Japan: Swords and Butterflies - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 260

In Japan today, even though wet-rice culture is no longer the spine that supports the
nation's body, deference to those above you in the hierarchy still prevails. In the great mat-
rix of obligation, it finds expression in the formality of exchanged bows and in modes of
speech. The higher the person ranks in relation to you (also in the corporation, in the civil
service, in the social structure), the deeper you bow, and the more deferential is the mode
of address. The constant exchange of calling cards serves to fix one's place instantly in the
social structure.
Giri , a sense of duty and obligation to others, was the fabric of traditional Japan. Since
the Second World War, Giri has frayed, and the rituals of deference have rubbed away. So-
cial rebels and teenagers often consider themselves exempt from the niceties of deference.
But among the elderly and in rural Japan, Giri is deeply felt, and the rituals of deference
are on fairly full display.
WHAT IS SHINTO?
Where do they come from
Those whom we so much dread?
— W. H. Auden [233]
Humans everywhere fear assault from sudden, violent, natural forces. The islands of Japan
stand inside geology's Great Ring of Fire: a chain of volcanoes and earthquakes that circle
the globe from the southern west coast of South America, northward to California, north
again to Alaska and down along the coast of Asia, rushing south into Indonesia and Hawaii.
Far beneath the earth's surface, tectonic plates grind and move against each other. Volca-
noes erupt, earthquakes explode, typhoons lash the land, and great tidal waves ( tsunami )
rush through the oceans. Sited across the Ring of Fire, about sixty of Japan's 186 volcanoes
are active, and earthquakes continue to shake Japan. In 1923 an earthquake killed 60,000
in Tokyo and 40,000 more in the surrounding territory. [234]
The ancient Japanese knew nothing of tectonic plates. To the Japanese, nature was
to be placated and worshipped. Trees, mountains, streams, and rocks each had their gods,
called Kami , and humans were expected to revere nature and worship the gods. Shinto
shrines and temples continue to bind the Japanese to the natural world. Worshippers enter
the temple grounds beneath a gateway ( Tori ) that separates the sacred from the secular, the
finite world from the endless world of the gods. Worshippers rinse mouths and wash hands
in rituals of bodily and spiritual cleansing. Shinto priests are the intermediaries between
gods and humans, placating and supplicating gods on behalf of the prayerful. [235]
Shinto shrines are dedicated to a specific Kami , who responds to prayers and entreat-
ies. On sale at temples and shrines are talismans, often small wooden placards, on which