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タイトルTit le

On the Quest ion of the Dead or “Ghosts”: A Meditat ion for DisasterVict ims

著者Author(s) Okubori, Akiko

掲載誌・巻号・ページCitat ion 21世紀倫理創成研究,Special Issue:124-134

刊行日Issue date 2019-03

資源タイプResource Type Departmental Bullet in Paper / 紀要論文

版区分Resource Version publisher

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DOI

JaLCDOI 10.24546/81011214

URL http://www.lib.kobe-u.ac.jp/handle_kernel/81011214

PDF issue: 2022-06-21

124

On the Question of the Dead or “Ghosts”:A Meditation for Disaster Victims

Akiko OKUBORI

1 IntroductionSince ancient times, philosophers have meditated on the question of death. For example,

for Plato and many of the philosophers who followed him, this question was one of the

fundamental areas of their meditation. Many of them have considered it in reference to the

question of the immortal soul. Another perspective can be seen in Martin Heidegger’s thinking

on the idea of death. As he proposes, we are conscious of our mortality or finitude as a condition

that allows us to determine to live an authentic existence. From another perspective, there has

been a renewal of interest in the death of the other as found in the thought of Vladimir

Jankélévitch (1903－1985) and Hajime Tanabe (田辺元 : 1885－1962). One aspect of the social

background of their meditation is their confrontation with the many deaths in World War II.

In the case of the Tōhoku (East－North) Great Earthquake of 2011, we also find a

similar question to that in World War II. In addition, today, we are called upon to

comprehend the difficulty of understanding death after a disaster. This study aims to try to

respond to the real question of the dead through meditating on the discussion of the death

of the other in Jankélévitch and Tanabe.

2 The Question of Personal Pronouns in La MortAt the beginning of La Mort, [1] Jankélévitch poses a question: Is death a

philosophical question (M, 5)? He discusses this question in terms of death as a

phenomenon and a mystery. He points out that death is paradoxical; it is both impersonal

and personal, empirical and metaempirical, a phenomenon and a mystery. On the one

hand, death as a phenomenon relates to death in the third person, which is impersonal. On

the other hand, we experience death in the second person as personal; death is not banal

and can be willfully “scandalous,” that is, shocking. We take such death almost as our

1 The quotations from this book (La Mort, Flammarion, 1966) are indicated as follows: (M, pagination),

Flammarion.

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own death. According to Jankélévitch, we cannot know about our own death because we

are already dead at the time. Therefore, death in the first person is death as a mystery,

which is the other side of death, and is different from death as a phenomenon.

2.1 What Does the Death of a Person Look Like?As a metaphor, Jankélévitch takes the example of a person’s death from Leo Tolstoy’s

Death of Ivan Iliitch. Here I will examine death in the third person and in the first person

through the characters Ivan Iliitch and Piotr Ivanovitch. Jankélévitch interprets the death of

Ivan from Piotr’s perspective in the following way:

The good news is that a person who died is another man. Piotr asks about

Ivan’s death with interest, as if death is a personal misfortune, as if the death is an

accident just limited to another, as if death is entirely unrelated to him. (M, 10)

Regarding the characters mentioned in the passage above, Ivan is the person who dies,

as indicated in the title of the book. Ivan was sitting on a bench in the central court. Piotr is his

colleague and longtime friend. First, “death” in the title refers to Ivan’s own death, which is

death in the first person. However, according to Jankélévitch, for death in the first person,

future tense never comes to us personally (M, 19). We can say “I will die” in the future tense,

but we cannot say “I die” in the present tense, much less “I died” in the past tense (M, 32).

The first person plays hide-and-seek with death (M, 34). However, from his colleague’s perspective, Ivan’s death is also an event. The notice of Ivan’s death leads to an appointment

and a change of post for his colleagues, a promotion (M, 5-6). In this case, death is not a

mystery but rather remains a phenomenon (M, 25). Ivan’s colleagues never remember the face

of the dead. The dead is impersonal (M, 31) in the third person without a face (M, 26).

