A nation, a people, that incurs a civilization like this can only feel a sense of emptiness, of dissatisfaction and anxiety. There are those who gloat over this civilization of ours as if it were internally motivated, but they are wrong. They may think that they represent the height of fashion, but they are wrong. They are false and shallow, like boys who make a great show of enjoying cigarettes before they even know what tobacco tastes like. This is what the Japanese must do in order to survive, and this is what makes us so pitiful.
Here is an example that may not come under the heading of “civilization,” but just look at how we socialize with Westerners: always according to their rules, never ours. Why, then, do we not just stop socializing with them? Sadly enough, we have no choice in the matter. And when two unequal parties socialize, they do so according to the customs of the stronger. One Japanese may make fun of another for not knowing the proper way to hold a knife or fork, but such smug behavior only proves that the Westerners are stronger than we are. If we were the stronger, it would be a simple matter for us to take the lead and make them imitate us. Instead, we must imitate them. And because ageold customs cannot be changed overnight, all we can do is mechanically memorize Western manners—manners which, on us, look ridiculous.
All of this talk about silverware and manners may seem very trivial and have nothing to do with civilization, but that is exactly my point: everything we do—every trivial little act—is not internally, but externally motivated. This tells us that the civilization of modern-day Japan is superficial: it just skims the surface. Of course, I am not saying that this is true of absolutely everything. Such radical pronouncements should be avoided in dealing with complex problems, but the fact remains that no matter how much we view our civilization in our own favor, we cannot escape the conclusion that a part—perhaps the greatest part—of our civilization is superficial. This is not to say that we must put a stop to it. There is really nothing we can do about it. We must go on skimming the surface, fighting back our tears.
You may wonder, then, whether it is finally impossible for us to cease being the child carried along on a grown-up’s back, for us to forge ahead on our own through all the proper stages of development. I would answer no, it is not impossible. But if the Japanese were able to condense into ten years all the developments that it took the West a hundred years to accomplish—to do this in such a way as to avoid the accusation of hollowness and convince all onlookers that the progress was internally motivated—the results would be devastating. Even a beginner in mathematics could see that our vital energies would have to increase tenfold in order for us to accomplish a hundred years’ worth of experience in a tenth of the time without skimming the surface.
I can illustrate this point most easily by referring to the academic world. Let us suppose that through the forty-odd years of educational efforts that we have expended since the Meiji Restoration, we were able to arrive at the high degree of academic specialization that the Westerners realized after a hundred years and that we were able to do this entirely through internal motivation and without relying on any half-digested theories imported from the West, passing through a natural series of stages from theory A to B to C, entirely as a result of our own original research. If the Westerners, whose mental and physical powers far surpass ours, took a hundred years to get where they are now and we were able to reach that point in less than half that time (forgetting for the moment the difficulties they faced as pioneers), then we could certainly boast of an astounding intellectual accomplishment, but we would also succumb to an incurable nervous breakdown; we would fall by the wayside gasping for breath. And this is in no way farfetched. If you stop and think about it, a nervous breakdown is exactly what most university professors end up with after ten years of hard work. The healthy ones are merely phony scholars, or if that’s putting it too bluntly, let’s just say that succumbing to a nervous breakdown is more or less to be expected in that profession. I use scholars here simply because their example is so easy to grasp, but I believe the logic can be applied to all areas of civilization.
I said earlier that for all its progress, civilization favors us with so little peace of mind that if we consider the added anxieties thrust on us by competition and the like, our happiness is probably not very different from what it was in the Stone Age. If we add to that what I just now said about the nervous breakdown we experience from trying not to skim the surface as our civilization is forced to change mechanically because of the unique situation Japan now finds itself in, we Japanese come out looking pretty miserable, or—shall I say?—pathetic: our situation is simply appalling. That is my only conclusion; I have no advice to give, no remedies to suggest, because I do not believe there is anything anyone can do about it. I am simply lamenting the sad fact of it all.
Assuming that my analysis is correct, we can only view Japan’s future with pessimism. There seem to be fewer of us nowadays ridiculous enough to boast of Mount Fuji to foreigners, but we do hear many people proclaiming that victory over Russia made Japan a first-class power. I suppose one can make such claims if one is an incurable optimist. But what are we to do? How are we to cut our way through this desperate situation? As I said before, I have no clever solutions. The best answer I can come up with is that we probably should go on changing through internal motivation while trying our best to avoid a nervous breakdown.
I apologize for having exposed you so mercilessly to the bitter truth as I see it and for having given you something unpleasant to think about, if only for an hour or so, but I hope that you will appreciate the fact that I have shared with you today my own most deeply held opinions, based on substantial evidence and on my fullest intellectual efforts and that this will allow you to forgive the weak points in my presentation.
