Purity and Impurity in Japan, Research Paper Example

The concepts of purity and impurity in Japanese culture may be understood in terms of both their theoretical, conceptual manifestations and their everyday, common manifestations. In other words, we can approach the etiology – a study of the causes and effects – of purity and impurity within Japanese society according to the relationship between how the practice of purity and impurity in the Japanese context may be understood in regards to a particular framework of cultural normativities, a philosophical and theological tradition, or what could be termed, to use a prominent term from the contemporary academic literature, ideology. Such an approach suggests that the diverse presentations of purity and impurity within Japanese social practice have as their cause various discourses, beliefs, and world-views, which are constitutive of the greater Japanese tradition. Thus, to provide a full summary of purity and impurity in the Japanese context, it appears that we must tackle the phenomenon at two separate, yet nevertheless interrelated levels: the conceptual level and the practical or social level. In the following essay, we shall attempt to examine the phenomena of purity and impurity in Japanese culture by precisely utilizing such a two-tiered approach between the conceptual and the practical. Of course, this is not to suggest, as we have mentioned, that this two-tiered approach implies any radical separation between the conceptual and the practical. Rather, the conceptual can be understood as a certain condition for the practical, which in turn, after being conditioned, can undergo its own specific variations. To develop this notion, our text will therefore begin its focus with a discussion of some of the traditional Japanese conceptions of purity and impurity, primarily as related to the oldest Japanese mythical narratives and legal documents. Furthermore, we shall examine how this traditional conceptual approach to purity and impurity manifests itself in societal practice. This manifestation occurs in a wide variety of social phenomena, ranging from the performance of daily hygiene to the exclusion of certain groups from mainstream Japanese society. These particular relationships to purity and impurity are thus to be traced back to a   conceptual condition. At the same time, we can understand how the practical aspect of purity and impurity may have undergone its own deviations within its practice according to time: this would demonstrate some of the shifts in the concept of purity and impurity within Japanese social practice. In other words, with a reliance on the academic literature, we are to develop an account of the logic of purity and impurity in Japan, according to its theoretical, conceptual and practical manifestations. Moreover, we are to suggest that the concepts of purity and impurity have played a crucial role in the history of Japan, to the extent that one can say these concepts are essential to the Japanese tradition as a whole.

To clarify our approach in this essay, it can be underscored that the concepts of purity and impurity in Japanese culture have a history. What this historical status of purity and impurity means is that we can clearly conceive of origins, of places in time, in which such notions develop a significance, and furthermore, how this initial blooming of significance subsequently presents itself in the practices of society. This history of purity and impurity can also be understood in terms of changes in what is considered to be pure and impure within Japanese culture: in other words, from a broader historical and historiographical perspective, one can detect that there have been alterations in what is considered pure and impure, or rather, certain phenomena come to be associated more stringently or more forcefully with such notions of pure and impure. Such changes, we are to argue, are nevertheless symptomatic of the centrality the concepts of purity and impurity occupy in the Japanese consciousness.

A supporting argument for such a centrality is presented in Ohnuki-Tierney’s seminal text The Monkey as Mirror: Symbolic Transformations in Japanese History and Ritual, in which the author attributes a profound significance to the concepts of purity and impurity within Japanese culture. More precisely, Ohnuki-Tierney describes purity and impurity as the crucial ethical concepts of Japanese life: “the dominant characteristic of the Japanese world view, the symbolic opposition of purity (jo) and impurity (fujo or kegare) is the major theme of the Japanese ethos throughout history.” (Monkey as Mirror, 137) Ohnuki-Tierney thus identifies a crucial oppositional tension inherent to this cultural history, the tension between purity and impurity. According to Ohnuki-Tierney, this tension serves as a certain historical invariant with which one can subsequently develop an understanding of an underlying consistency that exists in the greater narrative of a Japanese ethos.

