Respect and Reverence

As an avid hiker and backpacker, I have spent many hours looking down at the ground watching my hiking boots carry me along the trail. When I am scanning the path and step over mud, plants, and rocks of every size, there always depressingly appears to be an ever-present assortment of trash littering the hiking trails. Empty drink cans, bags of dog poop left by owners, candy wrappers, and more plagued the trails almost everywhere I went, from California to Colorado.

Of course, as a well-trained Boy Scout, I dutifully attempted to pick up the garbage as I found it but alas the pockets of my pack would always inevitably fill up and I would be forced to decide whether to pull out a garbage bag and clean up the mountain or to complete the hike. Even though hikers and outdoor people tend to be cleaner than most and the trails can be far from cities, litter still occurs, perhaps because there are no trash cans to dispose of in nature. However, it is still disheartening because the problem of litter gets exorbitantly worse in the suburban American cities where facilities to handle garbage exist and a trash can could be found every ten steps.

I had become slightly depressed and disheartened after years of living in a world where, no matter how far I ventured from civilization or how hard people tried to keep an area clean, there always seemed to be an ugly mark of human presence. I had become entrenched in the belief that humans cannot exist without defacing the land with their waste. At least, that was my belief until I came to Japan.

Japan is clean. Even in Tokyo, a megacity with a population of 9 million, or nearly double Los Angeles, it is clean. It is a common occurrence as a foreigner in Tokyo, or anywhere in Japan, to finish with a piece of trash, to look around for a trash can and to be stuck holding it for blocks only to give up and stuff it in your backpack.

Despite the wonderfully maddening absence of trash cans, there is a very clear and joyous absence of litter. There are no gum wrappers, no fruit peels, and no plastic straws or empty fast food cups lying about, even in the street gutters and park benches, places often fraught with abandoned garbage in America. Even if one does come across a piece of trash accidentally dropped or left, it does not remain there for long, as most Japanese people often do not hesitate to pick it up themselves.

It may not make sense to the average Japanese native for me to be so surprised and overjoyed by the simple absence of garbage from the street. However, after years of picking up trash, even in the most rural of places, I had become convinced to believe humans are just incapable of leaving any area unmarred by their actions. Now after travelling to this country, I am overjoyed by the Japanese’s culture of respect for the land and especially for nature.

Last July, in 2018, I travelled to Japan for two weeks with my uncle on a trip to visit his family and during that trip I joined some of his friends on a two-day hiking trip up Mount Kaikakoma, a three thousand meter tall mountain in Nagano prefecture. This experience was one of the first that showed me the respect that the Japanese have for nature.

Throughout the hike, not only was I in awe of the lack of litter, I was curious and pleased by the show of reverence to the mountain and forest through Shinto shrines. All along the dozen kilometer trail sat shrines, both large and quite small, collecting coins as offerings. They were everywhere, from a large, old tree to a mildly established clearing, in each place marking a spot of reverence to the nature.

As I hiked along, I felt an exciting, infectious respect and connection to the landscape and mountain each time we passed one of these little spots. While I have hiked through many forests and climbed my small share of mountains, it was a totally new experience to see the mark of humans in a way that did not mar the landscape, like litter or graffiti, but rather enhanced and encouraged a respect and veneration for the landscape. This reverence and respect for nature and the world around us is something I continually notice and continually am surprised about in my journey through Japan.

Coming from a culture of selfish greed and “not my problem” attitudes, where many people do not think twice about a haphazard toss of garbage out the window, it has been a refreshing experience to live in a society with a palpable sense of awareness of their actions.

From the most basic of bars to Seven-Eleven convenience stores, workers and employees are always respectful and diligent, preparing your cheap food with incredible care. The pride and respect in their work shows in little things: how employees handle your cash or credit card with two hands or how even the most basic of workers are dressed in a well-maintained uniform.

In America, not only would it be commonplace, it would be almost socially acceptable for a minimum wage employee to be ambivalent and apathetic to their work, but not in Japan. The Japanese reverence and respect, which I saw in the clean streets and the shrines on the mountain, I now see carries over into the daily lives and actions of the general Japanese culture. They have respect and reverence for everything around them and for everything they do and own.

Simply by living in this culture of respect and being around people who take pride in their work, I am learning how to respect and care for things in my daily life more and more. I tuck and wrap my cheap umbrella neatly rather than just shoving it away; I put items away more carefully; I handle my food with care and deliberation; I do this all because the Japanese culture has taught me that everything deserves to be treated with respect.