Norito

A Translation of the Ancient Japanese Ritual Prayers - Updated Edition

Donald L. Philippi

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780691014890
  9780691068596
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691214528
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This volume presents the only English translation of the prayers of Japan's indigenous religious tradition, Shinto. These prayers, norito, are works of religious literature that are basic to our understanding of Japanese religious history. Locating Donald Philippi as one of a small number of scholars who have developed a perceptive approach to the problem of "hermeneutical distance" in dealing with ancient or foreign texts, Joseph M. Kitagawa recalls Mircea Eliade's observation that "most of the time [our] encounters and comparisons with non-Western cultures have not made all the `strangeness' of these cultures evident. . . . We may say that the Western world has not yet, or not generally, met with authentic representatives of the `real' non-Western traditions." Composed in the stately ritual language of the ancient Japanese and presented as a "performing text," these prayers are, Kitagawa tells us, "one of the authentic foreign representatives in Eliade's sense." In the preface Kitagawa elucidates their significance, discusses Philippi's methods of encountering the "strangeness" of Japan, and comments astutely on aspects of the encounter of East and West.

PREFACE

Joseph M. Kitagawa

This preface is meant to elucidate the not-so-readily apparent significance of norito, the ancient Japanese ritual prayers, with reference to Donald L. Philippi’s small but well-researched, creative, and innovative volume on the subject. Invariably our account, like all discussions of non-Western traditions, is compelled to begin with the historic encounter between East and West.

THE “STRANGENESS” OF NON-WESTERN TRADITIONS

Those who remember the days prior to World War II tell us how little the West then knew about the non-Western world. This was true even in America, which had been developing into a full-fledged Pacific power since the latter part of the nineteenth century.¹ As we look back it becomes evident, however, that World War II made a tremendous difference in Americans’ as well as in other Westerners’ familiarity with things non-Western. Here in America, particularly, the national emergency required training and instructional programs in Asian subjects, and there appeared an amazing array of books and articles on Asia, from the very scholarly to the ridiculous.²

Further, the newly aroused interest in Asia among Americans and other Westerners did not diminish at the end of the Pacific war. In fact it has grown steadily for the past thirty years, as exemplified by the phenomenal increase in Asian and other non-Western studies in various Western educational institutions. Over time, the interest in things non-Western became no longer confined to colleges and universities. To be sure, the “Orient” (as the East used to be referred to) always had an aura of mystery for a small number of Western minds, primarily symbolizing—to borrow Arthur Christy’s expression—something “far away and long ago.”³ In our time, however, we find a vastly different situation: Many Western people, for example, have come into direct contact with Japan, resulting in an increasing familiarity with Japanese art, literature, cuisine, and cinema, as well as with karate, judo, Zen meditation, and Japanese-manufactured automobiles, television sets, and videocassette recorders.

Such a rapid growth in Westerners’ interests in things non-Western and the concomitant increase in travel and dialogue between the Western and Eastern cultures are impressive, but there is much truth in Mircea Eliade’s astute and sobering observation that:

most of the time, [our] encounters and comparisons with non-Western cultures have not made all the “strangeness” of these cultures evident. . . . This is due to the fact that the encounters have been made through their more Westernized representatives, or in the mainly external spheres of economics or politics. We may say that the Western world has not yet, or not generally, met with authentic representatives of the “real” non-Western traditions.⁴

Eliade’s observation is a fair warning as we confront the strangeness of norito, the ancient Japanese form of ritual prayers, and itself assuredly one of the authentic foreign representatives in Eliade’s sense.