Two clarifying points can be made in regard to Ohnuki-Tierney’s basic premise, before approaching it critically. Firstly, it can be relevant to note Ohnuki-Tierney’s utilization of the term ethos, as opposed to ethics. Whereas ethos certainly includes the notion of ethics, that is, what we understand today in terms of moral issues, proper conducts of behavior, etc., it is also pertinent to consider the etymology of ethos. Ethos in its Ancient Greek meaning refers to a living space, an environment in which beings dwell and exist. In other words, that Japanese history is constituted by the particular ethos of purity and impurity would refer to the specific manner in which the Japanese people have existed within this history: ethos is not merely related to a detailed list of some proper codes of human action, but is related to the entire context in which the Japanese culture dwells in its living space. Secondly, insofar as Ohnuki-Tierney claims that purity and impurity is the central ethos of Japanese life, one may contrast this particular ethos with other possible arrangements of ethos, such as that common conceptual pairing of good and evil. If an ethics reflects itself in a living space, and the Japanese living space above all privileges purity and impurity, this infers that a culture that assumes this particular primary opposition as central to its ethos would in turn develop a unique history according to the specific trajectory of its conceptual foundations.

Ohnuki-Tierney provides a lucid account of the history of this primary opposition and how the crucial specificity of the centrality of the opposition of purity and impurity has given rise to a uniquely Japanese ethos. One of the key aspects of the Japanese conception of purity and impurity is that it largely refers to a physical purity and impurity: this physical manifestation is related to the oppositional pair of cleanliness and uncleanliness. Ohnuki-Tierney primarily develops his thesis according to a reliance on some of the oldest primary sources of Japanese history. In particular, he refers to the text the Kojiki, commonly translated as the “Record of Ancient Matters”, which has been dated back to the early 700s A.D. According to Ohnuki-Tierney, what is of particular interest in the Kojiki is the notion that the gods of the Japanese pantheon are born from essentially hygienic practices, which by definition eliminate uncleanliness. Ohnuki-Tierney recounts the following key myth: “When their father (Izanagi-no-Mikoto), washed his left eye, Amaterasu-Omi-kami, the founding ancestress of the Imperial family, was born, her brother Susano-no-Mikoto, was born when their father washes his nose.” (The Monkey as Mirror, 137) The ancestral lineage of the Emperor and the highest nobility of Japan are thus conceived as beginning from a hygienic act: from blowing the nose and washing the eye respectively. The key motif here is therefore the affirmation of the relation of purity to physical cleanliness: the origin of this culture is extrapolated in terms of this very hygienic gesture. This centrality of purity and impurity is also made clear in the reason why Izanagi-no-Mikoto washed his eye and blew his nose. Ohnuki-Tierney writes that Izanagi-no-Mikoto “had been defiled by seeing the corpse of his deceased wife (Izanami-no-Mikoto) covered with maggots in the underworld of the dead.” (The Monkey as Mirror, 137) Izanagi’s witnessing of the physically unclean as presented in the real physicality of human decay and purification makes Izanagi himself unclean. There is thus an uncleanliness associated with the physical decay of the body; the effect of this physical impurity is so strong that Izanagi is forced to clean himself after observing this horrifying scene. Moreover, the gesture of cleanliness, of regaining the purity that had been lost, is a gesture with positive effects: the production of his sons and daughters. There is thus a struggle between cleanliness and uncleanliness, between purity and impurity, one that this ancient myth suggests must be overcome. As Ohnuki-Tierney describes this struggle, it is a “dialectic between the two opposing values of purity and impurity, which are correlated with life and death.” (The Monkey as Mirror, 137) The life as evinced in the life that cleanliness created, with the birth of his son and daughter, is contrasted with death’s association with uncleanliness, with maggots eating flesh. In other words, the decision for cleanliness is an affirmation of life and of existence itself.

Yet this is not only a mythical account: In the context of its times it has to be understood, as Ohnuki-Tierney notes, as an embryonic form of a Japanese ethos.

Ohnuki-Tierney makes a compelling connection between this myth and the general Japanese ethos by following his summarization of the ancient Kojiki with a comparison of this text to the oldest legal code of Japan, the Norito of 927 A.D. What is of foremost significance to Ohnuki-Tierney is the key connection made in the Norito between sin and impurity: “Of paramount importance here is that record’s definition of impurity as the gravest sin of all.” (The Monkey as Mirror, 137) Citing the Norito, Ohnuki-Tierney recalls that some of the “sins of impurity are ‘cutting living flesh; cutting dead flesh’ white leprosy; skin excrescences.’” (The Monkey as Mirror, 137) It is therefore acts that mutilate the body or which destroy its condition that are considered to be criminal and sinful. Moreover, these are not only acts of the destruction of the body, but what may be viewed as destructions of the body caused by the body. What is to be considered sinful is any tarnishing of the body, such as skin excrescences. In essence, the greatest impurity as presented in the Norito is the sin of an unclean body. Insofar as this is a legal code, this uncleanliness is therefore a crime.

