If you spontaneously understand what the above shown pic is, you don’t need to read what I’m going to write down. This is a photo taken at the Kansai International Airport (KIX) in Osaka. The KIX itself doesn’t matter. What you should concentrate on is rather its location: The Airport is quite famous for being located far away from the center of Osaka. Why?

 

Before getting further deeply into this issue, I have to say I wrote too much on issues of the current financial capitalism in this column so far. I firmly believe the so-called “PAX JAPONICA” will come even after a series of turbulances in the world community. In order to make all of my dear readers understand why, I should now try to write what genuine Japanese ways have been traditionally. Without any knowledge of them, it’s hardly possible for you to realize what will happen around Japan from now on.

 

 

Besides Shintoism, it’s essential to focus of Japanese schools Buddhism, especially “Shingon-Buddhism”. It’s not an accident that bonzes of this school have traditionally accompanied every single person of the Japanese historical leadership. Thanks to hard religious trainings, they are capable of remote viewing.  Even though the bonzes don’t physically accompany us, they can “see” what happened to us and what our own future will head to. Therefore, it’s indispensable for Japanese leadership to maintain close relationship with bonzes of the Shingon-Buddhism.

 

 

In this regard, I find it very remarkable that the Shingon-Buddhism was sometimes much powerful than secular leadership, so that it was frequently targeted as its enemy.  From 1583 to 1597, Father Luis Frois wrote his famous report entitled ” Historia do Japõo or Historia de Japam“. It’s one of the most important documents on the Japanese history written from the viewpoint of a westerner. In this report, Frois didn’t hesitate to describe “Denpo-in”, a monastery in the Negoroji-Temple of the Shingon-Buddhism as one of the biggest schools in the world, where more than 3500 Buddhistic students came to study. Because the temple was politically so powerful, Hideyoshi TOYOTOMI decided to destroy it completely. Those bonzes who could survive escaped to EDO (called “TOKYO” later) to seek patronage of Ieyasu TOKUGAWA. After he accomplishes unification of the whole country, the Shingon-Buddhism was allowed to expand its territory wherever it wanted, especially in eastern regions of Japan.

 

 

Objectively viewing,  this intentionally makes the whole system of the Shingon-Buddhism much more complicated than before: The Negoroji-Temple played a role of the holy of the holies （奥の院）compared with the Mount Koya, at which everybody thinks the center of the Shingon-Buddhism to be located. Nevertheless, it’s not true. It’s the former that matters. Every important holy documents of this school is preserved in the Negoroji-Temple, as a preventive measure against any possible accidents at the Mount Koya. Furthermore, a lot of bonzes at the highest level pay visits not to the Mount Koya but to the Negoroji-Temple to discuss together, even though they belong to other Buddhistic schools such as Tendai.

Outsiders don’t have any opportunities to get closer to this reality, while the majority of decisive bonzes related to this temple live quite far way of NEGORO. The most important one, Shinkyo SEKINE, the patriarch of the temple, lives in Tokyo. Not in NEGORO. Every time important Buddhistic events take place seasonally, the bonzes get together there to pray and discuss. After that, they just vanish.

 

This multiplicity is the most essential part of the Japanese traditional systems. To hide the very core of systems from potential enemies, the Japanese always keep opaque structures. Not a single part but the whole system does work as a network.  If you’re foreigners, don’t forget to grasp it as a whole. Otherwise, you will easily lose sight of what you actually want to see.

 

 

Last but not least, don’t forget to watch out geographic positions of both the Negoroji-Temple and KIX.  Every important bonzes of Japanese Buddhistic schools use the airport, whenever they have to gather, they say. There is no accident in the world. An accident is what we just believe it to be so.

Can you finally understand how the Japanese politics make a decision of essential infrastructures? This is what foreigners call “structural problems/impediments” and has still protected Japan against attacks of foreign barbarism.

 

The Japanese way to survive is to make everything opaque. To remain brave, you need a “structure” in Japan. This rule can be applied also to what’s happening in the real politics and economy in Japan recently.