While Shintoism provides a justification for a total concentration of power in the hands of the Emperor, its lack of a developed ethical system means that compliance with imperial edicts is for all practical purposes dependent on coercion. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that much of the history of the Japanese state is characterized by an Emperor that reigns and a powerful military family that rules. The appeal of Confucianism to Japan's ruling class for over a thousand years can be partly accounted for by its usefulness as an appendage to Shintoism, or more accurately, as a means of gaining political power through moral influence.

 

Confucianism could be used in the above manner largely because of its relative silence on the supernatural. As a secular philosophy, it contains no divine entity to which all owe moral obligations or that could provide divine sanction for the assumption of political power by other than the descendents of the Sun Goddess, the Japanese Imperial Line. Confucianism in its original form did, however, pose three threats to existing socio-political structures. First, it contained the right to rebel against a ruler that had failed to fulfill his responsibilities to the people. Second, the Confucian system of mutual social obligations limited the prerogatives of the elite and provided a basis for claims against the elite by commoners. Third, it called for selecting the elite on the basis of merit, not lineage. The Japanese upper class "wisely" eliminated the first and third elements from the Japanese version of Confucianism and thereby rendered the second problematic.

 

As a result, the Japanese version of Confucianism came to resemble a form of sage worship in which its detailed system of social obligations became an incontrovertible moral imperative. 10 Behavior became dictated by Confucian ethics rather than guided by them. Mutual obligations were transformed into a unilateral flow of duties to the next higher layer of the socio-political structure. Social harmony (wa) became the justification for an inflexible social structure rather than the goal of social relationships. All in all, Confucianism in the Japanese context joined Shintoism in the disparagement of the needs of the individual and in denying him, and especially her, of any right to resist the demands of a "superior" other.

 

Buddhism, in contrast, neither subordinates the individual to a higher moral authority nor deprives the individual of choices by entangling him in an intricate web of inflexible social obligations. As we have seen, in Buddhism moral authority emanates from within. Personal development is not the result of a faithful rendering of the will of a heavenly or earthly King, but of intense and continual self-examination. The purpose of this self-examination is to draw upon the just nature (Buddhahood) within us all, and not to remold our character in the name of collective harmony. In Buddhism, the "attainment of Nirvana is everyone's Ultimate Good, and the good of each single person is always more important than any good of any putative whole or collective." 11 Thus the central concern of all socio-political constructs is providing an environment in which the just nature of each individual can be fully explored and expressed.

 

The emphasis in Buddhism on the development of the individual must not, however, be confused in any way with apathy towards the plight of others or extreme individualism. Such confusion again arises from a failure to overcome the illusion of the duality of self and other. Acknowledgement of the nonself involves first seeing that our present existence is characterized by impermanence and suffering, and second by accepting that in a wink of an eye the comfortable can become the destitute. Recognition of this reality dissipates the difference between self and other through empathy and compassion, and perhaps, even a degree of self-interest. The concept of Karma is also relevant here in that a concern for moral justice links the development of self with the development of others. We should further recall that the enlightened ones will traverse Nirvana and become what we today refer to as activists. Therefore, while the freedom of the individual to pursue self-enlightenment is imperative, ultimate freedom is reflected in the enlightened individual's unabiding concern for the plight of others.

 

To summarize, Buddhism rejects the fixation on one's duties to others found in Shintoism and Confucianism, and the fixation on unrestrained self-interest (licence) often found in Western individualism. For Buddhists, these conflicting positions, that are derived from the illusion of the duality of self and other, account for most of the suffering in the world. The duality of self and other, it is argued, naturally leads to zero-sum calculations which are worked out in an intense and often violent confrontation. Thus, only through an awakening to the nonself can a people be spared the suffering inflicted by the excesses of individualism and collectivism/statism.