Furthermore, Ohnuki-Tierney emphasizes how such sins are to be dealt with in the Norito. The reaction to this physical uncleanliness suggests that purity must be achieved against impurity – in other words, this impurity of uncleanliness must be completely eradicated. Ohnuki-Tierney writes: “Also of interest is the manner by which these sins are purged. The sins are taken to the great ocean by a goddess who dwells “in the rapids of the rapid-running rivers.” (The Monkey as Mirror, 138) The sins are “swallowed with a gulp.” (The Monkey as Mirror, 138) The identification of the impure is not merely enough according to the legal code of the Norito, although this identification corresponds to the identification of the central sin of the Japanese ethos: this sin must be made unsinful, which is to say the unclean must be rendered clean, even if this requires the casting of the unclean or impure into the ocean to be destroyed. That is to say, impurity cannot be allowed to co-habitate the living space constitutive of the Japanese ethos – it must be identified and must be rehabilitated. This is not so much a dialectic between purity and impurity, as Ohnuki-Tierney writes, to the extent that there is no synthesis of the two concepts. Rather, there is a complete elimination of impurity that is imperative to the ethical, legal and cultural tradition.

Once again, it is crucial to note that the Norito is not a mythical narrative, but an actual legal code, which implies the strictness with which these sets of norms, mores and living approaches are to be observed and maintained. This is not to suggest that the mythical narrative does not have this same grip on the public imaginary; rather it shows the extent to which such notions of purity and impurity, from mythical narratives to legal codes, were constitutive of the Japanese consciousness. Furthermore, it provides a crucial clarification of the Japanese conception of purity and impurity itself. Purity and Impurity are mainly defined in terms of physical phenomena. Thus, purity and impurity here are not so much virtues, related to some abstract, ideal realm, such as value judgments related to concepts like good and evil. Purity and impurity in these above examples have clear material, empirical manifestations, primarily related to the Japanese attitude towards the body. In other words, we can say that the physical body is the site of the manifestation of the opposition of purity and impurity. Purity and impurity encroach themselves on the body: purity in terms of cleanliness, of the performance of hygienic acts, such as blowing one’s nose, washing one’s eye, destroying a diseased body; impurity in terms of the harming of the flesh, the witnessing of the degradation of the body, or even physical conditions that deteriorate the skin.

Sources such as the Norito and the Kojiki attest to the centrality of the concepts of purity and impurity to Japanese cultural and historical life. The crucial role these concepts play in the fundamental texts of Japanese culture demonstrate their profound effectivity in the conception of an overall Japanese ethos. Moreover, the content associated with these concepts also specifies exactly what Japanese culture considers to be pure and impure and how to deal with this opposition. Purity and impurity is irrevocably linked to the physicality of the body: it is not so much a mystical, virtuous or idealist conception of purity and impurity, such as the aforementioned virtues of some abstract notions of good and evil – the concepts have a clear physical and material manifestation. In other words, we can suggest that the Japanese concept of purity and impurity is a materialist as opposed to idealist account, insofar as it is linked to cleanliness, uncleanliness and hygiene. This is clear in, for example, Shigekazu Haruki’s remark that “the basic of idea of Shintoism is ‘purity and impurity’”, from which Haruki lists in explicit detail Shinto conceptions of impurity: “According to this idea, bleeding menses, pregnancy, death, corpses and funerals fall under impurity.” (49) Anything that is associated with some degradation of the body, or something lost from the body is coextensive with a form of impurity. And as Haruki also notes, this is reflected in the cosmological and metaphysical split at the heart of Shintoism: “’Pure land’ or the ‘blessed land’ symbolizes where God exists, while the impure world named ‘Edo’ symbolizes the land of the living.” (49) Moreover, the treatment of uncleanliness, as emphasized in the ancient texts of the Norito and the Kojiki, clearly demonstrate the existential approach to the phenomenon of uncleanliness and its physical manifestations. This uncleanliness is not merely an unpleasantness that must be lived with, however uncomfortably: even though man resides in “Edo”, the diametrical contrast to the purity of the land in which God resides, this uncleanliness itself must be eradicated. “Purification rituals” must be performed, such as in the story of the Great God Izanagi, or in the destruction of sinful or dirty bodies such as in the Norito. These religious and legal documents thereby demonstrate the centrality of such notions to the Japanese world-view and how in essence, they delineate and define this very world-view.

