Recently I had occasion to re-read David Morley’s Pictures from the Water Trade (1985), one of many books to describe a foreigner’s coming to terms with living in Japan. It won praise at the time of its publication, and even though much of the book has dated, there are striking scenes that linger in the mind.
Priest reading out a prayer in the archaic language of the 'norito'
What distinguishes the novel from lesser works is the author’s interpretation of Japanese culture through the peculiarities of the language. It’s thought that the sound of words in Shinto can have a power over and beyond their meaning, and this is known as kotodama (word spirit). It’s essentially a belief in magic, in that the sounds themselves are said to produce an effect in the real world. It is why the wording of Norito prayers is thought to be of such importance.
In the passage below, Morley notes the ritualistic use of language in Japanese everyday life. Though it’s not explicit as such, I think there’s a link here with kotodama and the religious use of language in Shinto. What’s of particular interest is the connection Morley makes with Japan’s propensity to natural disasters, for it’s been often said that Shinto was shaped by the geographical conditions of the country. Appeasing deities in order to prevent cataclysm was a strong motivating factor for early kami worship.
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There was an element of superstition in the use of language, which Boon had hitherto only noticed in dead languages such as Anglo-Saxon and Latin. Relics of archaicism, of course, are to be found in all languages. Goodbye is archaic, and so is any liturgy; speech which has become fossilised, which has acquired its power or nourished a belief in its power as a result of unvarying repetition over many centuries: speech with talismanic properties. It was Boon’s impression, however, that the function of language as prophylaxis and invocation characterised Japanese on a much grander scale.
When the emperor made his famous broadcast announcing the capitulation of the Japanese at the end of the war his speech was unintelligible to the majority of his people. The special use of language evolved for the imperial family, of what might be termed imperial aimai [vagueness], was grounded in the belief that a form of speech so removed from the language of his common subjects as to be virtually impenetrable was a proper symbol of the emperor’s inaccessibility. Sustained euphemism making up a distinct language, isolating the emperor from verbal contamination, supplied a clear example of the superstitious use of words.
The formulaic use of language, a supersititious belief in the power of words, a declared trust in intuitive feeling and distaste for the logic that ignores reality: what was then this ultimate reality which superstition sought to appease, which only feeling could discern and with which logic was allegedly unable to cope? Boon decided that an answer to this question would have to allow for the unpredictability and violence of the natural conditions under which the inhabitants of the Japanese islands had always lived.
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Japan - a land of shifting tectonic plates, volcanoes, and earthquakes
Thanks for bringing up this interesting passage, John. As you write, at the time of publication Morley’s book “won a lot of praise.” Somehow not mine, but I had the impression that he measured Japan with western standards. As you write, this is due to “his coming to terms with living in Japan.”
Keyword in western standards is the word: “superstition”. I am inclined to say that this word is an archaism imbued with kotodama, in order to appease the western mind that is shocked/ embarrassed by what is seen in Japan . Morley maybe a bit dated, but I prefer his word “superstition” when there is need to define kotodama as the magic of words, over the phrase from a very recent book about Japan, where a journalist attends a shinto ceremony in Rikuzentakata and writes: “The priest ended with a noise like a screeching police siren.”
There is less “kotodama” in a screeching police siren than in superstition. This shift in the western perception of kotodama is perhaps a metaphor for the history of the decline of the western perception of the world. I start to like Morley now.