ejcjs - Postscript: Religion and the Secular in Japan: Problems in History, Social Anthropology and the Study of Religion

electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies

Discussion Paper 6 in 2004
First published in ejcjs on 20 October 2004

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Postscript

Religion and the Secular in Japan: Problems in History, Social Anthropology and the Study of Religion

by

T. Fitzgerald

Reader in Religion
University of Stirling

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About the Author

This paper is a postscript to a series of exchanges between Timothy Fitzgerald and Ian Reader on the subject of religion and the secular in Japan. In order to follow the discussion, please click on the links immediately below. Papers are listed in order of being published in the electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies.

Fitzgerald, T. (2003) 'Religion' and 'the Secular' in Japan: Problems in history, social anthropology, and religion, electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies, Discussion Paper 3 in 2003, First Posted on 10 July 2003.

Reader, Ian (2004) Ideology, Academic Inventions and Mystical Anthropology: Responding to Fitzgerald's Errors and Misguided Polemics, electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies, Discussion Paper 1 in 2004, First Posted on 3 March 2004.

Fitzgerald, T (2004) The Religion-Secular Dichotomy: A Response to Responses, electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies, Discussion Paper 2 in 2004, First Posted on 6 April 2004.

Reader, Ian (2004) Dichotomies, Contested Terms and Contemporary Issues in the Study of Religion, electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies, Discussion Paper 3 in 2004, First Posted on 10 May 2004.

Editor's comment: The editorial team at ejcjs make every effort to eliminate errors of a linguistic or factual nature. However, as our team members receive no payment for their services, we must rely on the goodwill and professionalism of our contributors. Therefore, and to repeat from our copyright statement:

In return for copyright remaining with the authors, and since the editors of ecjcs work at no financial gain to themselves, all typographical errors and errors of omission or fact that are contained in the text of articles, discussion papers, conference and seminar papers, and reviews are the sole responsibility of the author concerned.

Ian Reader (see JAWS Newsletter, 36: 82-5 and Reader, 2004a and 2004b in ecjcs) has made a number of allegations of inaccurate referencing in a discussion article of mine published in JAWS Newsletter, 35 (republished in ecjcs here). For a full list of papers in this discussion please see above.

This is how he put the matter:

When Fitzgerald does actually move from making unqualified assertions, to providing actual quotations, the problems get even worse, since he appears almost incapable of accuracy or getting hold of the right end of the stick. He says for example, that …

and he goes on to make a point about the origins of the idea of ‘religion’ at Meiji, a point which I discussed at some length in my response (Fitzgerald, 2004).

In my earlier defence I concentrated on the substantive conceptual issues Reader raised in his response because, while accuracy of referencing is an important issue, and charges of inaccuracy a sure way to sow doubt of the writer’s reliability in the reader’s mind, I had to make best use of limited space to pursue what seemed to me to be the more interesting and substantive problems. This is especially true, bearing in mind that readers who may be potentially interested would have limited time and energy for a ya-boo sucks kind of procedure.

However, now that I have been able to check the offending places where Reader says I have made mistakes, I offer this response:

JAWS, 36: 82 and Reader, 2004a. Reader says:

He [Fitzgerald] … complains that I ‘cannot explain the difference between a ritual and a religiously ritualised practice’ (No.35, 70) and gives a page reference from one of my articles…I suppose that most people reading this would assume therefore that I used the term ‘religiously ritualised practice’. Yet when I checked the offending article and looked at the page cited, the phrase was nowhere to be seen: nor does it appear elsewhere in the article, which suggests that it must have come from Fitzgerald’s own mind. Might I suggest that the reason why I did not explain the difference in the article is that I do not use the term! Simple really.

The page reference that I gave was (1995: 235) and this refers to an article listed in the bibliography “Cleaning floors and sweeping the mind” published in (eds.) Jan van Bremen and D.P.Martinez, Ceremony and Ritual in Contemporary Japan, Routledge: 227-245. Yes, I did get the word order wrong. The correct quote should have read:

“Cleaning is thus a ritualised religious practice” (1995: 235). I incorrectly wrote “a religiously ritualised practice.”

JAWS, 36: 82 and Reader, 2004a. Reader complains that Fitzgerald (JAWS 35: 53 and Fitzgerald, 2003) says he

…distinguishes between religious harmony and non-religious harmony (1991: 30) and even has a set apart place for ‘religious sincerity’”. Regarding harmony, Reader retorts that what he actually said was “harmony, which is affirmed as a social ideal in Japan, has also been transformed into ‘something of a religious ideal’ (1991: 30). I do not make a distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious harmony’ (nor do I use the term ‘non-religious harmony’, which makes distinguishing it from ‘religious harmony’ rather difficult!)