However, this is not to suggest that such an importance given to purity and impurity as conceived in terms of hygiene is found only in Japan. One of the most common cross-cultural, one could say universal, phenomenal approaches to purity and impurity is demonstrated in the notion of hygiene. This universality of societal approaches to cleanliness and dirtiness is noted by Ohnuki-Tierney in his book Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan: An Anthropological View: “Daily hygienic practices are based on one of the most fundamental concepts in any culture: what is clean and what is dirty.” (21) In this book, Ohnuki-Tierney paints a further picture of the relationship between what he calls in The Monkey and the Mirror the historical continuity of purity and impurity in Japanese cultural, theoretical and religious life and the current, modern or contemporary Japanese approaches to daily hygiene. Ohnuki-Tierney notes the disproportionate amount of Japanese texts that are devoted to purity and impurity and hygiene respectively: “Lack of detailed description of daily hygiene is common in publications on Japanese culture and society. There are numerous publications, many in Japanese and some in English, describing Japanese concepts of purity.” (Illness, 21) Insofar as textual accounts of hygiene are largely absent in contemporary Japan while there remains a sizeable amount of literature on purity and impurity, this seems to indicate that the reason for the absence of such hygienic texts is because hygiene relies on the texts on purity and impurity for their practice. What Ohnuki-Tierney thus intimates in this comparison is that the ideological, theoretical and traditional logic for practices of daily hygiene may be traced to the traditional conceptual and theoretical account of purity and impurity. In other words, daily hygiene practice is symptomatic of a discourse on purity and impurity within Japanese culture and society. As Ohnuki-Tierney notes the literature on purity and impurity is largely of a religious type, as purity and impurity are posited “within the framework of religious notions in Shinto and Buddhism.” (Illness, 21) Accordingly, one can maintain that the Japanese approach to purity and impurity is largely informed by the greater cultural tradition of Japan, as we have seen in the aforecited examples taken from the Kojiki and the Norito.

Despite such an apparent connection, however, Ohnuki-Tierney also seems to suggest that modern Japanese hygienic practice cannot merely be reduced or even defined in terms of such traditional accounts of purity and impurity: “These concepts are often seen as remnants of the past, and are not viewed as a part of the health-seeking behavior of contemporary Japanese.” (Illness, 21) According to this citation, daily hygiene practices in Japan are not the result of a traditional framework of concepts, as such concepts are deemed by modern Japanese to be archaic “remnants.” This would suggest that these practices must be traced back to other influences. Considering the context of this observation, it would appear that the modern Japanese culture attributes a key role to correspondingly modern concepts to explain hygienic practices, which in addition, would perhaps demarcate the influence of non-Japanese views on the formation of hygienic practice.

In the chapter “Japanese Germs” from Ohnuki-Tierney’s book, it seems that the author is attempting to test the veracity of this thesis. In other words, he is examining whether the description of the contemporary Japanese evaluation of hygienic practice as undetermined by the “remnants” of a past holds. For example, Ohnuki-Tierney discusses the hygienic practice in Japan in which one is “to take their shoes off and wash their hands” (Illness, 21) upon entering the house. As the author goes on to note: “The Japanese explain this custom by stating that one gets dirty from germs outside; one takes off one’s shoes so that unclean dirt from outside does not get tracked into the clean inside.” (Illness, 21) In Ohnuki-Tierney’s reading the key term utilized to explain this hygienic practice is germs. The author notes that, “the Japanese explain these customs in terms of germs”, (Illness, 21) which is significant insofar as germs – baikin in Japanese – is “a term of recent origin, after the introduction of the germ theory from the West.” (Illness, 21) This seems to suggest that the concept of purity and impurity as related to cleanliness in the Japanese consciousness has undergone a metamorphosis over time. Primarily, the emphasis on germs would infer that a new awareness of medical biology and bacteriology is central to the Japanese world-view. This new approach to purity and impurity, as opposed to the old approach, would appear to support the author’s aforecited remark that contemporary Japanese view their current hygienic practices as unconnected to the “remnants” of the past.

