Japan's national catholicism

What can the interpretation of a text tell us about the society in which the process of interpretation takes place? That's seems to be the basic idea behind Heidegger's hermeneutic circle. What the hermeneutic circle can tell us of a society in which the original text is hidden from its members as it is the case with Japanese society?

Weber's comparison of the Protestant and Catholic faiths starts with the problem of interpreting "the text", the Bible, in this case. In the former, the text is interpreted directly by the members of the cult. In the latter, the text is mediated through the interpretation of the Church, especially through its Catechism. Thus, Weber correlates Protestant hermeneutics to a strong sense of entrepreneurship and pro-action condensed in the Protestant ethics; whereas Catholic hermeneutics has its correlate in a patriarchal situation where the member of the cult adopts a passive attitude towards the organisation of labour. Everything is received. Furthermore, everything is received in piecemeal fashion. There cannot be insightful appreciation of theoretical cohesiveness. The recipients of the readings cannot but have faith in the interpretation they are been given because the interpretation is fragmented.

These two ways of being have enormous implications in the concept of citizenship and organisation of civil society.

So let us take a quick look at Japan, where the school system systematically hides the original text. There is a complete lack of access to the manuscript, to the original work throughout the school experience. Pupils rarely face the original novel, work of History or essay. There is an abundance of cathechism and a lack of personal research and understanding. Texts are interpreted in textbooks in similar fashion to the interpretation of the Bible done by the Catholic Church in 18th and 19th Century Europe. A professor in a Japanese university told me once that it took a serious effort trying to bridge students' ability to read from the simple reading of second or third-hand interpretations to the ability to read a text in its original form.

If we look at the phenomenon from a Bernsteinian perspective, we can see that in the case where the original text is hidden, the possibilities for the recontextualisation of knowledge --a routine operation carried out by what Bernstein calls the pedagogic device-- are wider. However, in a society where the reading of the original text is virtue, the possibilities for recontextualisation are narrower. In the former case, the power lies with the mediational organisation (intrinsic power). In the latter, the power still lies with the mediational organisation but some power remains in the ideas offered in the original text (extrinsic power). The only way to check the mediators and their intentions is by having access to the original text. In a society where the original text is kept outside the public domain, it is impossible to check the accuracy and object of the mediation. You have to trust the mediation is sound. You ought to have faith in the authorities.