Why the world keeps ending

Seen from a global perspective, October 23, 1844, was not an especially eventful day. The world was remarkably, if atypically peaceful. England was beginning what would be the long reign of Queen Victoria, and the United States just ending the profoundly uneventful presidency of John Tyler. No wars were fought: the only shadow of conflict was that looming between Mexico and what was for not much longer to be the independent Republic of Texas. Karl Marx had just met Friedrich Engels and completed one of his minor works. Charles Dickens had recently published the final installment of the serial novel Martin Chuzzlewit. Although not newsworthy at the time, the actress Sarah Bernhardt was born in Paris on this day. The lead story in the London daily Times concerned the upcoming visit of the Queen to the city, including helpful hints of where to stand for the best view of the royal procession. Nearly one whole page was devoted to a long, indignant letter from one member of the public who questioned the wisdom of forcing women in workhouses to break stones for a living. It was something of a slow news day.

But for a hundred thousand followers of the preacher William Miller, October 23 presented a very serious problem – it should not have arrived at all.

The Society of Jesus comes to Asia

Although separated by two and a half centuries, the early years of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and Tokugawa shogunate (1600–1868) present certain obvious similarities. Both regimes emerged from periods of chaos and warfare, and each one went to great lengths to transform society and thus establish a more durable political order. Bitter experience had taught the ambitious founders of each of these new governments that religion could be both a threat and an ally. Each enshrined new policies toward religion, supporting some, banning or ignoring others. Of course, the two were working within fairly different religious landscapes: the Ming emperor built up Confucianism but also faced the destabilizing influence of apocalyptic belief, while the early Tokugawa rulers had first to tame and then to harness Buddhist piety. To appreciate fully the comparison between these two, we need to see how each one reacted to the arrival of a new religion: Christianity.

The first Christian missionaries, Iberian Catholics of the Jesuit order, reached Japan in the mid-1500s, and China a few decades later. In each place, they found allies among the political elite and faced opposition from a variety of conservative figures, particularly Buddhist monks. Similarly, Christian missionaries in both Japan and China experienced an initial period of success, which was abruptly terminated by a sudden reversal of political fortune. By the early seventeen hundreds, Western missionaries had been expelled from both countries, and their religion banned by law.

Religious foundations of late imperial China

Religion in China is both singular and plural. For the great majority of Chinese people today, religion consists of a combination of three distinct traditions: Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Each of these traditions can be seen as its own intellectual and organizational entity, and this chapter will begin by presenting each one separately. In practice, few believers would think to choose one over the others. The idea of exclusive religious membership, that one should be a Buddhist or Daoist, but not both, simply does not apply. Even those believers who are particularly devoted to one teaching will often incorporate elements of the other two, sometimes without even recognizing them as such. The point is not that Chinese people are irreligious. Quite the contrary: the “three teachings,” as they are called, are inseparable parts of a single system of beliefs, morals, and rituals that pervades Chinese life.

It was not always so. The three teachings evolved in relation to, and sometimes in conflict with, each other. The current state of equilibrium is relatively recent, at least by Chinese standards, meaning that it is less than a thousand years old. Before that time, the balance among the three teachings was much more fluid, and occasionally more violent, than what we see today.

Confucianism

Properly speaking, Confucianism is less a religion than a political philosophy, one that developed long before the birth of Confucius himself.

Fists of Justice and Harmony: Christian mission and the last stand of Chinese traditionalism

Over the nineteenth century, the Qing gradually lost the upper hand in dealing with the Western powers. The change resulted not from religion, but from commerce. As the Iberian powers went into decline during the late 1700s, Britain emerged as China's greatest European trading partner. Initially, this trade was conducted entirely on Chinese terms: it was bottlenecked through the single port of Canton and consisted almost entirely of an exchange of Chinese tea for British silver. The tea trade was so massive and so valuable that even a low import duty of 12.5 percent provided a tenth of all British government revenue. But it was not sustainable. After a long series of behind-the-scenes negotiations over court protocol, British envoys finally met the aging Qianlong emperor in 1793. To the request for more equal terms of trade came the emperor's famously dismissive response: “We possess all things. I set no value on strange or ingenious objects, and have no use for your country's manufactures.”

By the early 1800s, British firms (including such august names as Jardine Matheson) were making up their losses by illegally trading opium up and down the coast, and by 1840 the tension between the two countries reached the point of war.

KITAMI EKI

Gaze through a window in the platform back wall (Shinjuku direction) and there is a plaque advertising a wondrous private clinic. Namely Brain Treatment System. Couple of visits should have you thinking more clearly.

KYODO EKI

Nothing like a good dental ad. Not least as you gaze from the Kyodo platform to a wall poster calling you to Sarurai Dentalpia. Could be a tooth-convention, even a deviant tooth-tendency.

SANGUBASHI EKI

Couple of stops from Shinjuku and there is an invitation to step into time as much as place. A platform sign reads – ‘Please get off at this station for Meiji Jingu’. The original shrine was built to commemorate Emperor Meiji and Empress Shō ken, destroyed in World War II bombing, and then re-created in 1958. Historic modernity several times over.

MINAMI SHINJUKU EKI

Essential facilities. Clearest word-and-picture indication, men and women, of where to go when you have got to go.

SETAGAYA-DAITA

One of several temporary plastic wall-coverings as the Odakyū-sen engineering work proceeds. Full of tile-like pattern. Small blocks colour-squares. With a small effort of imagination it puts you in mind of Mondrian or Miro. Japanese station cubism with a dash of Europe?

SWITCH TO GINZA LINE

LET's KIOSK, WHY NOT?

Newspapers

Sweets/Candy

Pens

Cigarettes

Magazines

Knick Knacks

Day in, day out you get on the train at Mukōgaoka-yūen. But only this Friday did I notice the outside sign on the local ‘personal hygiene’ emporium. A store selling shampoos and handsoap, toothpaste and make-up, house-cleaning tackle and medicines. The sign, however, reads WEL PARK. Having consulted the local street directory, I find it belongs to a drug-store chain called Welcia Kanto Company. Even so, the urge is now on me to spiderman up the wall and add what to my own eye is a missing ‘L’. Thoughts of Lshaped rooms flood in, not to say long-ago school geometry lessons and those squares and oblongs measurement exercises.

Rooftop vistas. Setagaya Daita and Soshigaya-Okura. Both have yet more ‘mansions’, moderate high-rises at once shoeboxes and in tiers, and with balconies of reach-out-and-touch train proximity. How do people living inside them manage – passing train noise, the near presence of huge metal transportation within arm's length of where your head may be resting? Then there is the laundry. Pegged and hanging out for immediate passing inspections are shirts, sheets, undies, an array of towels. Rail-track dormitory. Odakyū lifecubicles.

Today I found myself sitting opposite a male passenger, not so much a salaryman as a sports jacket and cords type. I was just about settling in for my vertical read of The Japan Times when, like some junkie readying for his fix, he rolled up his left sleeve and with his right hand reached into bag for…a pair of tweezers. Without a byyour-leave he then started tweezering out hairs from his arm and on it went for some time. Not something to make you feel good about breakfast. And there was a whole other arm to go. But then an unusual bit of drama. An older woman, breaking with all rules of non-interference, gender status, and seated on my side of the carriage, suddenly shouted at him – ‘not here, not here’. Startled he got his tweezers back into the bag, rolled down his sleeve, and virtually jumped out at the next station. Quite a thing.