Compared to the third person, Jankélévitch regards Ivan’s death as a misfortune in

the family (M, 6). Piotr thinks about Ivan’s death from a distance. However, his family

thinks about his death in the second person, as if thinking of him, “you are dead.” Another feature of the second person is that it is in an intermediate position between the

first and third person (M, 29). Jankélévitch emphasizes that the second person perspective

can help one to understand one’s own death. In other words, the philosophy of the second

On the Question of the Dead or “Ghosts”: A Meditation for Disaster Victims

126

person can help build a philosophy of the first person (M, 35).

2.2 The Other and the DeadHowever, a further question needs to be asked: Does Jankélévitch consider the dead when

he thinks about death in terms of personal pronouns? In this paper, I would like to highlight a

comment of his in the second part of La Mort in which we can discuss an instant of death.

Jankélévitch states that “we feel the temptation to replace instances with conditions,

death with the dead” (M, 224). Jankélévitch makes this statement in his interpretation of

Plato’s Phaedo, distinguishing between the instant of death and the dead already buried

(M, 219). The point of Jankélévitch’s idea is the decency of a disgraceful instance.

According to Jankélévitch, no matter how hard we try, the instance of death is not an

object of understanding and meditation and reasoning (ibid.). From this perspective, we

cannot philosophize about an instance of death (M, 220). We may intend to talk about an

instance of death, but we evade the unanswerable question.

After this discussion, Jankélévitch continues, saying that “farewell services help to

cover up an ‘unseeable’ instant if we do not have any story and logos” (M, 224). We cannot

talk about an instance of death, but we can hold a memorial service for the dead, hoping to

continue an event of death (ibid.). In that sense, we do not know what do in front of a tomb.

Finally, we mourn the dead, offering flowers on the altar in a person’s memory (M, 225-226).

Death is a phenomenon and a mystery at the same time for Jankélévitch. He reconsiders

the paradoxical axiom with three types of personal pronouns. The most important way in

which death can be apparent from this viewpoint is through that of the second person.

However, his discussion of the death of another does not develop into a discussion of the dead.

3 Philosophy of Death: Hajime TanabeHajime Tanabe also arrives at a similar conclusion, that is, the importance of death in the

case of the second person as a starting point for meditation on death. Tanabe was a member of

the Kyōto School, and he focused entirely on the work of Kitaro Nishida. Initially, he studied the

philosophy of science with Nishida, who was his teacher. However, Tanabe left him because of

his work in 1930. After this time, Tanabe started criticizing Nishida, as seen in “Logic of

Specifics” (Shu no ronri 種の論理 ). However, Tanabe’s students at the university, who studied

Journal of Innovative Ethics Special Issue

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the ideas in his book, did not return to their homes after World War II. Tanabe published

“Philosophy as Metanoetics” (Zangedō toshiteno tetsugaku) in 1946. In the final years of

his life, he produced “Philosophy of Death” (Shi no tetsugaku), his last study.

Fumihiko Sueki (末木文美士 ) considers death impossible to experience with pure

reason, after Immanuel Kant. Yet Heidegger does mention death in the twentieth century.

However, his idea of death is significant not so much as a philosophy of death, but essentially,

as an ontology of life in which death is the end of life. Therefore, following Kant, Sueki

suggests that the question of death has not faced a challenge head-on, and furthermore he

points out an error in the establishment of the problem: we cannot think about death insofar as

we question our own death, although we can experience the death of another. Therefore, it is

possible to investigate the question of death in philosophy if we consider another’s death.[2]

Shoto Hase (長谷正當 ) explains:

In Being and Time, Heidegger regards death not as a metaphor or as the death

of another, but as our own death in a literal sense. However, death bears hard upon

our head as an ideal index if we do not experience it. Tanabe omitted this type of

death from his investigation of death.[3]

This explanation clearly shows that Tanabe and Heidegger have diametrically

opposing opinions about the question of death. Tanabe was fascinated by Heidegger’s idea

about awareness of death. He felt constrained to think that this is exactly what philosophy

sought.[4] However, Tanabe concluded that Heidegger’s philosophy is an ontology

regarding life to the end. According to Tanabe, death in Heidegger remains a mark of

awareness of life.[5]

2 Cf., F. Sueki, Tasha Shisha tachi no kindai (『他者・死者たちの近代』The Others and Dead in Modern

Japan (トランスビュー ), 2010. Han Bukkyō gaku『反・仏教学』, Chikuma-shobō (筑摩書房 ), 2013.