Nevertheless, what is overlooked here is a certain continuity between the greater historical Japanese tradition and the centrality it gives to notions of purity and impurity with the current concepts and manifestations of hygienic practices: phenomena such as contemporary hygienic practices, however they are explained in a modern manner, can be nonetheless be viewed in terms of their very continuity to the past. That is to say, the emphasis on terms such as “germs” would merely be a modern means to which to approach a traditional Japanese concept and a Japanese ethos. In other words, the significance attributed to germs in contemporary Japanese hygienic practice could be construed as a certain modernization of traditional Japanese ethical practices through the introduction of a new scientific discourse to describe these same traditional forms of comportment and behavior. From this perspective, the particular discourse that addresses the phenomena of cleanliness and uncleanliness according to germs could be construed as easily fitting into a Japanese world-view insofar as both the conceptual framework and centrality of purity and impurity were already crucial aspects of Japanese life. Such an example suggests that merely the signification of these phenomena have changed over time, whereas the basic conceptual idea inherent to the culture remains present. For example, the association in the legal code of the Norito between sin, uncleanliness and impurity could be viewed as symptomatic of the influence of a particular religious discourse on the Japanese ethos of the time. A transformation, therefore, of the signification of the notions of impurity and uncleanliness from “sin” to “germs” would illustrate the shift from a religiously dominated paradigm to a scientifically dominated paradigm. Despite this shift, however, purity and impurity, cleanliness and uncleanliness, remain central to the Japanese outlook: it is rather the signification or nomination of these concepts that remains subject to particular, historical contexts in the form of the dominance of, for example, a scientific discourse, over a religious discourse.

Such a thesis helps clarify our comments in the introduction concerning the possible etiology or cause and effect at stake in the consideration of the concepts of purity and impurity in the Japanese context. When considering such prospective shifts in discourses, what begins to surface is a certain specific model of cause and effect, or causality, which can be used to explain the apparent changing attitudes to purity and impurity, cleanliness and uncleanliness. In essence, this is a case of a cause with two manifestations or aspects coupled with a singular effect. By this we mean that the singularity of effect remains constant: there are certain behavioral manifestations, such as the removal of shoes before entering a living area that remain constant over time. The two manifestations or aspects of a cause are where this structure of etiology becomes more complex. In essence, there is a singular cause, however this cause can take two different forms. Firstly, there is what may be termed the “surface” cause. This is the cause that functions consciously in the given social discourse. For example, as Ohnuki-Tierney mentions, in the contemporary Japanese discourse the crucial term to explain the cause for the effect of hygienic practices is germs; in ancient times, this same cause is equated with sin. This surface cause is thus subject to variations within history according to the dominance of certain discourses, such as the aforementioned religious or scientific discourses. Nevertheless, what is crucial here is that there is an underlying cause that remains the same. This is the historical or traditional cause, a cultural aversion to uncleanliness and impurity. While this cause may be explained in different terms, it remains a constant in the Japanese discourse. And insofar as it remains a constant, when, for example, a new discourse such as a scientific discourse is introduced into a society, because a similar concept within the culture’s tradition already exists, there is no difficulty in assimilating this concept and explaining it in terms of this new discourse. In other words, the reason that the notion of germs is so readily accepted as a cause for hygienic practice is because there is an already underlying inclination towards hygienic practice present within the culture. In the case of Japan, this is made evident by the long tradition of emphases placed on purity and impurity, as demonstrated in the Kojiki and the Norito.

