Parallel Session B: Religion, Environment and Sustainable Development	  November 18. 2015, Istanbul

Difference between Abrahamic and Japanese Religion’s Attitude to NatureRt. Rev. Yoshinobu Miyake

In the Beginning:
I express my heartfelt condolences for the terrorist attack's victims in the last Friday
in Paris, and I hope the criminal group will get arrested as early as possible.

Also, I

hope the events causing this incident will be solved in a way that is mutually fulfilling.
The theme of this parallel session is environmental issues, but I intend to point out in mypresentation about the difference of religious culture between East and West from theenvironmental view point and then analyze the cause of cycle of violence ocurring inmany parts of the world.

The US President Barak Obama said, “Attack on all humanity

and universal value we share” to this terror attack.

But actually, the terrorist made anobjection against “the universal value” supported by Western culture.

To search for asolution on this tangled issues, I hope my presentation would be of some help.

Let's start from the discussion about environmental issues.

Just a week ago,

President Obama wrote his first comment on his Facebook: “It’s always at the front of
my mind: We’ve got to preserve this beautiful planet of ours for our kids and grandkids.
And that means taking serious steps to address climate change once and for all.

Now,

we've made a lot of progress to cut carbon pollution here at home, and we're leading theworld to take action as well.

But we’ve got to do more.

I hope you'll join me inspeaking out on climate change and educating your friends about why this issue is soimportant.”

Given that the US has consistently indicated a negative attitude toward"International CO2 emission control for the prevention of global warming" that EU andJapan have pointed out since a quarter-century ago, and has been as the world's
largest greenhouse gas emitter along with China, I think "What is he telling us now?".

However, we support the work undertaken by President Obama as "to do GHG
emission control is better than inaction" and request to apply GHG emission control
strictly to newly developing countries like India and China, where have been missed sofar.

1.“Dominum Terrae” Abrahamic Attitude to the Earth:
Although the common theme in this G20 Interfaith Summit 2015 is "Religion,
Harmony and Sustainable Development", we aim to target the sustainable development,
replacing "Harmony" by "Environment" in this parallel session.

As previously

discussed in other parallel sessions, we could interpret "Harmony" as EconomicalHarmony, Ethnic Harmony and even Military Harmony.

From among these"Harmonies", we'll enlighten and deepen the understanding towards "EnvironmentalHarmony" of each other.

Especially, as the only Japanese with a Shinto background,the mission imposed on me is to raise awareness that the perspective of the world of thepeoples with Abrahamic religioous backgrounds who are the majority of this interfaithsummit is not enough to really understand the world.

When discussing an environmental problem from a religious perspective, thefollowing language described in "Genesis" Chapter 1, Section 26, which is the common
Scripture among Abrahamic peoples such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, isfrequently used as the basis of argument.

“Let us make mankind in our image, in ourlikeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over thelivestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along theground.”About 200 years ago, the modern science-technology civilization blossomedin Europe. Since the majority religion in Europe was Christianity, the words of this "Bookof Genesis" have been used as "endorsement" for making the environmental rule byman. This rule has existed until now.
nature to the human beings.

Therefore, it's the will of God that human beings exploit avaluable nature for themselves".
words "Dominium terrae."

That is, "God gives the transcendency over theThis view has been theologically denoted by the Latin

However, near the end of the 20th century, a question to the justification to human's
global environment rule which has been collateralized by a traditional interpretation of
the Christianity, has been also raised from a Christianity side.

An Australianphilosopher, John Passmore, argues that "Two different interpretations are possible forDominium terrae".

The first one is "according to a classic interpretation, the humanbeing to whom full powers were entrusted from God reigns on the ground tyrannically".
The second one is to take care of the nature, like the way of shepherd.

Human beings living in harmony with the nature is graphically portrayed in thePsalm: 104.

Although Paul mentioned "For the creation waits with eager expectation

for the sons of God to be revealed.

For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its

own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope" (Romans: 8:19-20), twodifferent interpretations are possible for this sentence.