“MAN’S WESTERN QUEST”

To further complicate the matter of dialogue between Western and non-Western cultures, there is today a peculiar belief among some modern Western scholars and some Western-inspired young Asian scholars alike that they have already discovered the correct approaches to unfolding the mystery of the historical-cultural destiny of the entire human race. In fact, they are totally oblivious to the “strangeness” of some traditions, the strangeness that is necessarily inherent in things truly “other,” or the “authentic representatives” in Eliade’s terms. These scholars are overconfident that the approaches, perspectives, and methods they use are the most dependable and trustworthy tools for dealing with different linguistic, social, cultural, and religious traditions in all parts of the world. But these tools have a history of their own, having been developed within a Western tradition that has always attempted to integrate and interfuse all the disparate strands of human civilization into its own mundus imaginalis. It may therefore be worth reviewing briefly the intellectual heritage of what Denis de Rougemont calls “Man’s Western Quest.”⁵

In a sense, “Man’s Western Quest” can be traced all the way back to the ancient Greek notion of “system,’’ which, as Betty Heimann has cogently pointed out, implied composition in a rational order, based on a postulate that the human mind thinks systematically. No wonder Protagoras maintained that “man is the measure of all things.”⁶ In the course of time, the Greek characterization of humanity was infused with the Hebrew-Christian concept of imago dei, and it was exposed to the Persian Zoroastrian theory of the “end of the world” (eschaton), itself mediated by the Jewish and Christian traditions.

In this connection, it is worth mentioning that the Western notion of anthropos always tended to lean toward the idea of “progress,’’ a word derived from the Latin term gressus, or “step,” which suggests the act of stepping forward. “Progress” was a theoretically abstract concept that became transformed into an idea of progress, as Paul Tillich has reminded us; indeed, the idea of progress is more an interpretation of an actual historical situation in terms of the concept of progress:

There is a difference between the concept of progress and the idea of progress. The concept of progress is an abstraction, based on the description of a group of facts, of objects of observation which may well be verified or falsified; but the idea of progress is an interpretation of existence as a whole, which means first of all our own existence.⁷

Actually, Western intellectual history serves as a good illustration of how easily the concept of progress can be metamorphosed into the idea of progress, which in turn can become a doctrine of the law of history, or even an unconscious dogma of progressiveness. It is equally significant that the Western sense of history came to be amplified by a self-authenticating circular religious logic, especially after the Christian tradition became the state religion of the Roman empire in the fourth century.

Apparently, the Western tradition regarded it a sign of its own progress to encounter, and eventually absorb into its own framework, many different features of human civilization, especially during the Christian-dominated religious/cultural/social/political synthesis in medieval Europe.⁸ It is well known that medieval European civilization revolved around three pivotal institutions—the Church (sacerdotium), the state (imperium), and the university (studium). And, as might be expected, many Europeans came to be convinced that their synthesis was the most advanced and progressive in the world, because their tradition was given “cosmic legitimation” by Christianity, following the self-authenticating circular logic of its religious rhetoric.

From the perspective of ecclesiastical Christian logic, Judaism after the coming of Christ was no longer an authentic divine religion since the ancient Hebrew tradition had been fulfilled by the birth of Christianity. In a similar vein, many Europeans identified Mohammed as the false prophet in the Johannine apocalypse and thus regarded Islam as a false and misguided faith. Ironically, it was from Muslims and Jews in Spain that the Christian world learned philosophy, especially Greek philosophy, thereby benefiting both Christian Scholasticism and the medieval European university. It is pertinent, too, to remember that it was the Spaniards and the Portuguese who, having been heavily influenced by Islam (the this-worldly religion par excellence), initiated in the non-Christian world the wave of European colonialism and Christian missionary work that began almost immediately after the celebrated voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama.

THE QUESTIONABLE OBJECTIVITY OF THE CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL METHOD

In retrospect, it becomes evident that during the past five centuries the intellectual topography of Europe has undergone many significant changes inspired by, among other movements and events, the Renaissance, the Reformation, nationalism, the Industrial Revolution, and the French Revolution. It is often said that the Renaissance, by bringing down the center of gravity of the world from heaven to earth, gave birth to the new conception of civilization, that is, Western civilization as a pseudo-religion of secularized salvation. Rejecting the thesis of the corpus Christianum that civilization was to be guided by ecclesiastical authority, modern Europeans came to regard themselves as the inventors and transmitters of true civilization. Moreover, during the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, intellectuals made another cognitive somersault, whereby various fields of knowledge formerly circumscribed in the university by the domains of metaphysics and theology were liberated. In the words of Ernst Cassirer:

