Resurrecting Ancestral Charisma

Japan today magnifies the familiar split image of itself, one half looking to the future with insatiable zest for change and novelty, the other half facing backward to the past to recapture tradition and continuity. Ironically but understandably, the unprecedented magnitude of economic prosperity and technological advancement that is enabling Japanese to rush to obtain the newest possible things is also funding and expediting a nostalgic journey in search of their roots and history. The split is not between change and continuity but rather between two perspectives of change. After all, tradition is not something that exists out there ready to be retrieved, but is a product of cultural construction and reconstruction, oftentimes to provide a rationale for some vested interest or even for a revolutionary change as in the case of the Meiji Restoration. Bestor calls this type of propensity for tradition-creation traditionalism, which is to be distinguished from tradition itself.' In this paper I analyze the resurrection of ancestors as a form of traditionalism manifested in

Aesthetics · Autocracy · Charisma · Democracy · Environmental ethics · Humanities · Political science · Politics · Prosperity · Traditionalism · Zest · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy