著者

河村 望

出版者

東京女子大学

雑誌

東京女子大学紀要論集 (ISSN:04934350)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.49, no.1, pp.59-84, 1998-09-24

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Japanese capitalist society has been treated thus far as a concept which has nothing to do with Japanese culture and the Japanese nation. Karl Marx described a capitalist society as a society in which the bourgeoisie, which has money and capital, exploits and rules the proletariate, which has nothing but their own ability to work. Thus, ecomony was considered the base or infrastructure of the society, while legal and political institutions and many forms of ideas were seen as superstructures. In this way, the capitalist culture has been merely seen as a means for the greedy pursuit of profit. According to Marx, religion is an "opiate of the people." Also, Marx was not interested in any indigenous culture, including that of the West. In contrast to this position, Max Weber defined modern capitalism as a rational profit-making organization based on the Protestant ethic. The Puritans had protested against the traditional idea which divided this world and the next world. The souls of the people could not be relieved in this world; they could be relieved only in heaven. Thus, the traditionalism which thought of religion as a means of proding relief in heaven prevailed before modernization. Weber emphasized that the Puritans, especially the Calvinists, taught that, instead of being worried whether or not one is saved, one should devote one's life to increasing the glory of God on Earth. To increase the glory of God is to sacrifice oneself to his calling and to practice an ascetic life. According to Weber, the accumulation of money as the natural result of this shows the grace of God. However, this thin overcoat which man could take off anytime became an iron cage in which he was locked. Thus, rational capitalism and its spirit are products only of the West, that is, of the Protestant Christian culture. Confucianism, which values outward forms, cannot be the spirit of rational capitalism. In the Oriental family-and community-based society there have been distinctive differences between the inner ethic and the outer ethic and between the inner economy and the outer economy. This dualism has hampered the establishment of universalism in the fields of ethics and the economy. In his "Introduction" to the Paperback Edition of Tokugawa Religion (1985), Robert Bellah said that a central point of his argument was that Japan had found an adequate "functional equivalent" for the universal ethic of Protestant Christianity, which had contributed so signally in the West to modern developments in the economy, in politics, and so on. Therefore, Bellah evaluated his own book as "one of the few sustained efforts to apply a Weberian sociological perspective to a case that Weber himself did not seriously study. The questions it raises are perennial ones in Japanese studies." Bellah pointed out that, in Japan, the Jodo Shinshu of Buddhism, the study of the mind by Ishida Baigan, the moral and economic teachings of Ninomiya Sontoku, etc. played the same role as the Protestant ethic. However, he denied the ability of Japan to sustain an ethical universalism, saying that most Japanese are still closely tied into groups that demand their loyalty and so cut them off from sympathy with outsiders. He could not understand an ethical universalism which was not based on individualism. In Japan, the basic unit of the community is not the individual but the household, that is, husband and wife. In Japan, a grave is a family grave, and a husband and wife who live in this world are thought also to live together in the next world. Naturally, therefore, in Japan the rational capitalistic organization has been based on the household. The Japanese business organization, like the Japanese household, has an eternal continuity beyond that of individuals. Such a characteristic comes from the religion of Mahanaya Buddhism, which teaches an altruistic moral theory. Like the Protestant, the Mahanaya Buddhist must devote himself to his calling and practice asceticism in order to thank Buddha for his earthly benefits. An altruistic activity is one which repays one's debt of gratitude to Buddha, who saves all persons, whether good or wicked. The spirit of Japanese capitalism once seemed set to disappear before Japan's wholesale Westernization, and it seemed that the Japanese spirit and Japanese technology were being replaced by the Western spirit and Western technology. Just as English has not become the Japanese national language, though, the so-called Japanese tradition, Japanese culture, and Japanese spirit have not lost their significance and have not been replaced by the Western spirit of capitalism.