THE MODERN REVIEW
No. 6
No. 126
THE SPIRIT OF JAPAN
By Sir Rabindranath Tagore.
ONE morning the whole world looked up in surprise, when Japan broke through her walls of old habits in a night and came out triumphant. It was done in such an incredibly short time, that it seemed like a change of dress and not like the slow building up of a new structure. She showed the confident strength of maturity and the freshness and infinite potentiality of new life at the same moment. The fear was entertained that it was a mere freak of history, a child's game of Time, the blowing up of a soap bubble, perfect in its rondure and colouring, hollow in its heart and without substance. But Japan has proved conclusively that this sudden revealment of her power is not a shortlived wonder, a chance product of time and tide, thrown up from the depth of obscurity to be swept away the next moment into the sea of oblivion.
The truth is that Japan is old and new at the same time. She has her legacy of ancient culture from the East,—the culture that enjoins man to look for his true wealth and power in his inner soul, the culture that gives self-possession in the face of loss and danger, self-sacrifice without counting the cost or hoping for gain, defiance of death, acceptance of countless social obligations that we owe to man as a social being,—the culture that has given us the vision of the infinite in all all finite things, through which we have come to realise that the universe is living with a life and permeated with a soul, that it is not a huge machine which had been turned out by a demon of accidence or fashioned by a teleological God who lives in a far away heaven. In a word modern Japan has come out of the immemorial East like a lotus blossoming in an easy grace, all the while keeping its firm hold upon the profound depth from which it has sprung.
And Japan, the child of the Ancient East, has also fearlessly claimed all the gifts of the modern age for herself. She has shewn her bold spirit in breaking through the confinements of habits, useless accumulations of the lazy mind, seeking safety in its thrift and its locks and keys. Thus she has come in contact with the living time and has accepted with an amazing eagerness and aptitude the responsibilities of modern civilisation.
This it is which has given heart to the rest of Asia. We have seen that the life and the strength are there in us, only the dead crust has to be removed; that we must nakedly take our plunge into the youth-giving stream of the time-flood. We have seen that taking shelter in the dead is death itself, and only taking all the risk of life to the fullest extent is living.
Japan has taught us that we must learn the watchword of the age, in which we live, and answer has to be given to the sentinel of time, if we must escape annihilation. Japan has sent forth her word over Asia, that the old seed has the life germ in it, only it has to be planted in the soil of the new age.
I, for myself, cannot believe that Japan has become what she is by imitating the West. We cannot imitate life, we cannot simulate strength for long, nay, what is more, a mere imitation is a source of weakness. For it hampers our true nature, it is always in our way. It is like dressing our skeleton with another man's skin, giving rise to eternal feuds between the skin and the bones at every movement.
I have not had the opportunity of coming into intimate touch with Japan and forming my own opinion of what she truly
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