RELG: World by Robert E. Van Voorst

Author:Robert E. Van Voorst
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781337405041
Publisher: Cengage

Reuters/Toru Hanai

Three representatives of the Emperor of Japan (at center, in traditional clothing) visit the Yasukuni Shrine in 2015 to honor the counry’s war dead shortly before the Japanese prime minister made an important speech on Japan’s war-time past at an international summit. Shinto priests in white garments can be seen alongside the envoys.

Despite the religiously motivated self-sacrifice of Japanese warriors, the Divine Wind did not come.

Shinto played a significant role in World War II, which started in Asia with the Japanese invasion of northern China in 1937. Since the 1870s, it had been fueling a strong nationalism among the Japanese, a force that would inevitably lead to war. Service in the military was a religious as well as a civic obligation, and the spirits of those who died were honored as kami. Kamikaze pilots intentionally crashed their planes into American warships at the end of the war in a last-ditch effort to stave off an invasion of Japan. Kamikaze is often used popularly today as meaning reckless to the point of suicide, but it really means Divine (kami) Wind (kaze). The Divine Wind was a typhoon that destroyed a Chinese fleet threatening Japan in the 1200s, and the modern Divine Wind was meant to reproduce that deliverance. Another well-known feature of that war was the Japanese shout “Banzai!” (bahn-ZIGH)—“ten thousand years!”— and was understood to mean “May the emperor live ten thousand years!” This was frequently used as a cry of attack by Japanese forces. Despite the religiously motivated self-sacrifice of Japanese warriors, the Divine Wind did not come, and the emperor’s rule as a god would soon end, falling far short of ten thousand years.

“Banzai” … was understood to mean “May the emperor live ten thousand years!”

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