In the Realm of a Dying Emperor

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title: Norma Field. 1991. In the Realm of a Dying Emperor. NY: Pantheon Books.

Main points:

Part II. In June 1988 the supreme court of Japan overturned the decision of two lower courts to announce the termination in failure of a legal case regarding a window’s 15 year fight with a Shinto organization that had enshrined her deceased husband. Norma read about this case in the New York Times. (108) The significance of the suit lay beyond the merely legal: it reflected the incommensurateness of judicial capability. (108)

- in consultation with her church minister, Mrs. Nakaya filed a law suit in 1973 against the Yamaguchi prefectural branch of the SDF and the Veteran’s Association for violating the constitutional provision for the separation of religion and state, as well as for violating  her religious rights. (110) The vicissitudes of Japanese Christian could be extended back to the favorable reception in the 16th century accorded to the Jesuit. (115)

-Yamaguchi, the place where Mrs. Nakaya returned to after her husband’s death, was a prefecture on the west side of the island of Honshu. (117) Mr. Urabe, the husband of a close friend of Mrs. Nakaya, was asked to meet Norma at the station. Mrs. Nakaya lived in Yuda at the outskirts of Yamaguchi city. Yuda was an old hot-spring town. (119)

- Urabes and Mrs. Nakaya belonged to different church in the same district; they became acquainted through church activities. (120)

- Japanese interest in reviving the official character of Yasukuni shrine was already apparent by the mid-fifties. In the late 1960s, LDP sponsored a series of legislations that aimed to establish government funding for the shrine. This in turn prompted opposition by progressive and religious groups, including churches in Yamaguchi. (120)

- Mrs. Nakaya’s son Takaharu was a sixth-grader when charges were filed in court against the SDF and the Veteran’s association. That unleashed a barrage of threat and vituperation by mail and by telephone toward Mrs. Nakaya. (134)

- in 1985, the Prime Minster of Japan offered flowers to Yasukuni shrine purchased with public funds and bowed once. This new style of worship was presumably designed to circumvent objections based on Section 3 of Article 20 that was forbidding religious activity.(140) The insistent gesture of cabinet members paying tribute at Yasukuni shrine mighty seem quaint, if not baffling. (140) During such time the presence of courageous minority becomes especially precious.(140)

- people’s rights become invisible without testing. In a society such as Japan where the overwhelming majority believed they were the mainstream, the burden of the minority to struggle for the rights of all was but an unbearably onerous. The minorities did battle for themselves and for majorities. (141)

- Mrs. Nakaya herself was under no coercion to participate in any aspect of her husband’s enshrinement. That portion of his husband’s remains which she took from his (in-law) father’s home was deposited in a memorial vault at her church. This was a distracting point for many. If the widow had access to part of the remains, why should she object if some other part of him were enshrined elsewhere? In fact, enshrinement in Shinto never involves the remains, but only the names of the dead. (141)

What then were the grounds of Mrs. Nakaya’s suit? (141) First, the Yamaguchi prefectural branch of the SDF, by cooperating with the Veteran’s Association in seeking the enshrinement, violated Article 20, section 3 of the Constitution which barred the state from religious activity. (142)

- the elaborate denial of the religious nature of SDF activity had showed a way to read the legal terms of a postwar version in that Shinto was not so much about religion but folk custom. It was important to point out that it was a strategy of dismissing quibbles over the relationship of state and religion. The ‘new form’ of worship demonstrated by PM Nakasone at Yasukuni was an example. The Supreme Court decision was a revealing confirmation of the social and political truisms of contemporary Japan:  don’t be different; don’t waste energy fighting the courts against politics strategies masquerading as common sense; understand that the religion of Japan had its Japanese-ness. (147)

- according to a Shinto priest, Shinto is not really a religion. Therefore discussion about separation of church and state were beside the point. Shinto was something else, perhaps folk custom. The Japanese had long tolerated and adopted multiple religions. (151)

- Nakaya Takafumi continued to be enshrined at the Yamaguchi prefectural Defense-of-the-nation shrine. Mrs. Nakaya said it didn’t bother her anymore. She had come to summarize the trial as protest against the state’s use of her husband’s death.(152)

(to be continued)