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One World and the Japanese Religion
Akiko Miyake
June l2, 2000 When Mr. Mori, our Prime Minister, told that Japan is a country of gods
with the Emperor at the center, I understand that he has never studied
the Japanese religion in comparison with other religions in the world.
By the Japanese religion, I mean the Shintoism. It is a kind of hero-worship,
worshiping the spirit of great men in history. "Tenjinsama,"
for instance, is the spirit of Sugawara-no-Michizane. It is a noble religion
to inspire virtue and courage, but it never teaches Japanese people the
idea that all the people on the earth are brothers and sisters. Let us
call this idea "the Universal Brotherhood of Man."
Our present world is getting smaller and smaller, being more and more unified. In such a world, any religion, not holding the Universal Brotherhood, is not only useless, but also can be dangerous, for it may excite a conflict, even a war. A Hindoo Indian once told me. When he was a little boy, he was taught that all the women in the world are either his mothers or his sisters. We have no such beautiful mediation in our culture. Christianity, too, believes in One God, who creates all men and women and loves each one as His child.
We, Japanese people, believe that religion is the most awful and dangerous
thing. Although it teaches the universal brotherhood, it causes one war
after another, as the Jewish people and Arab Moslems are doing in Jerusalem.
This is quite true. But I traveled Europe last month, and met a group of
some 500 Christians in Italy who are trying to correct their mistakes in
the past.
An Italian woman called Chiara Lubich built in a lovely mountain near Florence
a Christian community, "Focolare," meaning in Italian, a fire-place.
They are working not only to unify the Catholic Church and the Protestant
Churches, but also to make peace between Christians and Moslems. It was
really pleasant to visit them and discuss with the people from 20 different
countries. They are training young people and sending them to 70 different
countries for increasing the "Focolare." Two small branches were
made in Tokyo and Nagasaki.
Going northward from Florence over the Alps, I found the German Focolare
near Augusburg. There I learn that German Christians must make peace with
Moslems as soon as possible. So many Turks are coming to work and sending
their Moslem children to German public schools where Christianity is being
taught. This is why the Pope, John Paul II, visited Jerusalem recently.
To the surprise of everybody the Pope asked the pardon of Moslems for the
historical errors that Europeans committed, to attack Jerusalem as the
Crusade in the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries.
So this is how some European Christians are trying to make the universal brotherhood actual. Are we Japanese in the same movement? No, not yet.. It seems we are strangely slow to understand ourselves and to make ourselves understood. We can not even ask for the pardon of the Koreans as properly as they want. Is it not important for us Japanese, to study our own religion and to compare it with other religions? Then we will find out the way to join the brotherhood of the mankind on the earth.
（2000年6月12日 関西トーストマスターズクラブ 例会 スピーチ原稿 B-7）
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