The Secular World and the Realm of the Spirit

Asahi Shimbun, Morning Edition, Oct. 30, 1999

Unexpected, striking encounters can occur even in psychiatric hospitals. An elderly woman, smiling with delight after finding fourteen four-leaf clovers in a corner of the garden, told me, “I’ve been deceived so many times by greedy people that I’ve lost faith in society. I’ll stay here, retired, until the world becomes a little more decent.”

People with mental illness often stand at the opposite end of values such as productivity, profit, and efficiency. They may not succumb to overwork or work-related suicide, but they are often highly sensitive—like canaries in a coal mine, some say, warning us about the future of humanity.

Those who turn to religious life in search of inner peace may, in a similar way, seek detachment from the worldly and a form of absolute tranquility.

The film Seven depicts a dark and terrifying pursuit of a serial killer inspired by the seven deadly sins—wrath, envy, greed, gluttony, lust, sloth, and pride—suggesting how deeply the concept of God is embedded in Western consciousness.

Yet religion is not always treated with reverence. In We’re No Angels, starring Humphrey Bogart and later remade with Robert De Niro, escaped convicts take refuge in a church, playfully mocking the sacred. Films like I Love You to Death, portraying a man who repeatedly cheats and confesses, also treat faith with irony. Such works can feel oddly relatable.

A labor medicine scholar returning from Sweden once remarked on the strong sense of equality grounded in faith there. Those studying to become lawyers or doctors are not envied for seeking status or wealth, but are instead regarded as contributing to society.

Those who seem to have reached spiritual heights, and those immersed in worldly stress to the point of drowning—perhaps there is not such a great difference between them after all.