 24, 87; of place 27; postmodern quest for 71; in social science 7–10; and social science 222–223; and soul (tamashii) 117; understanding of 7

Index spiritual wealth 9–10 Sprenger, Guido 152n48 star sands 221; Foraminifera (Baculogypsina and Calcarina) state Shinto 24, 24–25, 26, 128, 234. see also institutionalised Shinto stone statues 64–65 Studio Ghibli 17, 31–32, 159, 165–166, 174, 176, 179, 194, 213 subconscious mind 196–197 subjectivity: crisis of 46–47; inner self 67–68, 69; search for 74; shutaisei 50; thinking as basis of 67 Sueki Fumihiko 22, 26 Sugihara Yuri 95 Sugimoto Eiko 90 Sugita Shunsuke 170, 183, 195 Sunada Ami 175 super-modernisation, end of period of 12 super-modernity 3 supernatural, the 7 supirichuaru (spiritual) 87 supraplace force 126 sustainable development 116, 120 sustainable practices, fisherman 56 Suzuki Toshio 160, 164–167, 168 system society 68, 70–73, 73, 212. see also life-world, the Tada Tomio 99, 106n78 Taisho Period 60 Takahashi Genichiro 166 Takahata Isao 166 takazareki 228n19 Tale of the White Serpent, The (film) 171, 172, 173–174, 178, 198, 207, 211 tamashii (soul). see soul tamashiire (soul-imbuing) ceremony 114, 150n17 tangible life 63 tanka poems 101, 112, 142, 147–148, 207, 225 Taoism 21 technological nationalism 95 techno-natural orders 3 Teeuwen, Mark 128, 129, 134 theoretical framework 27–28 Theory of Japaneseness (Nihonjinron) 20, 24, 31, 128 thinking, and soul 67 thyroid cancer 12 Time 5 Tokaimura Fuel Plant incident 47

249

Tokugawa, era 22; Period 132, 154n109 Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) 5, 12–13, 13, 47, 216 Tokyo, sarin gas attack 88 Tokyo Shimbun 166 Tokyo, University of 86 totemism, and other different ontologies 152n48 Totoro, in My Neighbor Totoro 159, 168, 172–173, 175–176, 178–179, 181–182, 194, 207 Toyama, cadmium poisoning 45; Prefecture 11 traditional cultures 121. see also intangible cultural heritage translocal alliances 220–221 triple disaster, 11 March 2011 (earthquake, tsunami and nuclear incident) 1, 6, 7, 14, 71, 81, 129, 163, 205, 231, 233, 234, 236 Tsuchimoto Noriaki 86 Tsuda College 112 tsumi (sin) 61, 65 tsunami, 11 March 2011 1, 163, 231–232, 232, 233–234, 235–236; tsunami line, the 233–234; tsunami markers 232, 233–234 Tsurumi Kazuko 5, 14, 23, 24, 28, 30, 31, 43, 54, 84, 101, 111–149, 205, 214; on ancestor worship 131; animism 111, 113, 116–118, 125, 131, 143–149, 207, 209, 210, 211; The Animist Ethic and the Spirit of Endogenous Development 124; critique of modernity 143; cultural background 112–113; cultural references 207; encounter with Minamata 113–116, 143–144, 147, 207, 211; and Ishimure Michiko 84, 90–91; Kazuko Tsurumi: The Adventure of Ideas 111; mandala 141; on Minakata Kumagusu 138–139, 140; near-death experience 142, 147–148, 157n225, 211; and nonhumans 219; and Shinto 126, 126–135; tanka poems 101, 112, 142, 147–148, 207; Theory of Endogenous Development 111; theory of endogenous development 116–118, 118–126, 136, 142, 143–144, 147, 152n60, 215, 219; Tsurumi Kazuko Mandala 111; view of soul 90, 136, 213, 223 Tsurumi Shunsuke 112 Tsurumi Yusuke 112 Turner, Victor 71

250

Index

Turning Point 178 Tylor, Edward 17–18, 101, 210 Uchida Tatsuru 98 Ui Jun 95 Umehara Takeshi 20–22, 84 United Nations Development Programme 120 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 120, 208 United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development 116 unseen world, the 175, 194. see also the other world Vassar College 112 Vatican, the 217 village shrines 189, 232, 234 Villages of the Gods (Ishimure) 81–82, 96–98 vitalism 18, 145, 146, 228n32, 223 Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo 19, 152n48 Watanuki Reiko 113 Weber, Max 7, 111 Weberian disenchantment 111, 118. see also disenchantment

Westernisation-modernisationsecularisation 222 West, the 23, 121; intellectual domination of 118; Western civilization 21 Whanganui River, New Zealand 217 What Now? Another Development (Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation) 116, 119–120 White, Lynn 24 Wind Rises, The (film) 159, 163–164, 166, 168, 176 working of life (inochi no hataraki) 63, 64 world risk society 1–2, 5–6, 6–7, 217; world-risk-society Japan 3, 5–6, 84 World Values Surveys 8, 9, 87 Wright Mills, C. 149n1 Yamao Sansei 25–26 yamawaros 82–83 Yamuna (river), the 217 Yanagita Kunio 25, 31, 129, 131, 134, 146, 207, 209, 211 Yasuda Yoshinori 20–21, 22 Yasukuni Shrine 128 Yokkaichi city, air pollution 45; petrochemical complex 11 Yoshii Masazumi 14