MY INDIVIDUALISM (WATAKUSHI NO KOJINSHUGI)
Translated by Jay Rubin
Having been born into the world, I had to find something to do. But what that something was, I had no idea. I stood paralyzed, alone and shut in by a fog, hoping that a single ray of sunlight would shine through to me, hoping even more that I could turn a searchlight outward and find a lighted path ahead, however narrow. But wherever I looked, there was only obscurity, a formless blur. I felt as if I had been sealed in a sack, unable to escape. If only I had something sharp, I could tear a hole in the sack, I thought, struggling frantically, but no one handed me what I needed, nor could I find it for myself. There was nothing for me to do but spend day after day in a pall of gloom that I concealed from others even as I kept asking myself, “What will become of me?”
I graduated from the university clutching this anxiety to my breast. I took it with me to Matsuyama and from Matsuyama to Kumamoto. And when at last, I journeyed to England, the anxiety was still there, deep within me.
Given the opportunity to study abroad, anyone would feel some new sense of responsibility. I worked hard. I strove to accomplish something. But none of the books I read helped me tear my way through the sack. I could search from one end of London to the other, I felt, and never find what I needed. I stayed in my room, thinking how absurd this all was. No amount of reading was going to fill this emptiness in the pit of my stomach. And when I resigned myself to the hopelessness of my task, I could no longer see any point to my reading books.
It was then that I realized that my only hope for salvation lay in fashioning for myself a conception of what literature is, working from the ground up and relying on nothing but my own efforts. At long last I saw that I had been no better than a rootless, floating weed, drifting aimlessly and wholly centered on others—“other-centered”—in the sense of an imitator, a man who has someone else drink his liquor for him, who asks the other fellow’s opinion of it and makes that opinion his own without question. Yes, it sounds foolish when I put it like this, and you may well doubt that there could be people who would imitate others in this manner. But in fact, there are. Why do you think you hear so much about Bergson these days, or Eucken? Simply because Japanese see wha
t is being talked about abroad and, in imitation, they begin shouting about it at home.
In my day, it was even worse. Attribute something—anything—to a Westerner, and people would follow it blindly, acting meanwhile as though it made them very important. Everywhere, there were men who thought themselves extremely clever because they could fill their speech with foreign names. Practically everyone was doing it. I say this not in condemnation of others, however: I myself was one of those men. I might read one European’s critique of another European’s book, for example. Then, never considering the merits of the critique, without in fact understanding it, I would spout it as my own. This piece of mechanically acquired information, this alien thing that I had swallowed whole, that was neither possession nor blood nor flesh of mine, I would regurgitate in the guise of personal opinion. And the times being what they were, everyone would applaud.
No amount of applause, however, could quiet any anxiety, for I myself knew that I was boasting of borrowed clothes, preening with glued-on peacock feathers. I began to see that I must abandon this empty display and move toward something more genuine, for until I did, the anxiety in the pit of my stomach would never go away.
A Westerner might say a poem was very fine, for example, or its tone extremely good, but this was his view, his Western view, and while certainly not irrelevant, it was nothing that I had to repeat if I could not agree with it. I was an independent Japanese, not a slave to England, and it was incumbent on me as a Japanese to possess at least this degree of self-respect. A respect for honesty, as well, the ethic shared by all nations, forbade me to alter my opinion. . . .
My next step was to strengthen—perhaps I should say to build anew—the foundations on which I stood in my study of literature. For this, I began to read books that had nothing whatever to do with literature. If, before, I had been other-centered, it occurred to me now that I must become self-centered. I became absorbed in scientific studies, philosophical speculation, anything that would support this position. Now the times are different and the need for self-centeredness should be clear to anyone who has done some thinking, but I was immature then, and the world around me was still not very advanced. There was really no other way for me to proceed.
Once I had grasped this idea of self-centeredness, it became for me an enormous fund of strength, even defiance. Who did these Westerners think they were, anyway? I had been feeling lost, in a daze, when the idea of ego-centeredness told me where to stand, showed me the road I must take.
Self-centeredness became for me a new beginning, I confess, and it helped me find what I thought would be my life’s work. I resolved to write books, to tell people that they need not imitate Westerners, that running blindly after others as they were doing would only cause them great anxiety. If I could spell this out for them with unshakable proof, it would give me pleasure and make them happy as well. This was what I hoped to accomplish.
My anxiety disappeared without a trace. I looked out on London’s gloom with a happy heart. I felt that after years of agony, my pick had at least struck a vein of ore. A ray of light had broken through the fog and illuminated my way.
At the time that I experienced this enlightenment, I had been in England for more than a year. There was no hope of my accomplishing the task I had set for myself while I was in a foreign country. I decided to collect all the materials I could find and to complete my work after returning to Japan. As it happened, then, I would return to Japan with a strength I had not possessed when I left for England . . .