3 H. Tanabe, Zangedō toshiteno tetsugaku / Shi no tetsugaku (『懺悔道としての哲学・死の哲学』 Philosophy as Metanoetics, Philosophy of Death), ed. S. Hase. Tōei-sha (燈影舎 ), 2000, 453.

4 H. Tanabe, Shi no tetsugaku (『死の哲学』Philosophy of Death), ed. M. Fujita. Iwanami-shoten (岩波書店 ), 2010, 222.

5 Ibid., 223.


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4 A Meditation for Disaster Victims in the Great East Japan Earthquake

We see death during the course of living our life, not our own death in the first

person but the death of the other. We start meditating on death when we face the death of

another, especially in the case of the second person. Can we respond to the real question

of the dead based on a discussion of death of the other in Jankélévitch and Tanabe? The

purpose of this study is to consider this question.

4.1 The Case of a Clerk Working in a Care Office in Ishinomaki City[6]

I am conducting fieldwork on mourning following the Tōhoku earthquake of 2011 in

Ishinomaki city. I would like to try giving myself time to think about the question of the dead

with residents of Ishinomaki, especially the case of a clerk in a care office. There is no

narrative that can explain her experience of the earthquake through her words. She talked to

me about her deceased colleague on the day I visited, while we took a drive in Onagawa town.

On March 11, 2011, the clerk’s colleague was in the care office when the earthquake

came. She shuttled back and forth between the office and evacuation center with the office car,

to help older people move to a safe place. She was engulfed by the tsunami while she was

underway. Another colleague wanted to take older people with disabilities to a secure location.

She held out a hand to help them, but the tsunami overcame her. Another colleague, who was

the manager, was in the office to check whether everybody had managed to escape the disaster.

She went to the door to lock it and was in front of the door, and then the tsunami overpowered

her. The clerk of the care office saw a ring under the rubble and recognized her colleague. She

wanted to move away the rubble to help the woman; however, it was impossible to do so

because everybody in the town was in the same situation. In this unprecedented crisis, her

colleague’s family continued asking if they could remove the rubble soon. Her boss made

arrangements with the town hall, and then they finally permitted him to join in the effort to

clear away debris. After borrowing and using a heavy machine from the office of a builder he

knew, he finally found the woman. He carried her corpse to a charnel house. However, they

could not cremate her quickly or hold a funeral ceremony.

6 Ethical notice: this on-the-scene investigation was approved by a research ethics committee at Osaka

University, Graduate School of Human Sciences (No. 2017016).


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According to the clerk of the care office, she discovered people’s bodies all over the

place throughout the town. Most residents faced death somewhere. She actually came

across a dead man’s body in the compound of her parents’ house. The body was located in

the cumulated tatami outside by her cousin who was there for the Golden Week holidays.

Her cousin told a member of the self-defense forces that worked nearby about the body.

Especially in April and May 2011, the clerk had to listen to how people had died

and fill out claims for worker’s compensation. Continuing her communication with her

colleague’s families, she relived her colleague’s last day. Therefore, she recognized their

memories as if she had experienced them herself.

4.2 Disaster Study on SpiritualityI gained a new perspective from the case of the clerk of the care office in Ishinomaki city:

Jankélévitch’s personal classification of death is inapplicable in actuality. According to

Jankélévitch, death in the third person relates to death as a phenomenon, which is impersonal and

banal. Therefore, it is true that we can talk about death in biological terms in the third person.

However, even if Jankélévitch defines death in the third person as impersonal, we have difficulty

accepting this death. Jankélévitch’s concept of death in the third person changes to death in the

second person, independent of antemortem relationships or closeness. In the case of people who

happened to live together in the same town, the survivors have to continue to live after the

earthquake without their sign. This survivor’s consciousness demonstrates the difficulty in

understanding death, and furthermore the expansion of the range of the third person.