Ohnuki-Tierney takes a similar, although different approach to explaining this phenomenon. He suggests that, “the introduction and intensive dissemination of biomedical knowledge has not resulted…in the replacement of “Japanese germs” with biomedically defined microbes. The concepts of cultural germs…are part of a structure of meaning that has displayed remarkable tenacity through time.” (Illness, 50) In other words, the inheritance of the concepts of “germs” is not indicative of a sudden shift to a radically biomedical perspective in the Japanese consciousness. Rather, the Japanese consciousness already possesses a crucial meaning that is given to such germs, according to their historical commitment to purity against impurity in the form of physical cleanliness against uncleanliness. It is thus that the biomedical discourse corresponds or is easily convertible with the traditional discourse. Our interpretation of the surface cause and the underlying or traditional cause comes close to Ohnuki-Tierney’s account: It is already because this cause has a specific meaning and importance that it can be translated easily into Japanese culture, because Japanese culture has already accommodated a place for such a concept within its historical and traditional narrative.

To support this thesis, one could note, as Ohnuki-Tierney does, the Japanese views of the burakumin. As Alistair McClauchlan notes the burakumin are “Japan’s discriminated ethnic minority, historically linked to the Tokugawa eta and hinin outcast groups.” (178) This discrimination has not disappeared over time, for example, with the democratization of Japanese society. Rather, “almost 15 million Japanese still refuse to have any contact with burakumin citizens.” (McClauchlan, 178) The reason why burakumin are discriminated against is linked to Japanese ideas of purity and impurity: the burakumin were traditionally laborers who worked “unclean” jobs, i.e., slaughterhouse workers, tanners, and funeral workers. This shows that the basic concepts of purity and impurity remain the same: there is a consistent prejudice in Japanese culture towards the burakumin. Moreover, such discrimination occurs despite what one may call a modernization discourse that emphasizes globalization, multi-culturalism and tolerance. In the Japanese “structure of meaning”, the term of tolerance has not been appropriated within the Japanese discourse because this term contradicts with the essential traditional concepts of Japan. As Ohnuki-Tierney writes: “social discrimination against the burakumin was not erased by rapid industrialization and the introduction of democracy into the law”; (Illness, 178) there has been no “eradication of prejudice against the burakumin as impure.” (Illness, 178) The concepts of purity and impurity thus remain central to the Japanese tradition. Other non-Japanese discourses can influence these poles of impurity only to the extent that they are complicit with the Japanese conceptual framework.

The acceptance of the term “germs” as the cause for hygienic practices and the continued prejudice against the burakumin demonstrate that there has not been a shift in traditional perspectives: rather it demonstrates the constancy of traditional perspectives and their permanence in Japanese life.  The encounter with foreign traditions that comes with the inevitable rise of modernity does not result in the eradication of all traditions – it demonstrates how the tradition itself adapts in order to survive.

This greater thesis concerning the functioning of traditional concepts and their practices over time is clearly demonstrated in the importance ascribed to purity and impurity in Japanese life. This importance can be uncovered in terms of an examination of theoretical and cultural sources, such as ancient myth and ancient legal codes to understand essential conceptual dualities. Furthermore, this importance can be seen in the manifestation of these concepts in the behavior of a populace. In the case of the Japanese account of purity and impurity, these concepts are primarily related to the importance given to the body and its protection from anything that may threaten its health or even its aesthetic appearance. This is demonstrated in the physical examples of uncleanliness that we mentioned in the paper. Moreover, such a centrality can be seen in Japan’s encounter with the Other, with the Western world and globalization. The encounter with modernity is not only a threat to the native tradition; it becomes the opportunity for the strong aspects of an endemic culture to adapt to the terms of the global discourse in order to survive. It is particularly the notion of purity and impurity that have survived in contemporary Japan, thus evincing their crucial conceptual and practical position within the culture.

Works Cited

Haruki, Shigekazu. “Psychonephrology in Japan”, In Consultation-liaison Psychiatry in Japan. Basel, Switzerland: Karger Publishers, 2001.

Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan: An Anthropological View. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. The Monkey as Mirror: Symbolic Transformations in Japanese History and Ritual. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.

McLauchlan, Alaistair. “Japanese Authorities and the Buraku Issue: Was it really 130 years of ‘Conniving’?” In Asian Nationalism in an Age of Globalization. Pp. 178-206. New York: Routledge, 2001

Nonetheless the Japanese texts would have to be considered in contrast to these different cultures according to the aforementioned centrality of purity and impurity to the Japanese culture.

Already with this association, we can begin to understand a certain definition of purity and impurity – purity and impurity is associated with a form of cleanliness and therefore dirtiness.