The idea that came to me at the time, however, the idea of self-centeredness, has stayed with me. Indeed, it has grown stronger with the passing of each year. My projected work ended in failure, but I had found a belief that I could get my hands on, the conviction that I was the single most important person in my life while others were only secondary. This has given me enormous confidence and peace of mind, and I feel that it will continue to make it possible for me to live. Its strength may well be what enables me to be standing here like this lecturing to young men like yourselves.
In my talk so far I have tried to give you a rough idea of what my experience has been, my only motive being a sort of grandmotherly hope that it will be of some relevance to your own situations. All of you will leave school and go out into the world. For many of you, this will not happen for some time yet. Others will be active in the real world before long. But I suspect that all of you are likely to repeat the agony—perhaps a different kind of agony—that I once experienced. There must be those among you who, as I once did, want desperately to break through to something but cannot, who want to get a firm hold on something but meet with as maddeningly little success as you would in trying to grasp a slippery, hairless pate. Those of you who may have already carved out a way for yourselves are certainly the exception.
There may be some who are satisfied to travel the old, proven routes behind others, and I do not say you are wrong in doing so—if it gives you genuine, unshakable peace of mind and self-confidence. If it does not, however, you must continue to dig ahead with your very own pick until you strike that vein of ore. I repeat, you must do it, for anyone who is unable to strike home will be unhappy for life, straying through the world in an endless, uneasy crouch. I urge you on so emphatically because I want to help you avoid such a predicament. I have absolutely no intention of suggesting that you take me as a model for emulation. I know that I have succeeded in making my own way, and however unimpressive it may appear to you, that is entirely a matter of your observation and critical judgment and does me no injury at all. I am satisfied with the route I have taken, but let there be no misunderstanding: It may have given me confidence and peace of mind, but I do not for a moment believe that it can, for that reason, serve as a model for you.
In any case, I would suspect that the same kind of anguish I experienced lies in store for many of you. And if indeed it does, then I hope you will see the necessity for men such as yourselves engaged in learning and education to forge ahead until you collide with something, whether you must work at it for ten years, twenty years—a lifetime. “I have found my way at last! I have struck home at last!” Only when this exclamation echoes from the bottom of your heart will your heart find peace. And with that shout will arise within you an indestructible self-confidence. Perhaps a goodly number of you have already reached that stage, but if there are any of you now suffering the anguish of being trapped somewhere in a fog, I believe that you should forge ahead until you know that you have struck home, whatever the sacrifice. I urge you to accomplish this, not for the nation’s sake or even for the sake of your families, but because it is absolutely necessary for your own personal happiness. If you have already taken a route similar to mine, then what I have to say here will be of little use to you, but if there is something holding you back, you must press on until you have trampled it to dust. Of course, simply pressing on will not in itself reveal to you the direction you must take: all that you can do is go forward until you collide with something.
I do not mean to stand up here and preach to you, but I cannot keep silent when I know that a part of your future happiness is at stake. I speak out because it seems to me that you would hate it if you were always in some amorphous state of mind, if deep down inside you there were nothing but some half-formed, inconclusive, jellyfish sort of thing. If you insist that it does not bother you to feel like that, there is nothing I can say; if you insist that you have gone beyond such unhappiness, that is splendid, too: it is everything I wish for you. But I myself was unable to go beyond that unhappiness even after I had left school—indeed, until I was over thirty. It was, to be sure, a dull ache that afflicted me but one that persisted year after year. That is why I want so badly for you—any of you who have caught the disease that I once had—to forge bravely onward. I ask you to do this because I believe that you will be able to find the place where you belong and that you will attain peace of mind and self-confidence to last a lifetime. . . .
Gakushūin i
s generally thought of as—and, in fact, it surely is—a school for young men of good social position. If, as I suspect, the sons of the upper classes gather here to the exclusion of the genuinely poor, then foremost among the many things that will accrue to you in the years to come must be mentioned power. In other words, when you go out into the world, you will have a good deal more power at your disposal than would a poor man.
I did say earlier that you must forge ahead in your work until you strike home in order to attain happiness and peace of mind, but what is it that brings that happiness and peace of mind? You make peace with yourself when the individuality with which you were born arrives where it belongs. And when you have settled on the track and move steadily forward, that individuality of yours proceeds to grow and develop. Only when your individuality and your work are in perfect harmony can you claim to have found the place where you belong.
With this understood, let us consider what is meant by the word “power.” Power is a tool by means of which one forces his individuality on others. If this sounds too arbitrary, let us say that power can be used as such a tool.
After power comes money. This, too, is something that you will have more of at your disposal than would a poor man. Viewed in the context in which I have viewed power, money—financial power—can be an exceedingly useful tool for aggrandizing one’s individuality through the temptation of others.
Thus, we would have to characterize power and money as enormously convenient implements, for with them one is able to impose one’s individuality on other men or to entice them in any direction, as a poor man never could. A man with this kind of power seems very important; in fact, he is very dangerous.
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series) Page 49