It should be recognized that new academic fields are now developing that are related to

areas affected by the Great East Japan earthquake. One of these new approaches is disaster

studies.[7] I would like to focus specifically on a “disaster study on spirituality” (Reisei no

Shinsai-gaku: 霊性の震災学 ), an approach that has been suggested by sociologist Kiyoshi

Kanebishi ( 金菱清 ). Within a week after the earthquake, he started a project that involved

recording people’s testimonies about the earthquake with his students in Sendai. They gathered

500 reports. The institution with which he is affiliated, Tōhoku Gakuin University, is familiar to

7 For example, Tōhoku University started offering “Endowed Chair on Practical Religious Studies (実践宗教学寄附講座 , Jissen shukyōgaku kihu kōza)” after the earthquake. Their lectures address “Japanese-style chaplains (臨床宗教師 , Rinshō-shukyō-shi),” who go to areas where there are disaster victims, to listen to the survivors’ experiences and concerns.


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the people of Miyagi prefecture and the Tōhoku district. Students shared their bitter experiences

with others, for example, relatives, friends, and neighbors, even if they did not go through

difficulties themselves. And the sharing of experience spread to the graduate students of various

generations and areas. Based on their reports, Kanebishi wrote “3・11 Document of Wail: The

Great Tsunami / Great Earthquake / Nuclear Power Plant Disaster Experience of 71 People” (3.11 Dōkoku no kiroku: 71 nin no taikan shita ōtsunami / genpatsu / kyodai jishin). This book is

the first publication related to the project. The purpose of the book was simply to create a record

of the disaster and its aftermath. However, the reaction of survivors led to an unexpected

development. Kanebishi turned to the question of the dead, to which little attention has been

given in the literature on the earthquake in general.

In so doing, Kanebishi discovered a so-called “care of keeping the pain.” The term

“care of keeping the pain” is used to describe a relationship between the dead and the

survivors. According to Kanebishi, survivors have paradoxical feelings: they wish to be

released from the dead in order to feel relieved, but they feel that they cannot leave the

dead in pain. This was the mental state of the survivors after the earthquake. As a result of

this research, Kanebishi decided to try a form of care involving keeping the pain and an

approach of taking notes on the survivors’ records. Based on these records, he published

“Memento Mori of Earthquake: In the Face of the Second Tsunami” (Shinsai memento

mori: daini no tsunami ni kōshite). Survivors have reconstructed their relation to the dead

by taking notes. Kanebishi thus proposes a disaster study based on spirituality (Reisei: 霊性 ,) in “An Introduction to Disaster Study: The Structure of Society from the Viewpoint of

Life and Death” (Shinsai-gaku nyumon: shiseikan kara no shakai kōsō).

4.3 The Ghost Phenomenon after March 11, 2011Kanebishi’s student, Yuka Kudō (工藤優花 ), interviewed taxi drivers and published

these interviews in‘A Town Where the Dead Come: The Ghost Phenomenon of the Taxi

Drivers’ (Shisha tachi ga ikikau machi: takushi doraiba no yurei genshō). In her article,

she mentions the appearance of ghosts after the earthquake in Ishinomaki city, as follows:

In an unprecedented earthquake, residents of Ishinomaki left their beloved

place suddenly, and lost their dear old home, and suffered the death of a loved one.


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They had a lot of hurt. The taxi drivers experienced these pains personally, or faced

their state of affairs. They seemed to be in grief and despair as if it were the end of

the world. Then, the ghost phenomenon appeared. The taxi drivers stood in awe of

the ghost, being in a state of fear and surprise.[8]

According to Kudo, there is a sense of solidarity among the residents of Isinomaki[9] that

expresses itself in the ghost phenomenon. Residents can find the dead in their life even if the

dead appears as a ghost. Similar to Kanebishi, Shuji Okuno (奥野修司 ) has investigated the

question of the ghost phenomenon after the earthquake. In the beginning of “Even If [you are] a

Spirit, Stay by My Side: Listening the Spiritual Experience after 3.11” (Tamashii demo iikara

soba ni ite), he discusses the opportunity that led him to start researching, which were his friend’s words: “The ghost phenomenon seemed to appear when our society broke, and we have no

doubt in the world that our society is rational, that we can foresee the future of our society”.[10] A

further researcher in this field is Eisuke Wakamatsu (若松英輔 ). In “Touching a Soul: The

