Religion and Spiritual Development: Japan
Editorial note: Bracketed number codes in this entry refer to the list of
ideograms that follows.
Japanese martial arts developed within a multifaceted ethos that aligned
human activities with the ultimate forces or principles ruling the cosmos.
Warriors drew upon their understanding of these cosmic forces as they dis-
ciplined their bodies to acquire or apply physical skills, psychological vigor,
and special abilities. Modern authors frequently address aspects of Japa-
nese cosmos and ethos under the Western rubrics of religion and spiritual
development. Even in Western contexts, however, the terms religionand
spirituallack consistent and generally accepted definitions. It should not be
surprising, therefore, that their application to Japanese contexts is fre-
quently problematic. Nowhere are problems more abundant than in ac-
counts of Japanese martial arts and religion. It is widely reported, for ex-
ample, that Japanese martial arts constitute paths of spiritual development
based on Zen Buddhism [1], the goal of which is to attain a state of no-
mind (mushin [2]), characterized by spontaneous action and reaction with-
out regrets. Such accounts not only romanticize the relationship between
martial arts and religion, but greatly exaggerate the relative importance of
Zen Buddhism and present a distorted image of the nature and aims of Zen
training. The following presents an alternative account, one that is more
comprehensive and that situates the religious aspects of Japanese martial
arts within their historical context.
The simplistic myth of “Zen and the martial arts” has been so uncrit-
ically accepted and repeated so often, however, that it cannot be ignored or
dismissed out of hand. Indeed it is difficult to gain a more balanced view
of this topic without first attempting to understand the origins of this Zen
motif and the reasons for its enduring appeal both in the West and in
Japan. For this purpose, it is necessary to briefly review the development of
scholarly discourses on the nature of religions, on Japanese religiosity, and
on the religious nature of European sports and Japanese martial arts. All of
these discourses emerged at the same time during a period of recent history
when Western powers exerted colonial control over much of Asia and
viewed contemporary Asians and their cultures with contempt. Japanese
faced this challenge by actively importing Western intellectual methodolo-
gies and by fashioning new images of themselves to export to the West.
Within this geopolitical context academic theories of religion and descrip-
tions of the religious aspects of Japanese martial arts have never been
value-free or impartial. Their development has been shaped by contempo-
raneous intellectual currents and has served to advance changing ideologi-
cal agendas. Once these agendas have been assessed, we can turn our at-472 Religion and Spiritual Development: Japan