THE SPIRIT OF JAPAN
A LECTURE
BY
SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Delivered for the Students of the Private Colleges
of Tokyo and the Members of the
Indo-Japanese Association, at the
Keio Gijuku University.
PUBLISHED BY THE INDO-JAPANESE
ASSOCIATION, TOKYO
JULY 2, 1916.
Copyrighted in U. S. A.
[Pg 1]
I am glad to have this opportunity oncemore of speaking to you before I leave Japan.My stay here has been so short that one maythink I have not earned my right to speak toyou about anything concerning your country. Ifeel sure that I shall be told, that I am idealisingcertain aspects, while leaving others unnoticed,and that there are chances of my disillusionment,if I remain here for long. For I have knownforeigners, whose long experience has madethem doubtful about your moral qualifications,—evenof your full efficiency in modern equipmentsof progress.
But I am not going to be brow-beaten bythe authority of long experience, which is likelyto be an experience of blindness carried throughlong years. I have known such instances in myown country. The mental sense, by the help of[Pg 2]which we feel the spirit of a people, is like thesense of sight, or of touch,—it is a natural gift.It finds its objects, not by analysis, but bydirect apprehension. Those who have not thisvision, merely see events and facts, and not theirinner association. Those who have no ear formusic, hear sounds, but not the song. Thereforewhen, by the mere reason of the lengthiness oftheir suffering, they threaten to establish the factof the tune to be a noise, one need not be anxiousabout music. Very often it is mistakesthat require longer time to develop their tangles,while the right answer comes promptly.
You ask me how I can prove, that I amright in my confidence that I can see. Myanswer is, because I see something which ispositive. There are others, who affirm that theysee something contrary. It only shows, that Iam looking on the picture side of the canvas,and they on the blank side. Therefore my shortview is of more value than their prolonged stare.
It is a truism to say that shadows accompanylight. What you feel, as the truth of a[Pg 3]people, has its numberless contradictions,—just asthe roundness of the earth is contradicted atevery step by its hills and hollows. Those whocan boast of a greater familiarity with yourcountry than myself, can bring before me loadsof contradictions, but I remain firm upon myvision of a truth, which does not depend uponits dimension, but upon its vitality.
At first, I had my doubts. I thought thatI might not be able to see Japan, as she is herself,but should have to be content to see the Japanthat takes an acrobatic pride in violently appearingas something else. On my first arrival inthis country, when I looked out from the balconyof a house on the hillside, the town of Kobe,—thathuge mass of corrugated iron roofs,—appearedto me like a dragon, with glisteningscales, basking in the sun, after having devoureda large slice of the living flesh of the earth.This dragon did not belong to the mythology ofthe past, but of the present; and with its ironmask it tried to look real to the children of theage,—real as the majestic rocks on the shore, as[Pg 4]the epic rhythm of the sea-waves. Anyhow ithid Japan from my view, and I felt myse