Great Earthquake and the Live Dead” (Tamashii ni fureru: dai shinsai to ikiteiru shisha),

Wakamatsu proposes the following idea: the survivor’s problem is to continue living together

with our still companions, in other words with the dead.[11]

5 Conclusion: Where are the Dead Who Cannot be Classified into Personal Pronouns?

Through the story of the dead in the case of the clerk working in the care office, we

reached the same difficulty accepting death in the third person as is the case with death in

8 Y. Kudō, Shisha tachi ga ikikau machi: takushi doraiba no yurei genshō (「死者たちの通う街 ――タクシードライバーの幽霊現象」『呼び覚まされる霊性の震災学 3.11 生と死のはざまで』 A Town Where the Dead Come: The Ghost Phenomenon of the Taxi Drivers, Disaster Study on Spirituality, Resonant : Between Life and Death), The project for recording the earthquake at Tōhoku Gakuin University. ed. K. Kanebishi, Shinyou-sha (新曜社 ), 2016, 18.

9 Ibid.

10 S. Okuno, Tamashii demo iikara soba ni ite: 3.11 go no reitaiken wo kiku, (『魂でもいいから，そばにいて 3.11後の霊体験を聞く』Even If [you are] a Spirit, Stay by My Side: Listening the Spiritual Experience after 3.11), Shinchō-sha ( 新潮社 ), 2017, 11.

11 E. Wakamatsu, Tamashii ni fureru: dai shinsai to ikiteiru shisha (『魂にふれる大震災と，生きている死者』Touching a Soul: The Great Earthquake and the Live Dead), Transview (トランスビュー ), 2012, 20.


132

the second person. After observing this problem, we noticed the potential for “disaster

study on spirituality”. This study and many scholars see the question of the dead,

furthermore the question of “ghosts” as a problem.

Therefore, the story of the dead in the case of the clerk working in the care office can

be interpreted as a sort of the question of “ghost”. Survivors faced many unpalatable deaths

in the Great East Japan Earthquake. They cannot classify even the dead who were strangers

as death in the third person. Especially from the viewpoint of the ghost phenomenon, the

death of strangers appears within the framework of “ghosts”. Philosophers might find a new

issue that reaches beyond the question of the dead by considering the ghost phenomenon.

On the one hand, Jankélévitch considers the death in the context of personal pronouns,

and he emphasizes death in the second person. On the other hand, Tanabe tried to think

about death based on the question of the dead. It is true that these two philosophers have

different perspectives from the traditional philosophy of death, which thought about one’s

own death. However, we are confounded by new issues, for example the ghost phenomenon,

when the real question of the dead comes to the stage. Philosophers need to consider such

issues if they are to obtain alternatives to the established answers.

References:

E. Wakamatsu, Tamashii ni fureru: dai shinsai to ikiteiru shisha (『魂にふれる大震災と，生きている

死者』 Touching a Soul: The Great Earthquake and the Live Dead), Transview (トランスビュー ), 2012.

F. Sueki, Tasha Shisha tachi no kindai (『他者・死者たちの近代』 The Others and Dead in Modern

Japan, Transview (トランスビュー ), 2010.

――――, Han Bukkyō gaku (『反・仏教学』 Against Buddhist Studies), Chikuma-shobō (筑摩書房 ),

2013.

H.Takahashi, Dare ga hanashi wo kikunoka? : hisai-chi ni okeru rei no hanashi to shukyōsha ( 『誰が

話を聴くのか? : 被災地における霊の話と宗教者』 Who Listens to Their Stories? : How Religious

Professionals are Dealing with Occult Phenomena in the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster Area),

Shiseigaku-nenpō 2014, Rithon (リトン ), 2014.

H. Tanabe, Zangedō toshiteno tetsugaku / Shi no tetsugaku (『懺悔道としての哲学・死の哲学』

Philosophy as Metanoetics, Philosophy of Death), ed. S. Hase. Tōei-sha (燈影舎 ), 2000.

