Title : The ceremony — as Naruhito accedes to the Chrysanthemum Throne.
link : The ceremony — as Naruhito accedes to the Chrysanthemum Throne.
The ceremony — as Naruhito accedes to the Chrysanthemum Throne.
Today, in Japan:"I swear that I will reflect deeply on the course followed by his majesty, the emperor emeritus, and bear in mind the path trodden by past emperors, and will devote myself to self-improvement."
I'd like to know more about the devotion to "self-improvement." What is the Japanese word and what is the significance of the concept in Japanese culture? The "self-improvement" of the new leader is not an idea that has any prominence when an American takes a political office. Imagine a candidate for President offering to devote himself to self-improvement. Self-improvement? That sounds like an indulgence, a lack of interest in meeting responsibilities. I won't lamely speculate on the possible lack of actual work for the Japanese emperor. I'm going to assume there's a very interesting and government-related concept here that is puzzlingly represented by the English term "self-improvement."
From the Wikipedia article on the Chrysanthemum Throne:
Japan is the oldest continuing hereditary monarchy in the world. In much the same sense as the British Crown, the Chrysanthemum Throne is an abstract metonymic concept that represents the monarch and the legal authority for the existence of the government....And an image of the literal throne:
Here's the Wikipedia article on "Self-help or self-improvement." From the "History" subsection:
For some, George Combe's "Constitution" [1828], in the way that it advocated personal responsibility and the possibility of naturally sanctioned self-improvement through education or proper self-control, largely inaugurated the self-help movement." In 1841, an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, entitled Compensation, was published suggesting "every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults" and "acquire habits of self-help" as "our strength grows out of our weakness." Samuel Smiles (1812–1904) published the first self-consciously personal-development "self-help" book—entitled Self-Help—in 1859. Its opening sentence: "Heaven helps those who help themselves", provides a variation of "God helps them that help themselves", the oft-quoted maxim that had also appeared previously in Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac (1733–1758). In the 20th century, "Carnegie's remarkable success as a self-help author" further developed the genre with How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936.... Earlier, in 1902, James Allen published As a Man Thinketh, which proceeds from the conviction that "a man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts." Noble thoughts, the book maintains, make for a noble person, whilst lowly thoughts make for a miserable person; and Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich (1937) described the use of repeated positive thoughts to attract happiness and wealth by tapping into an "Infinite Intelligence."That's all terribly American. Again, I have no idea what Naruhito meant by what was translated as "self-improvement" and would really like to improve myself by hearing a good explanation.
By the way, Donald Trump's "The Art of the Deal" has been located in the American tradition of self help literature. From "What Donald Trump’s Books Say About Winning/Thirty years ago with The Art of the Deal, the president broke with a long tradition of American success writing by separating self-improvement from morality" (November 12, 2017) by Steven Watts in The Atlantic:
Trump’s books fall into one of the oldest, most influential genres in American popular culture: the success tract, or literature on how to get ahead in life. In the early republic, Benjamin Franklin advocated “virtue” as the pathway for aspiring individuals unshackled from aristocratic tradition. In the 1800s, Horatio Alger offered hard work and “character” as habits that would produce prosperity in a competitive market society. For a 20th-century society dominated by bureaucracies, Dale Carnegie urged strivers to cultivate human relations and an attractive “personality.”AND: Let me quote this passage about the Emperor from the book I'm rereading "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami:
But Trump’s writing has destroyed many of this tradition’s essential elements. To be sure, he borrows certain tried-and-true elements from Franklin, Alger, and Carnegie—unstinting labor, positive thinking, careful delineation of goals, mental focus. But he also peddles directives that ignore what these writers perceived as their obligation to shape good people and a good society. Instead, Trump’s injunctions look inward to promote a relentless self-aggrandizement, and outward to manipulate a world of facile images. These qualities, and their appeal to a popular audience, have reshaped America’s success tradition. They have jettisoned its moral ethos for one of bristling self-regard.
“Listen — God only exists in people’s minds. Especially in Japan, God’s always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn’t God anymore. That’s what Japanese gods are like — they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American chomping on a cheap pipe...The character saying that is — strangely enough — Colonel Sanders.
... gives the order and presto change-o — God’s no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like, I wouldn’t worry about it.”
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