We have two possible

perspective: "those who hold the nature in subjection is God", or "those who hold thenature in subjection is man".

Taking it that "it's human being's responsibility" is thetrend in the latest Christianity theology.

That is, the human beings have submitted thenature to insubstantiality, and therefore it leads to the logic that "we have responsibility
for the nature".

However, following the section 21 ("that the creation itself also will bedelivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God"),
the logic developed as "the day to free the nature with human beings from the servitude
to insubstantiality, will come" in "Romans".

With this, there are some theologians whoargue that "the harmonious coexistence of nature and humans is written in the Bible".

2. Different Understundings to the World: Nature>Human>God
I discussed in my early words that the relationship between God who created us,
and the man and the nature that are the creatures in the Abrahamic religion’s context.
Even if there is a difference whether the man"dominates" or "takes care of" the natureenvironment, we can discover traits common in that recognizing man as "a specialexistence", different from the other the creatures. However, if I explained
set-theoretically, there is a crucial difference between the Abrahamic religion and theothers about the relationship between personal God and the man and the nature.

i.e.,the understanding of African people who is regarded as a common ancestry of all
mankind, and the indigenous people of the Americas who descended from Mongoloid
anthropologically, not to mention Japanese who has lived in East Asia for a very longtime.

If I explained using a mathematical model, in the Abrahamic religion, the priority

would be "personal God > (greater than)human existence > (greater than) nature".

But in case of setting priorities according to the Japanese model, it will show just theopposite (nature > (greater than) human existence > (greater than) personal God).

Let me explain why Japanese view of the nature and the world happened.

When

we see an Euro centric world map , the Japanese archipelago where I’m living is the“small islands” floating at the East end of Eurasian Continent.

On these small islands

which just cover 0.0075% of the surface of the earth, 10% of all earthquake, volcanicand eruptive activities on the earth are happening.

Aside from this, 26 typhoons comeper year, and sometimes the catastrophic tsunami also come.

So, the event

probability of earthquake and eruption in Japan, is 75,000 times higher than globalaverage.

The Japanese made Jomon pottery 15,000 years ago, faster than any otherancient civilizations even with such a severe nature environment. This Jomon
civilization which has happened for many years, had a large impact to the view of theworld and view of life and death of present Japanese.

"Jomon civilization" did not have the technology of agriculture based on thegrand-scale irrigation which was in common in the ancient civilizations such as Egyptand Mesopotamia.

According to the common sense of theory of civilization, Jomon

civilization has belonged to a hunter-gatherer civilization which is regarded as moreprimitive.

However, the common sense of archaeology that the man cannot stay livingin the same place in a hunter-gatherer society was broken down, as Jomon people
stayed living in the same colony for over 1500 years, and maintained a large population.
Moreover, according to the latest scientific research achievement like pollen
archaeology, when the soil which was dragged from the place where there was a forestof chestnut trees surrounding their colonies, was examined, DNA of chestnuts pollen'sfossil collected from the soil was nearly the same.
chose the prolific chestnut tree and planted it.

This means that Jomon people

It seems that Jomon people who were

the direct ancestor of Japanese, lived a sustainable life, rather than the civilization

which is high environmental load, such as slash-and-burn farming and irrigation
agriculture.

The Jomon era which is the prototype of Japanese civilization continued during
12,500 years.

After that, when the Babylonian captivity happened in the Middle East,

when the philosopher like Socrates and Plato appeared in Greece, when the Saints like
Gautama Buddha and Mahabharata appeared in India, and the thinkers like Confucius
and Lao-tze appeared in China at the same time, the rice agriculture of wet-field wasintroduced from Southeast Asian Continent to Japan in the 5th century BC.

The local

ruling family in each area were integrated gradually, and formed a unified statecentering on the present Imperial family.

By the introduction of wet-field's rice

agriculture, most flatlands became the rice paddy field.

Originally, Japan had one of

the greatest high rainfall area, and since the moisture-containing wind blowing from theseas surrounding the Japanese archipelago hit the Central Mountain Range which isthe backbone of Japan Island, it was possible to maintain these wet fields without
constructing Irrigation canal on a broad scale.