The book in question is Religion in Contemporary Japan, (1991: 30) Here is what he said on the page cited:

…Confucianism can be perceived running through much of Japanese society in general, instilling ideals of order and structuralizing respect for one’s elders and seniors both in family and social terms and asserting the importance of harmony as a social ideal. These ideals have made their mark also in the religious sphere: harmony has become transformed into something of a religious ideal while Confucian ethical teachings and concepts of filial piety have underpinned the Japanese practice of ancestor veneration. Confucianist ideas have been expressed in religious terms largely through the medium of Buddhism…(1991: 30)

A distinction between the social sphere and the religious sphere is certainly made here, otherwise why would a transformation into a religious ideal be necessary? What would it mean? And if the transformation is into a religious ideal, then the ideal must surely have been non-religious prior to the transformation. I don’t see how else to read it. Personally I find this passage typical of the book as a whole. For example, it could be interpreted as meaning that Confucian ethical teachings are essentially social, but that Buddhism provided an agency for changing (transforming) the social teaching into religious teaching. Does this mean that Confucianism is a social teaching but Buddhism is a religious one? It is precisely this kind of conceptual muddle that I am identifying.

JAWS, 36: 82/3 and Reader, 2004a. Reader complains that I did not give a proper reference for ‘religious sincerity’ when I said “Reader…distinguishes between religious harmony and non-religious harmony and even has a set apart place for ‘religious sincerity’” (JAWS, 35: 82) It is true that in this case the reference details that I gave were incorrect, and I apologise. But Reader found it for me at 1991: 16. Here is the relevant part of his text, where he is talking about the performance of death rites:

…when performed with purity and sincerity of mind, the traditional and socially prescribed reactions to the situation of death are not simply formalistic, but become vehicles of religious expression. Latent belongings to Buddhism are transformed into actualities, brought to life through ritual performances and acted out, even if only temporarily, with religious sincerity. (1991, 16).

What I gather from my reading of this passage is that “socially prescribed reactions” are temporarily transformed into religiously sincere acts. There is a move from (insincere?) social prescription to religious sincerity. The religious sincerity is “latent” and only becomes manifest at certain points during the socially prescribed procedures. But the question is still a fair one: what is the difference between religious and non-religious (or if you prefer, merely social) sincerity? Because sincerity is clearly a principle of great importance in all walks of life in Japan, and it isn’t clear to me how a distinct class of religious sincerity is in principle any different in principle from a whole range of other religious things that Reader constructs, a range that seems to amount to a distinct arena of religious motives, emotions, ideas, practices, buildings, and organisations. I do not pick out these examples to be bloody-minded. I have identified a fault-line between the religious and the non-religious that Reader and many religionists reproduce, and the distinction between ‘religious sincerity’ and some other kind of sincerity follows the logic of this fault-line.

JAWS, 36: 83 and Reader, 2004a. Referring to my fairly detailed analysis of the different meanings that can be attributed to the idea of spirit and spirituality in Reader’s work and more generally in English language constructions of the field, Reader points out that I claim he sometimes contrasts “the spiritual realm” with the physical. He goes on to say:

Thus he works out that I define the ‘religious’ as somehow being related to the ‘non-material’, the unseen. The problems with this are manifold, not least because, if readers care to check out the reference given (Reader, 1991: 46) they would find no such comments there, nor indeed comments contrasting the ‘religious’ with the physical.

Here is what Reader says one page before the reference I cited:

Memorial rites are not only performed for the souls of the human dead…for the idea that life is a coalition of the physical and the spiritual is not limited to the human realm alone. Animals and even apparently inanimate objects …may also be seen in a similar vein. (1991: 45)

Reader continues to discuss this same point on the next page (1991: 46), showing how dolls, printing blocks and aborted foetuses have memorial rites performed for them on the principle that they have spirits or souls that survive death. My page reference to the specific words written were one page out, but the page reference that I gave would lead the reader to the heart of the relevant discussion and can hardly amount to dishonesty. Since his book is all about ‘religion’ it seems reasonable to assume that he is sometimes (frequently might be truer) identifying the religious with the spiritual, as distinct from the material body. I also discuss several other significantly different ways that Reader uses the term spirit. Instead of entering into a discussion or debate about the principles involved here, Reader is merely defensive, hiding behind a claim, repeated at various points, that I make “false quotations” (JAWS, 36: 85 and Reader, 2004a) and that therefore I cannot be considered a proper scholar like him.

References

Reader, Ian (1991) Religion in Contemporary Japan, London: Macmillan.

Reader, Ian (1995) “Cleaning floors and sweeping the mind” in (eds.) van Bremen and Martinez, Ceremony and Ritual In Japan: Religious practices in an industrialised society, London and New York: Routledge.

Reader, Ian (2004a) Ideology, Academic Inventions and Mystical Anthropology: Responding to Fitzgerald's Errors and Misguided Polemics, electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies, Discussion Paper 1 in 2004, First Posted on 3 March 2004.

Fitzgerald, T (2004) The Religion-Secular Dichotomy: A Response to Responses, electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies, Discussion Paper 2 in 2004, First Posted on 6 April 2004.

Reader, Ian (2004b) Dichotomies, Contested Terms and Contemporary Issues in the Study of Religion, electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies, Discussion Paper 3 in 2004, First Posted on 10 May 2004.

About the author

Timothy Fitzgerald began his career within Religious Studies at King’s College, London, then did a PhD also at King’s College, London, in the field of philosophical theology, and then moved into social anthropology at the LSE where he did an MSc. He did field work on Ambedkar Buddhism, an untouchable movement of collective and individual transformation and liberation in Maharashtra. Soon after his first field trip to India, he moved to Japan and taught in a university near Nagoya for several years. His wife Noriko is Japanese and their children, Taro and Mari, are bilingual. His recent book is The Ideology of Religious Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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