３．The three Basis of human life
 

 3-1 The triangle of human life

  The ancient had constructed great civilization, but most of them perished in the stream of history and left desert on the earth, in spite of their prosperity. After their ruin, the culture of theism that was born in Middle East spread all over the world except some parts of East Asia. It was a mystery for me that many people in the world have received theism, though it has caused many cruel religious wars and many people have been killed under the name of God until now. Probably it is also mystery for most of Japanese intellectual people, because the killing under the name of God seems silly utterly. Nevertheless we can say that the tradition of theism has been most effective in the world.

  For solution of this mystery, we must make clear the limit of ancient civilization, because theism appeared with ruin of it. Firstly ancient society was based on the principle of race, in which benefit of their race was most respected. In such community they used to pursue their own profit and built their nation without care of outer races and natural surroundings around them. Consequently most significant their defect is firstly they had little restraint from increasing of their desire, and secondary had few ways to communicate with other racial community for peaceful coexistence. Their nation often grew rapidly without order, like cancer cells, and also repeated battles with others, but at last, in most cases, they left only the remains of ancient civilization in desert.

  Theism, in this sense, gave this standpoint for reflection by proposing the idea of universality. Other religions or thoughts gave us universal ideas for our behavior, for example mercy in Buddhism, JIN (virtue) or REI (etiquette) in Confucianism. But theism was most effective in world history, because it proposed the idea of creation of whole world and gave us the common myth for communication and the consciousness of finiteness of humanity. Other religious or ethical thoughts showed Supreme Being as thing that can not be described negatively, but Theism proposed it as unique God who created the world positively. And this made theism spread all over the world and drove racial gods out of their history.

  I call it divinity, and propose it with individual and society as essential elements of human life. These three elements compose triangle like following illustration. Here the base line of triangle means dimension of human communication as creature, and its height means dimension between finiteness and infiniteness. Theism effectively controls and restrains from human society by showing definitely the superiority of divinity to human.
 
 

＊improvement and revolution

 Japanese people tend to solve their historical crises by reformation, not by revolution, because they used to change their social system partly, but not change their spiritual base radically. They well adjust their system to historical changes, but it is limited only in its parts and does not refer to the whole. The people who live in MANDARA world and are satisfied with its harmony can not recognize what the world is, though they understand how it is.

  In their communication from face to face, they decide their behavior by their direct motivations from their neighbor, but they lack the point for reflection from which they look over their own society as a whole. This tendency is shown in the fact their historical changing are always brought by foreign pressure which is called ‘GAIATU（the pressure from outer)'.
 

 2-2 The Enlargement of communication field

  Originally Japanese worship their nature itself as divinity, and even if they seem to worship something concrete like a statue of Buddha, they believe only in the order of nature and its harmony. Consequently MANDARA is typical example to show us their religious sense as well as their thought. They will not allow the being beyond nature like God, because for them the nature is everything including human. Here is the most important difference of religious senses between theism and Japanese religion that should be called naturalism. In the former the idea of divinity is explicit, but in the latter it is implicit and they will keep their harmonious coexistence with it by maintaining it under silence. 'KUU（vanity)'or 'MUSIN（insentience）'is conscious expression that dare to describe Japanese religious sense by negative way. Hence divinity in Japanese is so well covered in their silence not to be found by others easily, especially by western people.

  Such harmonious relationship between nature and human is found always in primitive community, but it has been lost through our history, because our society have became more opposed to nature, as it got more strong power and had more influence to the nature. Consequently, in primitive ages, three essential elements of human life were included in their scope of community. But according to increasing of social power or its influences to nature they became to contradict with each other, and, at last, each occupied its own independent position in human life.In this sense, we can say that theism appeared in order to balance them from higher standpoint than primitive or racial religion.

  It should be noticed that this process from ancient to universal religion (like theism) is in accordance with enlarging of human communication field. Most of modern Japanese social problems are caused by the contradiction between their old community depending on consciousness of family and new larger communication field in industrial society. Though Japanese WA-spirit (the spirit that gives priority to harmonious human relation over individuality) has well confined these three elements within their field of communication of family, it will be impossible.
 
