all earthly phenomena). The point is that human beings have no special claim on the benefits of the world as they find it. Rather, they are part of the world and, depending on how they function in it can find good or evil in all the things in it. Norinaga advocates focusing on the good.
Earhart discusses the complex attempt to revive Shinto during the Meiji period and the gradual movement in Japan toward a militaristic nationalism that was characterized, incorrectly, as Shinto. The so-called Shrine Shinto that emerged privileged Japanese exceptionalism and dominated more traditional strands of Shinto tradition between 1868 and 1945. Ultranationalism in Japan can be associated with suggestions by Norinaga of the inherent superiority of Japanese to Confucian and Buddhist cultures. "Our Imperial Land," Norinaga writes, "is superior to the rest of the world in its possession of the correct transmission of the ancient Way," a statement that could be used to rationalize all manner of imperialism in the sense of conquest. The aggressiveness with which Japan pursued a Pacific conquest in the first decades of the 20th century, specifically colonizing Korea in order to exploit its natural resources, appears to fly in the face of the notion that Shinto ever had anything to do with nature mysticism. However, Earhart stresses a distinction between state-sponsored Shrine Shinto and the more ancient tradition.
The Zen concept of protecting the environment must begin with the fact that the Buddha's great enlightenment came while he was meditating under a banyan tree. The link to nature is important to understan
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