――――, Shi no tetsugaku (『死の哲学』Philosophy of Death), ed. M. Fujita. Iwanami-shoten (岩


133

波書店 ), 2010.

K. Kanebishi, Dōkoku no kiroku: 71 nin no taikan shita ōtsunami / genpatsu / kyodai jishin (『3.11 慟哭

の記録 71人が体感した大津波・原発・巨大地震』 3・11 Document of Wail: The Great Tsunami /

Great Earthquake / Nuclear Power Plant Disaster Experience of 71 People), Shinyō-sha (新曜社 ), 2012.

―――――, Shinsai memento mori: daini no tsunami ni kōshite (『震災メメントモリ第二の津波に

抗して』 Memento Mori of Earthquake: In the face of the Second Tsunami), Shinyō-sha (新曜社 ), 2014.

―――――, Shinsai-gaku nyumon: shiseikan kara no shakai kōsō (『震災学入門死生観からの社

会構想』 An Introduction to Disaster Study: The Structure of Society from the viewpoint of Life and

Death), chikuma-shobō (筑摩書房 ), 2016.

K. Yanagida, Kinkyu hatsugen inochi he Ⅱ iryō jiko / tetsudō jiko / rinkai jiko / dai shinsai (『緊急発

言いのちへ Ⅱ 医療事故・鉄道事故・臨界事故・大震災』 Urgent Statement dear Life: Medical

Accident / Railroad Accident / Critical Accident / Great Earthquake), Kōdan-sha (講談社 ), 2001.

N. Kazashi, Metanoetics for the Dead and the Living: Tanabe Hajime, Karaki Junzō, and Moritaki

Ichirō on the Nuclear Age, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Contemporary Japanese

Philosophy, Bloomsbury, 2017.

The project for recording the earthquake at Tōhoku Gakuin University. ed. Kiyoshi Kanebishi,

Yobisamasareru reisei no shinsai-gaku: 3.11 sei to shi no hazamade (『呼び覚まされる霊性の震災学

3.11 生と死のはざまで』 Disaster Study on Spirituality, Resonant: Between Life and Death), Shinyō-sha

(新曜社 ), 2016.

――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――,

Watashi no yume made ai ni kite kureta: 3.11 naki hito tono sorekara (『私の夢まで，会いに来て

くれた 3.11 亡き人とのそれから』 He Came to My Dream: 3.11 the Future with the Dead), Asahi

Shimbun-shuppan (朝日新聞出版 ), 2018.

Tōhoku Gakuin University, Shinsai-gaku vol.10 (『震災学 vol.10』 Disaster Studies vol.10, Araemishi

(荒蝦夷 ), 2017.

T. Azuma, Hiroshima nowaru (『ヒロシマ・ノワール』 Hiroshima Noir), Impact-shuppankai ( イ

ンパクト出版会 ), 2014.

S. Okuno, Tamashii demo iikara soba ni ite: 3.11 go no reitaiken wo kiku, (『魂でもいいから，そ

ばにいて 3.11後の霊体験を聞く』 Even If [you are] a Spirit, Stay by My Side: Listening the

Spiritual Experience after 3.11), Shinchō-sha ( 新潮社 ), 2017.

Vladimir Jankélévitch, La Mort, Flammarion, 1966.


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Y. Taniyama, Iryōsha to shukyōsha no tame no supirituaru kea: rinshō-shukyō-shi no shiten kara (『医療者

と宗教者のためのスピリチュアルケア臨床宗教師の視点から』 Spiritual Care for Medical Worker

and Religions: From the viewpoint of Japanese-Style Chaplains), Chugaiigaku-sha (中外医学社 ), 2016.

21 century medical forum in Kōyasan, ed. K. Yanagida and T. Takamatsu,‘sei to shi’ no 21 seiki

sengen part.6 (『「生と死」の 21世紀宣言 part.6』 The Declaration of ‘Life and Death’ in 21

Century Part.6), Seikai-sha (青海社 ), 2014.

Acknowledgment:This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP17J01451 (Grant-in-Aid

for JSPS Research Fellow).

Author Information Akiko Okubori

JSPS Research Fellow (PD); Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University, Japan.


akiko okubori - lib.kobe-u.ac.jp

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