Ethics in Myth and History

Different from the Chinese or Koreans, the Japanese have not cut themselves off the ancient mythology. Their system of the emperor shows it. However, the modern civilization tries to give priority to history so that there is little room for them to keep the mythology safe and sound. One of the outcomes of the situation is the nationalistic ideology of the divine nation with the divine emperor invented out of the ancient mythology. It failed of course with the national defeat at the end of World War II, but this does not mean the end of the mythical mind of the Japanese. Since Antiquity till today, the Japanese have had a mythical vision of the world based on the idea of Natural productivity. According to the vision, a human product called history is nothing compared to the productivity of Nature. The Japanese ethics is not based on a historical vision but on a naturalistic vision, which differs them from the ethics of the so-called civilized peoples.