 

＊ Private belief

  Private belief is very dangerous for Japanese people, because their community is based on the assumption that each member recognizes others inner minds completely. Here is the reason why they could not receive Christianity, and for them, whether it is religious or not, private belief is fearful, as far as it shows individual inner territory which others can not invade.
 

＊To agree and to echo

  WA-spirit （the spirit to respect harmonious human relationships) is unique ethical ideal for Japanese. They used to insist this ideal in their community, even if individuality is sacrificed. It is true that many Japanese people believe their economical success was brought by it and consider it as the secret of their prosperity. Actually their ideal of WA is nothing but morality for maintaining their same quality, and we can not but grant it has been effective for their economical growth. But their concept of WA is not different from its original sense, because Confucius distinguish WA and to be same clearly.

 The master said, “The gentleman agree with others without being an　echo. The small man echoes without being in agreement. : Confucius / THE ANALECTS ,Book  23 ”

［子日、君子和而不同、小人同而不和、：論語  子路十三，二三］

  For him Wa is based on the agreement among various and different individuals and not Dou (to be same or to keep same quality) which is superficial echoes. Nevertheless, the Japanese do not distinguish WA from DOU and regard the latter as the former. It is shown in the name of ‘DOUWAKYOUIKU’ which means education against discrimination.
 

 3-3 The difference between convenant and contracts

  Primary divinity as grantor of human communication is beyond the line of human community between individual and society, and as I already pointed out, it proposes us the reflection point of our social life. By this reflection, moreover, it mediates between individuals and society with keeping their balance. In human community, their communication used to be managed by contracts decided among individuals, but they need originally two elements of human communications: rules for communicating and trust to others, and also these elements are the fundamental conditions of communication, and so there must be some backgrounds to satisfy them. Theism proposed such backgrounds of our communication under the name of "convenant" and gave us fundamental and universal base for it. During human community composed of already known people, they needs few explicit principles to manage their communicating, but after they need to communicate with outer unknown people, they must have common basement of their communication. Theism firstly gave it by the myth of creation of universe by unique God, and founded their universal rules for communicating.

  This difference between contracts among humans and covenant in theism has significant meanings, because it shows the difference of two dimensions in triangular figure of three elements; horizontal means human usual communicating, and vertical means relation between God and human. By the latter the former is relatively re-grasped in larger scope and gets deeper and more universal foundation. Hence, even if human society seems managed only by various rules made by human, there must be the Law that is the foundation of them.

  Modern Japanese social confusion is caused by the fact that they lost the Law by rapid modernization, Divinity that grantee their Law had been always hidden behind their society and left in unconsciousness, and so they did not think they must maintain it against modernization. They have never felt the need of explicit idea of divinity and never been conscious of human defect that demonstrate finiteness of human. Therefore, they do not notice the radical human limitation like sin, and do not know how it should be forgiven through divinity. "Timores omnium contra omnes"among silent people is caused by the fact that they have no explicit Law to forgive human defeat publicly. Japanese must work as perfectly as possible, because it is not definite whether he will be forgiven or not, as long as it depends on silent others. Even if, in most cases, one who failed seems to be forgiven in their community, it may be only superficial and pretense.

  This lack of definite standard of forgiveness makes the division between HONNE (inner true mind) and TATEMAE (principles for outer), because they must pretend themselves to be perfect for avoiding blame from others. At any rate, they must fear the people, who blame them by human rules, as long as there is no definite Law to forgive them. In this point, they are different from other people who have the Law in which human defect is already supposed as sin. From the viewpoint of theism, human defect can and must be forgiven by God who established Law, and originally we are protected by Law, but not blamed by it.
 
 

＊direction and command

  The difference between Law and other concrete rules should be regarded as difference between direction and command. Law directs us how to do for our purposes, but concrete rules command us what must or must not do regarding our will. For Japanese most of orders belong to the latter and KOUSOKU（the formal rules in Japanese school）is most typical example of it.
 

