From what I understand, mono no aware/wabi-sabi makes a pretty compelling argument against the assumption that underlies ideas like that of your teacher friend when he/she suggested lack of religion might be damaging family values. It’s an ethical, interconnected existence with things not in the pantheistic sense but in the nonspiritual materialistic sense. Like if Christianity wasn’t part of American history and we knew family values by other means.

I’m not bashing spirituality as a source of values; just an example to argue it’s not the only way.

I seem to have latched onto this term I just learned last week pretty hard :)

That’s a good point. I thought about atheists in America, too.

You’re right, the old ways do still permeate the culture. The teacher who told me Japanese aren’t spiritual (different from religious) enough made that point, too. As an example he said Japanese people are probably more likely to have feelings towards inanimate objects than most Westerners. He pushed a broom onto the floor and said many Japanese may feel or say something like “poor broom” even though it’s not alive. That’s because animism is an element of Shinto. It’s become kind of vestigial, though, in the sense that like you said. It’s kind of just something people do because it’s what they do. It’s lost its meaning, which I find kind of sad.

And about wabi-sabi (alternate spelling, I guess?), I was talking to them in Japanese, asking them to explain it, but they couldn’t. I just mean that I think it’s kind of a confusing idea and very difficult to understand for anyone, even Japanese. It’s all well and good to say that “Japanese people can appreciate and enjoy the transience of life” for example, and quite another to actually understand what it feels like to “enjoy the transience” of anything.

And sorry if it seem(s/ed) like I was taking aim at anything you said. I was more so addressing R, but also just kind of trying to make an independent point.

Japanese spirituality isn’t remotely like Western religion, in theory or practice, but it permeates the culture anyway – just as an Atheist in America still has Sundays off and gets gifts on Christmas. That’s why I was saying it was a “passive, but deep-rooted” spirituality.

Japan is highly secularized, but the traditions that it follows are still based in Shinto and Buddhism, whether or not Japanese people are aware of it. A person doesn’t have to know why they are going to a cherry blossom festival, or bathing every day, to enjoy it, but the roots are in Shinto/Buddhist practice.

That said, things like Wabi-Sabe may not be of interest to many, but it is certainly a part of the art, design and architecture fields. I doubt you could find an artisan or craftsman who doesn’t know wabi-sabe. (And to be fair to your co-workers, the translation of wabi-sabe in English is still “wabi-sabe,” because the term is so foreign, like “schadenfreude”).

So, yeah: Japanese people as a whole aren’t constantly reflecting on the passage of time when they drink lattes, and I didn’t want to impose that vision on any reader. I’m just saying what the roots of the practice are; and why Japan is, historically, rooted towards cycles and seasons in such a particular way.

That said, though, I’ve read a few articles that talk about how many Japanese people don’t consider themselves “Religious” even if they go to shrines every day. Part of it, I guess, is because the word “religion” is kind of foreign, and doesn’t really relate to the practice as prescribed by Zen or Shinto, which have practically nothing in common with Western “religion.”

The best I can understand is that, on both sides, we are using the word “religion” as vague approximations of what the other side means.

The other day I was talking to the teacher who sits next to me about something and she brought up wabi-sabi. I asked her what that meant, and both she and two other teachers in the area kind of ashamedly couldn’t really say what it was. We all had to look at the Japanese Wikipedia entry together. And it is rather bleak and nihilistic.

I also talked to a teacher who was lamenting the fact that Japanese people aren’t as religious as Americans are (he himself isn’t religious but likes to study various religions). He told me in all seriousness that he thinks it’s already causing problems with the Japanese family life that will only get worse in the future.

Japan has only a shade of the spirituality it once possessed, but I think many people looking in don’t realize it.