the name of this same ancestor to help them in their wars against each other.
Emperor Jimmu came from the province of Hyuga in eastern Kyushu. The island of Kyushu was the place where the first Japanese kingdoms, mentioned in the Chinese chronicles of the first centuries C.E., were located. It was also the island nearest to Korea, a land where Chinese culture had thrived before it reached Japan. Indeed, the high material culture absorbed into Japanese life until the middle of the first millennium C.E. arrived through Korea. This included advanced methods of wet-rice agriculture, horse breeding, textile weaving, and iron casting, as well as new forms of art, architecture, and political organization. The more advanced Chinese-Korean civilization entered Japan with Korean immigrants fleeing from the incessant wars on the peninsula. These immigrants were mostly of aristocratic origin, well versed in Chinese culture. In Japan they joined the local aristocracy and transmitted to it the advanced civilization of the continent.
There is a theory, first advanced by the Japanese historian Egami Namio in 1947, that a horse-riding tribe from Korea conquered Japan in the fourth century C.E. This conquest created the sudden advance in Japanese material civilization of that time and introduced new political and religious practices from the continent. Egami argued that the imperial clan of Japan belonged to this tribe of invaders, which settled first on the island of Kyushu and then, at the beginning of the fifth century, moved on to Yamato to establish its kingdom there. If that is true, then Emperor Jimmu was a Korean, and the heaven from which his grandfather had descended was nowhere but the Korean peninsula. Although this theory may be unpalatable to some modern Japanese, it is historically plausible.
To say that Abraham was an Arab or that Emperor Jimmu was a Korean does not diminish their stature as the alleged fathers of the Jews and the Japanese. These two nations, despite their ethnic and cultural resemblances to other peoples in their geographic proximity, developed quite early in their histories a strong tendency to distance themselves from their neighbors. Both the Jews and the Japanese regarded themselves—and still do—as categorically different from any other peoples. The feeling of "us" and "them" is, of course, common to all ethnic groups, but few peoples have drawn that line so sharply and clearly and maintained it for so long as have the Jews and the Japanese.
From what did this sense of separateness derive? In the case of the Jews, the source was originally religious: Jews believed that God had chosen them above all other peoples, established a covenant with them, and entrusted to them his holy commands. Judaism was not a religion to be propagated, but a religion to be kept and strictly observed. Other nations that were not chosen for this special covenantal relationship were called "gentiles" or "the other nations of the world." The Bible puts the following description of Israel in the mouth of the gentile prophet Balaam: "There is a people that dwells apart, not reckoned among the nations. . ." In time, this distinctiveness of the Jews embraced all aspects of life: They observed holidays no one else did, performed rituals no one else understood, communicated through a peculiar sacred language called Hebrew, wrote with a special alphabet, followed their own calendar, observed their own strict dietary rules, refused to intermarry with outsiders, and kept together wherever they went.
Self-definition for the Japanese was derived initially from geographical isolation: As an island nation physically detached from both China and Korea, the Japanese from early times developed a strong sense of independence. If the conquest by a fourth-century Korean tribe indeed occurred, it was the last conquest Japan knew until 1945. This obsession with independence was exemplified by the imperial institution; the emperors of Japan, considered to be gods, never recognized the suzerainty of the emperors of China, whom they considered mere mortals. As the fourteenth-century Japanese scholar Kitabatake Chikafusa wrote, "Since Japan is a separate continent, distinct from both India and China and lying in a great ocean, it is the country where the divine illustrious imperial line has been transmitted."
The Japanese adopted much of the culture of China but at the same time stubbornly refused to discard their indigenous culture. Thus the native religion subsequently called Shinto was preserved despite the fact that Buddhism and Confucianism were adopted; the native Japanese language was preserved despite the fact that much Chinese vocabulary was absorbed; Chinese script was adopted while Japanese supplementary phonetic syllabaries were developed; and Chinese institutions were introduced but modified according to Japanese practices. As it turned out, Chinese influence strengthened Japanese self-esteem rather than weakened it. By adopting the advanced culture and thought of China, the Japanese could claim that they were as good as the Chinese, and, because of their added Japaneseness, they could claim superiority.
Like the Jews, the Japanese kept their culture and religion within their ethnic boundaries and did not propagate them among other nations. They spoke a language nobody else understood, used a script partially their own, counted the years and months by their own system, adhered to a national religion nobody else shared, and cherished a mythology strictly their own.
Although the gods they worshiped were totally different, Abraham and Jimmu are both described as deeply religious men. One of the midrashim (traditional rabbinic interpretations of biblical text) states that when Abraham was a young man, he smashed the idols of his father Terah and announced his belief in one God. Abraham is thus considered to be the founder of monotheism as well as the father of the Jewish people. Therefore a convert having no biological Jewish parents is received into Judaism as a "son" or "daughter" of Abraham. The spirit of nonconformism that began with Abraham has characterized the Jews for most of their history. Yet, neither Abraham nor any other person has ever been deified by the Jews. Emperor Jimmu was a pious monarch, but he did not smash any idols. He adhered to the religion of his forefathers, which was the polytheistic and animistic creed we now call Shinto. Moreover, he himself became one of the myriad ("eight million") gods of that religion.
The religion that was subsequently called Judaism started as a spiritual revolution. It was a bold denial of previous convictions and a brave assertion of a higher-order belief system. The reduction of the number of deities from many to one was not a matter of arithmetic; it was an affirmation of the basic unity of the universe and of the moral purposefulness that underlies it, and so monotheism presented a qualitative rather than a mere quantitative shift. Shinto did not revolt against anything and did not try to assert any new truths. It is a religion of joyful acceptance of the world and of humanity as they are. Like other animistic religions, Shinto reveres the spirits of departed ancestors, celebrates the agricultural cycle, and worships the fertility of earth and of humans. Its aim is to please and appease the numerous gods and spirits who control the world around us. Shinto is therefore similar in many ways to the pagan religions that dominated the Middle East and Europe before the arrival of Judaism and its daughter religions, Christianity and Islam.
Due to this basic difference, Judaism and Shinto have treated other religions and creeds in opposite ways. The strict monotheism of Judaism excludes the belief in any other divinity. The Ten Commandments given to Moses make this very explicit: "I am the Lord your God.... You shall have no other gods beside me. . . . You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I the Lord your God am an impassioned God. . . ." After losing their political independence, the Jews were often persecuted for their refusal to bow to other gods, and many died as martyrs for that refusal. Worshiping other gods is one of the three cardinal sins (the other two being murder and incest) that a Jew must refrain from committing even at the cost of his or her life.
This religious exclusivity was transmitted from Judaism to Christianity and Islam. Yet, whereas in Judaism exclusivity was usually manifested as the refusal of a persecuted minority to worship other deities and there was no inclination to proselytize others, in these two world religions it became an intolerance directed at the infidels under their domination and at those outside who had to be converted. As the religions of Christianity and Islam were spread over huge parts of the world by means of conquest and coercion in addition to missionary activities, religious conflicts and religious intolerance have come to characterize Western and Middle East civilizations for a long time.
Shinto, even more than the pagan religions of the ancient Near East, has been tolerant
