Situated at the extreme eastern end of the known world, an isolated island with her
back to the Pacific, Japan has never achieved a position, culturally speaking, as a
cooperating member of the international community. It is true that Buddhist and Confucian
culture were introduced by way of Korea and imported directly from China; and that four
hundred years ago Catholicism was introduced and showed signs of spreading with striking
rapidity before being suppressed for political reasons. But in return for what Japan
received from other cultures, what had she to offer other peoples?
Since 1868 European and American culture and institutions have been introduced to
Japan, but whereas the assimilation of Buddhism and Confucianism had extended even to
their underlying ways of thought, the transplanting of Western culture and institutions
was done in such a way that they could send down no deep roots here. Our society has been
culturally no more than a colony of Europe. Faced by the urgent need to fashion a
centralized state, to develop the material prosperity of the nation, to revise the unequal
treaties which had humiliated us internationally, Japan could not help but take a
superficial and imitative approach to the adoption of Western culture. What we imported
was, in a word, the individualism of the Enlightenment and the material technology--the
natural science--of the West. Such tendencies were quite characteristic of the exponents
of Europeanization in the Meiji Era, who believed that this type of culture actually
represented Western Civilization. Therefore it was not at all surprising that in reaction
to this there should have appeared the exponents of Japan's "national polity."
They mistook individualism and materialism for Western culture, and opposed to it a
Japanese culture stressing collectivism and the national spirit. The surprising thing is
that the exponents of the latter should have become in practical politics the spokesmen
for militarism and state power.
At the beginning of her history Japan kept her doors completely open to the world.
Today Japan finds herself thrown completely into the maelstrom of world politics and world
culture. Because of this, we should remember, we have acquired new responsibilities to the
peoples of the world and to our times. To fulfill these responsibilities is the highest
destiny of the Japanese people. Japan must not only fulfill her own peculiarly creative
mission among the peoples of the world, but realize her universal mission. Japan possesses
her own characteristic moral convictions and fine social traditions which are a legacy
from Buddhism and Confucianism. Of these she must preserve all that is good. The Oriental
peoples, including the Japanese, have always recognized the natural law. This natural law
is the common spiritual basis uniting the cultures of East and West. Faith in her own
national moral values could be for a reborn Japan her qualification as a member of the
world community of peoples, giving us for the first time in our history a sense of Japan's
place and mission in the world, and providing a spiritual bond between East and West, as
well as a firm basis for world peace.
Source:
This text is part of the Internet
Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and
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© Paul Halsall, July 1998
