Spiritual Home

Spiritual Home

The fascinating journey of the Japanese nation reaches back several thousand years, and due to the geographical nature of the archipelago of Japan, have imbued the Japanese with a sense of their uniqueness and cultural eminence.

However, in essence, the Japanese suffer from the lack of a spiritual center, which causes them to feel out of place and alone in the world.

The Japanese are still a very much tribal and territorial people, this fundamental and deep attachment to their home—furusato— “birthplace” “home village” “hometown” or “place of origin.” is deep and profound.

Still, the Japanese have a longing for a spiritual home.

Why is this so?

Virtually all of Japan’s early culture was imported from China, first via the Korean peninsula and then directly from the Middle Kingdom itself.

Despite long periods of virtual isolation from China, the Japanese are still in the process of purging themselves of innermost feelings that they were little more than imitation the Chinese, which they clearly are not.

What truly makes Japan unique among nations is that since the middle of the 19th century, the primary influence on Japan has been America and Europe.

This has once again imposed a burden on the Japanese psyche by overlaying alien concepts and customs which often conflict with the traditional protocols of the Japanese, which still contributes to cultural friction within the Japanese society itself.

It seems the Japanese are still searching for their true spiritual furusato, and many Japanese still say China is their spiritual homeland.

This is true only in the sense that the Japanese innately understood the philosophy of Confucianism, and this moral and humanistic protocol serves as the foundation of the moral and spiritual character of the Japanese.

Indeed, Confucianism and its concepts and thought processes embodied within have no counterpart in the Western psyche, nor is it possible for mono-lingual Anglophone Occxies to comprehend these timeless humanistic principles embodied by the life of Confucius.

Confucianism embodies a worldview, a social ethic, a political ideology, a scholarly tradition, and a way of life and is sometimes viewed as a philosophy and sometimes as a religion—in fact it is both.

It is an all encompassing way of thinking and living that entails ancestor reverence and a profound human-centred religiousness, which in the case of the Japanese is structured around Form Order Process.

Could this protocol of Form Order Process be rooted in the Japanese love of the antiquity of Japanese culture and rituals which is still clearly evident in the highly stylized society of Japan today.

The journey of Confucius was a search for roots, which he recognized as grounded in humanity’s deepest needs for belonging and communicating, thus giving one’s ephemeral life purpose and meaning.

Confucius considered himself a transmitter who consciously tried to reanimate the old in order to attain the new.

This is something that is undeniably rooted in the society, culture, and Japanese psyche.

This is evident in the original Japanese notion of kaizen which is exactly what Confucius discovered on his profound journey—reanimate the old in order to attain the new—this is what the Japanese do intrinsically.

One could actually say the Japanese took spiritual concepts originating in China while molded these fundamental humanistic principles into a unique blend of East and West culture and concepts, creating the third pillar of civilization—Japan.

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