short-lived. Persecutions drove the Jews from one country to another until they became one of the most nomadic peoples on earth. In a curious way, God's command to Abraham "Go forth from your native land and from your father's house" was fulfilled three thousand years later in the form of the Wandering Jew. Long after the nomadic peoples of Europe and the Middle East had settled and formed sedentary political units, the Jews remained homeless, prospering where permitted to live and work, and fleeing where persecuted.
The history of the Japanese was precisely the opposite, as nothing ever occurred to make their hold on their islands tenuous or questionable. There has been little emigration from Japan to other countries over the centuries. The Japanese merchants who settled in Southeast Asia in the sixteenth century, and the Japanese farmers who emigrated to Hawaii and the American continent in the twentieth century never reached the numbers of the overseas Chinese or Indians, let alone those of the great waves of European emigration to the New World. Thus, while the Jews became a Diaspora without a home country, Japan remained a home country without a diaspora. Not only did the Japanese stay on their islands, but until late in the nineteenth century they rarely ventured abroad to conquer other territories. Although Japan was an island-state ruled by a warrior elite, until the second half of the nineteenth century it had never been a maritime power. When Commodore Matthew C. Perry sailed into the Bay of Edo (now Tokyo) in 1853 to forcibly open Japan, the country had no navy to protect its shores. Nevertheless, until 1945 no foreign power, not even the Europeans and Americans who followed Perry, ever controlled Japan; and those who attempted to do so in the past, such as the Mongols in the thirteenth century, were driven back by the land-based warriors.
The Jews and the Japanese were also different with respect to the occupations of their people. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Japan, like medieval Europe, developed into a society of peasants and warriors. In consequence, the nation's dominant values were those of the farmer—diligence, perseverance, and teamwork— and those of the soldier—loyalty, courage, and self-sacrifice. The merchants of traditional Japan occupied the lowest social stratum, and their preoccupation with profit was looked down on by the warrior class, the samurai. Because they wielded power and owned land, warriors, whether in Europe or in Japan, could afford to despise money. For the Jews, however, money was the means of survival. It could be accumulated, stored, hidden, transported, exchanged, invested, and loaned out. It was the best insurance against adversity and could buy security, at least for a considerable period of time. The long-dispersed Jews—not allowed to own land, to serve in armies, or to join governments—concentrated on trade as their main occupation, since it enabled them to survive and prosper without having to be settled in one particular location. Versed in languages, familiar with different cultures, and with relatives or associates scattered throughout many towns and countries, the Jews were well suited to engage in international trade. Indeed, their trading expertise made them assets to rulers of countries wishing to advance their own economies, such as the kings of Poland in the sixteenth century, who, to this end, invited Jews to come and settle there.
From the time of the loss of their native land, the security of the Jews had never been assured. Their survival and prosperity depended on the whim of local rulers. Subjected to discrimination, persecution, expulsion, and massacre, the Jews developed a keen sensitivity to danger. The least secure people on earth, they became masters of the art of survival. The Japanese, on the other hand, enjoyed security in their islands. Although they experienced internal war and turmoil, and very often were victims of such natural disasters as earthquakes, typhoons, fires, and floods, these were sporadic and isolated affairs; the basic security of the nation was never seriously jeopardized. Safe from foreign interference and domination, lacking sharp ethnic and religious divisions, enjoying a moderate climate with plenty of sunshine and water, and possessed of fertile valleys and rich fishing areas, the Japanese could feel that their basic needs were well provided for. The unbroken perpetuity of the imperial dynasty helped to strengthen the feeling that whatever happened, the fundamental structure of their existence remained stable.
4
The Perpetuity of
Emperors and Priests
THE DEATH of Emperor Hirohito in January 1989 and the enthronement ceremonies of Emperor Akihito in 1990 turned the attention of the world to the unique phenomenon of the Japanese imperial dynasty, which has existed continuously since the establishment of Japan as a unified state sometime in the first centuries of the common era. This uninterrupted reign of one family is strikingly different from the historical experience of other countries, Western as well as Eastern, where one dynasty of kings or emperors has periodically succeeded another. The perpetuity of the imperial family has fostered a strong sense of continuity and stability in the national life of Japan. Political power could shift from one group to another, but the source of legitimacy remained in the hands of the emperors. Although power was held by others—whether court aristocrats or military rulers—it was hardly ever concentrated in the hands of one man, which would have infringed upon the symbolic authority of the emperor. Conversely, although power was usually split among various officeholders and local strongmen, decentralization could not go too far, as the division of Japan into separate independent states would again impinge upon the status of the emperor. The imperial institution thus saved Japan from both one-man rule and total political fragmentation.
For more than a millennium, since the ascendancy to power of the Fujiwara nobles in the ninth century, the emperors of Japan wielded no political or military power of their own and were totally dependent on the goodwill of the actual rulers. But the imperial family in Kyoto, although powerless and often poor, continued to fill an irreplaceably important role as the symbolic underpinning of the political body of Japan, and to play a religious role no other family could play. As the direct descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu, the emperor was the only person on earth who could mediate between her and the people of Japan. The religious rites that he performed, such as the first planting and harvesting of rice, were essential to secure the continuing fertility of the land and the favorable disposition of the natural forces; these duties could not be transferred to others.
Not only was the imperial family preserved in Japan but so was also the hereditary nobility (kuge) that surrounded the imperial household and provided it with services and brides. Although these aristocratic families had already lost their power and much of their income by the twelfth century, they continued to retain high social status. The military rulers did not usurp the court posts, and the nobles of Kyoto continued for centuries to be appointed to empty high court positions and to officiate at elaborate, traditional court ceremonies.
The hereditary perpetuity of the Japanese emperors and nobles, and their lack of practical power, had an equivalent in Jewish hereditary institutions. As the religious teachers, the rabbis, took over the spiritual leadership from the hereditary priests (kohanim) during the period of the Second Temple, the power of the latter declined. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., the ceremonies officiated by the priests there were abruptly halted, and have never been resumed. Despite the fact that for almost two thousand years there has been no Temple, the hereditary Jewish priests still enjoy a special religious status and a Jewish male usually knows if he is a priest or not. This is often apparent in his last name, for if it is Cohen, Kuhn, Kagan, Kaplan, or any of the derivatives of these, it is highly probable that he is a kohen. As the distinction between priests and ordinary Israelites is transmitted from one generation to the next, those who are kohanim are usually aware of their status even if their names do not suggest it. According to Jewish religious law, or Halakha, they are forbidden to defile themselves by contact with a corpse or by entering a cemetery, except in the case of the death of an immediate relative, nor are they allowed to marry divorcees or proselytes. In the synagogue they are called first to the reading of the Torah and they officiate at the redemption ceremony of the first-born son. On festivals and the Day of Atonement, they perform the Priestly Blessing, standing in front of the congregation with their shoes removed, their heads covered by a prayer shawl (tallit), and their fingers outstretched in a prescribed position. They have been performing these duties for the last two thousand years.
The Jews have preserved
