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(3) For a more detailed presentation of this model cf. Giesen, B., Die Intellektuellen und die Nation (Frankfurt/M., 1993)Google Scholar.

(4) e.g. Hechter, M., Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1987)Google Scholar.

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(60) A. Grappard's analysis is very pertinent here: ‘Of the many techniques that were recommended for copying the Lotus Sutra, that which was called nyobokyo, or ‘Natural text’, enjoined one to refrain from using an animal-hair brush and to use instead grass and plants as brush, stones as ink, and to bow after each graph was copied, so that the natural character of the tools that were used would fit the natural character of the scripture that was copied. These epistemological directions led them to postulate that natural sounds were the sermon of the Buddha, and that the natural world was the body of Buddha. This ‘episteme of identity’ led them to manage a natural area in accordance with a vision which held that the Lotus Sutra was embodied in the mountain, and that the mountain was a ‘natural discourse’ expounding the Lotus Sutra. In other words, their perception of the world was already a sophisticated interpretation that was doctrinally related to the Tendai motto to the effect that ‘all animate and inanimate beings possess the buddha nature’, and to the proposition that ‘inanimate beings can expound the doctrine of the Buddha’. ‘… Foucault stipulates that the world, by means of this interplay of resemblances and likenesses, was as if forced to remain “identical”, in an identity in which “the same remains the same, riveted onto itself”. The world was filled with “signatures” in which similitudes could be recognized … A systematic study of combinatory cults supports this claim, and Kunisaki is a case in point because of its relation to the Hachiman cult. It is important to note that the apparent lack of distinction between religious and political realms in Japan means simply that Japanese society had a mythical vision of itself: first expressed in the Kojiki and in the Nihogi in the eighth century, it served as a structuring device of the sacred geographies that developed thereafter. In that vision, society and the world were conceived of as single sociocosm in which the pantheon of kami and its hierarchy were a mirror-image of the social construct and a mirror-image of the Buddhist pantheon. Furthermore, the world in which people lived was thought to be impacted by symbolic forces (such as those of stars or of diseases believed to originate in symbolic realms). In such a scheme the position of ritual was central, because people used it as an effective means to act over symbols. What one could qualify as the cosmonatural aspect of the sociocosm was the definition of nature according to mythology. That definition is clearly, though indirectly, given in the Kojiki in the myth relating the birth of fire, in which all the kami born before the birth of fire belong to the realm of nature whereas all the kami born after belong to the realm of culture’. Grappard, A. G., The Textualized Mountain-Enmountaind Text: the Lotus Sutra, in: Tanabe, S.J. and Tanabe, W.J. (eds), The Lotus Sutra in Japanese Culture (Honolulu, U. of Hawaii Press, 1984), 159–191Google Scholar.

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(69) H. Watanabe makes a similar observation: ‘This relationship of samurai and his lord is extremely different, in any phase, from that of the Chinese scholar-official and emperor. And of course it is dissimilar to the Neo-Confucian ideal of this relationship … A disciple of Zhu Xi wrote in the biography of his master. The master worried about the affairs of state all the time. When he heard the defects of the current administration, he was distressed. When he spoke of the deteriorated situation of the state, tears would at last drop from his eyes. However, he respected the ancient manner, Li that a virtuous man hesitates to serve. Therefore whenever he was offered an official position, he tried hard to decline it. He made much of the ancient manner, Li that a good vassal does not hesitate to resign. Therefore whenever his opinion did not coincide with the lord's he resigned immediately. He dared not impair the Way to get and keep his official position. He dared not compromise with vulgar opinions, because he had sympathy with the people … This is a very rationalistic relationship. There is no emotional attachment to the lord. He shied away from serving, because he respects the principle more…’ ‘… We can see the rationalistic, normative character of Zhu Xi's image of the lord-vassal relationship here. The contrast with samurai's relationship and his lord is really remarkable. And yet the Japanese Confucianists thought of samurai's relationship when they read Neo-Confucian teachings on the scholar-official's relationships. They must have been embarrassed sometimes. They understand that what they were talking about was quite different from what Chinese philosophers had talked about … So here too was a big task for Japanese Confucianists. It seems to me that most of them accepted or compromised with the samurai version of the loyalty relationship’. ‘… Unlike in China, in Japan a vasal's duty to the lord often came to be regarded as prior to this duty to his father, as many scholars have pointed out. And Confucianists almost unanimously applauded the deed of Ako masterless samurai, the hero of the famous play Chushingura, though there were a few conspicuous expections’. Watanabe, H., The Transformation of Neo-Confucianism in Early Tokugawa Japan,Paper presented at the conference on Confucianism of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences(Cambridge, Mass.,1992)Google Scholar.