2022/12/8
The following is from Masayuki Takayama's Weekly Shincho column, released today.
This article also proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
This paper also proves that I hit the nail on the head in the previous chapter.
A prolific reader friend told me that the chapters in which I mentioned Nobunaga and Masayuki Takayama's evaluation of Nobunaga are the same. I immediately agreed.
It is a must-read not only for the Japanese people but for people worldwide.
Nobunaga was a great man.
Yahweh, the God of Judaism, created the heavens, earth, and all things, including human beings.
However, he was a bit absent-minded and ended up creating a god called Baal and many other gods, and he ended up having to order the Jewish people not to worship other gods.
The people obeyed, but this time, they were told, "Don't speak my name uncontrollably."
He told them not to say, "God, help me," or to ask God for help.
He also hated LGBT people and burned the city of Sodom.
In this respect, Japanese gods are different.
They are devoted to their people.
If there is a calamity, God purifies it and casts it into the river.
The river god passes it to the God of the sea, and finally, the God of the bottom of the water buries it.
The river god had a bit of an appearance in "Spirited Away."
Ise Jingu Shrine, Suwa Taisha Shrine, Toyokawa Inari Shrine, etc., which enshrine such gods, are built on the median tectonic line, the massive fault that cuts through the Japanese archipelago.
They are there to quell earthquakes and volcanic eruptions caused by the fault line.
Japanese deities, however, dislike impurity, especially death.
In particular, they hate death.
That is why funerals are never held in shrines.
The people were so annoyed that they gave leave to their servants who were about to die, many of whom died along the road.
Akutagawa's novel Rashomon depicts the city of Kyoto as filled with such corpses.
A monk at a temple took notice of the devastation.
When Buddha entered nirvana, he told his disciples not to hold funerals, but they decided not to listen to him and began to take care of the dead.
The monks organized the funerals and sold the names of precepts, stupas, and tombstones, and the monks made a killing.
As more money was made and the number of believers who seriously believed in the Higan increased, the priests became increasingly presumptuous.
The Buddhist priests ravaged the capital, and the army of priests intervened in political disputes to influence the political process.
Around this time, the ex-Emperor Shirakawa lamented that "the flow of the Kamo River and the monks of Enryaku-ji Temple" were not as he wished.
The priests of the Ikkō-shū finally came to dominate Kaga, and Nobunaga took action against them for abusing their religious beliefs.
He defeated the Ishiyama-ji Temple, the head temple of the Ikkō-shū, and attacked the Enryaku-ji Temple of the Tendai sect on Mount Hiei.
The Nobunaga Chronicle says that he killed everyone, including women and children.
His behavior was such that Lewis Freud condemned it as "the work of the devil."
However, historical writer Shiono Nanayo has a different assessment.
After Nobunaga, the priests learned to know their place and stopped meddling in politics.
Kirishitan, another foreign religion, preached the love of God and engaged in the slave trade.
When Hideyoshi told Coelho, a Jesuit, to become a true Human, he rebelled, talked with the Kirishitan lords, and plotted to defeat Hideyoshi.
Ieyasu and Iemitsu disliked such politics and even killed women and children in the Shimabara Rebellion.
It was the moment when Japanese Christians knew their place.
The Meiji government also strictly prohibited the proselytizing of heterodoxy, including Kirishitan, under the Five Public Notices.
There was no progress among Christians outside of Japan.
In the U.S., they had used enslaved Black people until three years before, and when the ban was lifted, they now bought coolies.
In Japan, on the other hand, religion was disciplined, and it did not cause messiness.
But after the war, along came the idiot MacArthur.
This foolish general, beaten by the Japanese army and even fleeing before the enemy, did not know the "great cause" that was the source of the strength of the Japanese military.
He groundlessly suspected that it was the belief in Japanese gods and imposed the GHQ Constitution, which declared Shintoism to be an evil religion.
For this reason, the Japanese people were reprimanded for worshiping the loyalty monument and visiting Yasukuni. Still, in reaction, Buddhism, Christianity, and other religions were allowed to do whatever they wanted.
Aum killed three members of a lawyer's family and murdered eight people in Nagano, but even police investigations were blocked on the grounds of freedom of religion.
The Soka Gakkai meddled in politics, which Nobunaga did not allow, and Sun Myung Moon, supported by the Asahi Shimbun for lying about comfort women, forced Japanese people to pay money to atone for their sins and forced Japanese women to become sex slaves of Koreans themselves.
In the wake of this Sun Myung Moon's irreverence, the Diet has, for the first time, taken a scalpel to pagan religions other than Shinto, and Mows may come to earnest, or rather, to realize their evil.
Foreign religions do not suit the Japanese.
Japanese gods are the best.
2024/12/8 in kyoto