Rather, acquiring knowledge throughtheir experience, to prevent the potential flooding to lowland caused by heavy rain
falling on the mountainside, they took advantage of the water-retaining capacity offorests for flood control without cutting the mountain trees.

Some of you might have visited beautiful historical city Kyoto.
ancient capital for over a thousand years from AD794 to 1868.

Kyoto was an

Many people have

lived there continuously and continued to build the wooden houses and huge temples.
As you know, after moving the capital from Kyoto to Tokyo, a lapse of 150 years, themountains surrounding the present Kyoto City where 1.5 million peoples live, are still
covered by beautiful green.

The stone house doesn't exist in quake-prone Japan,instead, flexible and durable wooden construction is still used.
custom, there is not a desert nor bald mountain in Japan.

In spite of this long

Is there anyone who knows

how many percentage of forests exist on Japanese Islands where 125 millions peoples
live?

20%, 30%...?

For your comparison, here Turkey is 15%. Germany and Poland

are 30%. The United States and Canada are 33%.

Russia, which is the most vast

country in the world and has woodlands of Siberia across the Eurasian continent fromeast to west, is 48%.

Sweden, where is called as a "beautiful country of Scandinavia

blessed with rich natural environment" has 67%.
whole country is covered by the forests.
is higher than Sweden!

This means two-thirds of area of theThe Japan’s green percentage is 68 %, which

Can you imagine?

The country which has higher forest area

ratio is only Finland where is called "Santa Claus hometown" or "Country of forest andlake".

The forest of this country is 74% of the whole country.

Moreover, Japan is themost industrial society and highly-populated country than any other countries listedearlier.	 

There are very few primeval forests in Japan.

have been planted by hand.

Almost trees of beautiful mountains

The mountains surrounding Kyoto which is the ancient

capital for over a thousand years, have been always verdant.

This shows that theJapanese have planted the trees from Jomon period for over ten thousand years, rather
than for a thousand years ago.

3. Compare Myths between Ancient Mesopotamia and Japan:
The relationship between the Japanese and the forest, that I mentioned in theprevious chapter, can be understood easily if we compare Japanese myths with themyths of Mesopotamian civilizations.

I think most of you know about “The Epic ofGilgamesh” wrote 4,500 years ago.

This is the oldest literal text written on the clay

tablet by cuneiform.

It is the story of Sumerian King, Gilgamesh that's existed in theoldest city-state "Urk".

"Flood myth" which appears in this Epic of Gilgamesh has been

introduced to Jewish people through "Babylonian captivity", it became the prototype ofthe story of Noah's Ark which appears in the Genesis.

A huge Ziggurat built bySumerian has been incorporated into the Genesis, as a story of "The Tower of Babel".
That is, the Epic of Gilgamesh had a big impact to "the perspective of the world" ofAbrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, through the Old
Testament.

Gilgamesh entered to the holy forest protected by Monster Huwawa, with his friend,
Enkidu, and cut down Cedars of Lebanon using a bronze ax.
oldest city-state in Mesopotamia.

And he established theThe forest became dry field by irrigation agriculturecivilization, became grassland by pastoral farming civilization, became building material
and fuel by urban civilization, and the forest disappeared from the ground gradually from
the Middle East.

This means that, by cutting the Cedars of Lebanon of thick forest in

the Middle East, using a bronze ax, Gilgamesh was acknowledged as the “sacred king”
from the people of first city-state in human history.

This story is one of types of "culturehero" that has been handed down in many ethnic groups in the world.

The culture herois the story of derivation of special technologies which is handed down as a mythologyof ancient people.

i.e. "those who mastered how to use the fire", "those who started

the agriculture" etc..

In many cases, they have a special appearance like demigod or

therianthrope, as Gilgamesh, Enkidu and Huwawa were.

On the other hands, in the oldest national history books named "Chronicles ofJapan" have been handed down an interesting mythology as following:

In the Divine

Kingdom in the heaven, Sun Goddess Amaterasu’s brother Susanoo who was feared bydeities as a violent person to interfere with "divine rice farming.”

Someday, he exiled

the heaven, and landed to this earthly world along with his son.

Susanoo found notree grows on the mountains.

Then, he made cedar from his sideburns, Japanesecypress from chest hair, black pine from the pubic hair, and camphor tree from theeyebrow, he planted these trees to the Japanese mountains and its became to theforests.

He also taught the way to use these trees such as like “cedar and camphor

tree are good for making the ships” and “Japanese cypress is good for building theShinto shrine” and “black pine is good for making caskets”.
of trees for people.

He also gave these seeds

With this achievement, Susanoo who was feared as a violent

person in heaven, has been welcomed by the people of Japan, as the “sacred king” whobrought the civilized grace on this earthly world.

The difference of culture hero's behavior between the Middle East and Japanshows the difference between who became the sacred king by cutting down the forest
and who became the sacred king by planting trees, is directly connected to thedifference between the Abrahamic monotheism and the animistic Shinto world.

In theMiddle East, put the will of human beings who have dominated the nature, above thenature.

To that human beings, the absolute personal God who is transcendent overthe nature, blessed and gave the vision to the human beings.

Therefore, the concept

of "justice" which is unrelated with the individual circumstances and the nature, gounmentioned.

On the other hand, in Japan, the nature is a-priori principle which is inclusive of thehuman beings and God, and there is no distinction between right and wrong.

Thenature exists as it is, and that is transcendent over the human beings and God.

Four

years and a half ago, unprecedented giant tsunami struck north-east Japan which only
comes once every one thousand years.
people’s life and other lives.

By this tsunami took more than 20,000

But any Japanese doesn't regard this crisis as"punishment by God".	  Because the nature is an unbiased existence which goesbeyond the human beings and God.

It's the same thing that gazelle which passed

before hungry lion's eyes, gets eaten by lion.
this scene.

The gazelle didn't do anything wrong in

Or it doesn't mean that justice of lion prevailed.

The fact just exists "thelion ate gazelle, and the gazelle got eaten by the lion".	 

Conclusion:
The Japanese do not have a lot of interest in defining the concept, such as justice,
truth and love, conceived by human beings, though for those who believe Abrahamic
religion should not doubt these concepts given by the absolute God.

Beyond thehuman intelligence, "Permanency of life" showing the natural providence inclusive of thedivine presence, is to inherit the life from generation to generation, and that's the value.
In that sense, environmental sustainability is the most important things from Japaneseview point.

The Grand Shrine of Ise which is enshrined Sun Goddess Amaterasu whois the ancestor of the Emperor of Japan, is once in 20 years has been rebuilding all of its
125 shrines from ancient time.

The construction method is very unique: building a

copy of "shrine of completely same shape" next to a current shrine.

Then, as soon as"the new shrine" is set, they tear down the "old shrine", and start to build "the new-newshrine" which is also look-alike of its neighbors.
process indefinitely.

The Grand Shrine of Ise repeats thisFor this purpose, they inherit the construction method to the next

generation as well, to reproduce the shape of ancient buildings.

It is the same strategy

as creating a duplicate of all the same type in order to grow a cell, once untied thedouble helix of DNA and makes a complete copy...

For reproducing the Grand Shrineof Ise repeatedly, an enormous amount of Japanese cypress has been always
necessary.

For this purpose, tree-planting activities in many of mountains have been

maintained for over a thousand years.	  	  In the religion of Shinto, which is represented by this Grand Shrine of Ise, does notexist such as something special teachings or scriptures.
ritual in an unbroken line since ancient times.
cycle of violence all over the world today.

Simply, we have repeated theThis tradition is unrelated to triggering

From Shinto view point, it's highly unlikely tokill others due to the difference of religious doctrine or political principles.

I hope all of

you who attend this G20 Interfaith Summit to understand the another possibility forcoexisting all not only human beings but also all sentient beings in this way.

Thank you very much.