Japanese look to ancient traditions for strength

c. 2011 USA Today

(RNS) When uncounted thousands have died in a disaster such as last
week's earthquake and tsunami, where will the Japanese people find
spiritual strength?

Experts on Japanese culture say they'll find it in the critical,
comforting rituals of religion.

They will rely on centuries-old traditions of a distinctive Buddhist
culture and the ancient Shinto beliefs of their earliest people. Japan
is 90 percent Buddhist or Shinto or a combination of the two, with young
urban Japanese more inclined to have drifted from religious attachments.

Right now, most Japanese survivors are at the stage, like survivors
of the 9/11 attacks, of posting photos of missing loved ones. For
families who have found their dead, wakes, funeral prayers and
cremations may already be under way, said Duncan Williams, a survivor of
the Friday (March 11) quake and a scholar of Japanese Buddhism at the
University of California, Berkeley.

Seven days after the quake and tsunami, memorials will begin in
whatever temples remain near the disaster zone. In Buddhist traditions,
the seventh day ritual begins 33 years of formal mourning ceremonies,
Williams said.

Just as Christians and Jews in the West may offer prayers for those
who have died and those who mourn, so these rituals and prayers will
come from throughout Japan, as well as from Thailand and Taiwan, where
many share the Japanese form of Buddhism, said Williams, a native of
Japan.

Buddhism addresses and tries to alleviate suffering, physical and
mental. It stresses compassion while still acknowledging that death is
part of life. Monks in Japan will assure people that they survived for a
reason, Williams said.

"In the memorial services, after prayers and chants, the monks and
the people will offer all the merit, the good karma, from these rituals
to those who have perished and those who are suffering. They will pray
to the gods that "the kings of hell will not take your loved one away,"
Williams said.

Such talk of gods and hell kings doesn't sound like the meditative
Buddhism better known in the West, cultural anthropologist John Nelson
said. He's an expert on Shinto and Buddhist shrines and chairman of the
department of theology and religious studies at University of San
Francisco.

Nelson described Shinto culture as "like Native American or tribal
religions, it is strongest in rural environments. If you are in the
mountains, you speak of the mountain deities, for example. It's all
about the local spirits of that particular place, and they may have a
dual nature -- beneficial or destructive."

By contrast, Buddhism, the dominant religion now, is less about the
spirits of the natural world and more about rituals of society, family
and state, Nelson said.

"Japanese Buddhism is similar to Western religions with deities that
can be petitioned and can intervene in worldly affairs, and there are
many mechanisms to appeal to them, to pray for miracles," he said.

Even so, the idea that gods also punish people turned up Monday in
the Japanese press. Nelson said he read at online sites of two major
newspapers that the governor of Tokyo described the tsunami as
"punishment from heaven for the greed of the Japanese."