＊Lack of forgiveness

  For Japanese who do not have public Law for forgiveness, whether he is forgiven or not depends on silent others and to keep silent usually means ambiguous forgiveness. The most typical example of it is found in relation between Japanese nations and their emperor. They insisted that they had to invade and harm other Asian people for the name of ‘TENNOU', but on the other hand, their emperor HIROHITO confessed that he had to proclaim the war forced by his nations. And after this war, he visited all quarters in Japan to entreat his nations for his forgiveness, but, on the other hand, they felt they get forgiveness of war by visit of their emperor. Here can be found special relation of interdependence in which Japanese responsibility for the war was covered.

  Japanese people had not felt their responsibility for the war until recent days, though they harmed and killed many other Asian people. It is because their imagination to other human was limited in Japanese community in which this special relation of interdependence exists. Moreover this is also the reason why many Japanese dare to ignore the TENNOU's responsibility to the war because if they admit TENNOU's responsibility for the war, they cannot but notice their own responsibilities and be confront with their outer world. If they had public Law for their forgiveness, they would be conscious their responsibility for the war.I think the TENNOU-HIROHITO's responsibility for the war is same as other Japanese nations, but he had been also the special victim for avoiding Japanese responsibility to Asian people who was harmed in the war. At least, he lost the chance to be forgiven truly by denial of his responsibility to war.
 

 3-4 Two routes for human self realization

  In the triangle figure of human life, individual is start point, because individual human beings construct their society and worship divinity. Hence we must say all human life begin with individual human action, but it means that his action must be related with other two elements equally. There are two types in personal way of behavior: one is more related to society and another more to divinity. The former type of people used to have more interest in concrete things out of him than abstract and should be regarded as ‘extroversive’ person. On the other hand, the latter type of people used to be more attracted abstract things in him than concrete and should be regarded as ‘introversive’ person. Each type of person realizes himself according to different routes of human activity in the triangular figure. In route 1 (extroversive), individual action firstly constructs their society and supports divinity by social power. In route 2 (introversive), it restrains or controls their society seeking the divinity.

  Human life consists in the balance of these two ways of human action, but rapid enlargement of communication field broke it. As this field became larger and went over the limit of familiar communication, each three elements emerged as independent and must be integrated again by the idea of universality. Universal religion or thought appeared for balancing them and the Middle Ages is the age that they managed to balance their society by human spiritual effort. But, in modern age, their balance has been lost so much that extroversive personality is considered too much, and introversive people cannot but sustain a disadvantage.

  This collapse of balance of human life is common problem for all people on the globe, because the wave of modernization spreads all over the world. But how it raises is different in each cultural area. In Japanese community, extroversive people have so much advantage comparing with introversive to balance. For modern Japanese the most serious problem is that they have few explicit principles to recover it and also they hardly feel its danger.

  Already pointed out, this problem caused by unbalance of human life appeared in the last times of ancient age as spiritual crisis of humankind. For solving it, people got the tradition of universal religion or thought which establish identity of individuality and tell the way to communicate with unknown people. In spite of their success in industry, Japanese people ignorant in the way of communication basing on the belief in universal things and think that they can solve their problems in modern age only by concrete methods. But, for radical solution of them, they must notice that they are the people without Law given by divinity beyond human.

＊the problem of theism

  Though I respect the historical role of theism in enlargement of human communication field, I will not receive it without criticism, because it seems to be the origin of the most serious problems in modern age. It demands us to believe in its myth as fact, but modern science shows us that it is not fact but only a myth. This division between myth and fact brought by modern sciences damaged religious authorities and, on the other hand, caused religious dogmatism as its reaction. Though the truth of theism can not be denied by human sciences, a religious emotion of theism is based on the myth as fact.

  Therefore, in modern age the tradition of theism will not stand this division without reforming itself. This is the reason why oriental philosophies or religions attract modern people. They will not force us their myth as fact and, rather these are only the method that suggests us what they are. Both traditions of theism and other oriental religions are needed in modern crisis of our spirits.