They no longer look to the concept of God for their justification and legitimation; the various sciences themselves now determine the concept on the basis of their specific form. The relations between the concept of God and the concepts of truth, morality, [and] law are by no means abandoned, but their directions change.⁹

In this connection, it should be noted that the Christian missionary enterprise in Asia and Africa during the nineteenth century cooperated, unwittingly or otherwise, with European colonialism, and this cooperation led to Christianity’s coming to be viewed by outsiders as an important ingredient of Western civilization. And the combined forces of Western civilization, Christian missionary programs, and colonial expansion brought about social, political, economic, cultural, and religious changes in much of the non-Western world by the end of the nineteenth century.

This is neither the time nor the place to discuss the merits and demerits of colonialism. However, it is worth quoting an Indian thinker, Ashis Nandy, who commented on colonialism from the perspective of those who were once “governed” by a foreign colonial administration. According to Nandy:

Modern colonialism won its great victories not so much through its military and technological prowess as its ability to create secular hierarchies incompatible with the traditional order [in the non-Western world]. These hierarchies opened up new vistas for many, particularly for those exploited or cornered within the traditional order. To them the new order looked like—and here lay its psychological pull—the first step towards a more just and equal world. That was why some of the finest minds in Europe—and in the East—were to feel that colonialism . . . would open up the non-West to the modern critical-analytic spirit. ... It would be critical in the sense in which the Western tradition of social criticism—from Vico to Marx—had been critical and it would be rational in the sense in which post-Cartesian Europe had been rational.¹⁰

In addition to the new secular hierarchy described by Nandy, other attributes claimed by the West, such as objectivity, neutrality, and universality (sci...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface, by Joseph M. Kitagawa
• Introduction
• Notes on Individual Norito
• Bibliography of Modern Works Consulted
• I. Grain-Petitioning Festival
• II. Kasuga Festival
• III. Festival of Oho-Imi in Hirose
• IV. Festival of the Wind Deities of Tatuta
• V. Hirano Festival
• VI. Kudo and Furu-aki
• VII. Monthly Festival of the Sixth Month
• VIII. Blessing of the Great Palace
• IX. Festival of the Gates
• X. Great Exorcism of the Last Day of the Sixth Month
• XI. Incantation Formula When the Sword is Presented by the Fumi-no-Imiki of Yamato
• XII. Fire-Pacifying Festival
• XIII. Miti-ahe no Maturi
• XIV. Festival of the First Fruits Banquet
• XV. Mi-tama-sidume no Ihahi-to no Maturi
• XVI. Grand Shrine of ISE: Grain-Petitioning in the Second Month; Regular Festivals of the Sixth and Twelfth months
• XVII. Grand Shrine of ISE: Toyo-uke-no-miya (Same Festivals)
• XVIII. Grand Shrine of ISE: Divine Garments Festival of the Fourth Month
• XIX. Grand Shrine of ISE: Regular Festival of the Sixth Month
• XX. Grand Shrine of ISE: Festival of the Divine First Fruits Banquet of the Ninth Month
• XXI. Grand Shrine of ISE: Same Festival at Toyo-uke-no-miya
• XXII. Grand Shrine of ISE: Same, Divine First Fruits Banquet
• XXIII. Grand Shrine of ISE: When the High Priestess Assumes her Office
• XXIV. Grand Shrine of ISE: Norito on Moving the Shrine of the Great Deity
• XXV. To Drive away a Vengeful Deyty
• XXVI. Presenting Offerings on Dispatching an Envoy to China
• XXVII. Divine Congratulatory Words of the Kuni-no-miyatuko of Idumo
• XXVIII. Congratulatory Words of the Nakatomi
• XXIX. House-Blessing Formula (Muro-hogi) of Prince woke
• XXX. Words Spoken by Kusi-ya-tama-no-kami
• XXXI. Blessing Formula of Mi-oya-no-kami-no-mikoto
• XXXII. Words Spoken by Itode
• Glossary