NITOBE INAZÔ: A MAN FOR TODAY’S JAPAN

Today the Japanese seem to be in the process of forgetting an important figure from their history. This is Nitobe Inazô (1862–1933), whose international outlook made him a rare breed in the early modern era and the kind of person today’s Japan needs in large numbers. For some 20 years now Nitobe’s face has adorned the ¥5,000 note. In July 2004 he will lose that spot, though, when a redesigned note featuring the writer Higuchi Ichiyô (1872–96) will go into circulation.

While I certainly have no opposition to the idea of women gaining a place on Japan’s money, I do think it is a shame that Nitobe will disappear as part of this process—especially when knowledge about him and his life remains so scarce. Many people agree with me that this is a sad state of affairs, and a range of events are now being planned to build a solid body of information about Nitobe and to pass it on to the younger generations before his face disappears from the ¥5,000 bill.

The economic bubble of the late 1980s burst in 1991, and since then the economy has remained stagnant for more than a decade, with growth hovering at around 1% through three economic cycles. The malaise has not confined itself to the economic realm: Politics has also found itself running in tired ruts. These conditions have cast a stifling, pessimistic pall over society as a whole. In the midst of this gloom Japan has been turning inward. The buzzword globalization remains on people’s lips today, but their attitudes are rather antiglobalist in nature. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they are showing relatively little interest in the outside world.

I say “relatively” here using the word in two senses. First, this level of interest is relatively low compared to other times in Japanese history. Second, interest is relatively weak given what could be expected in response to the historical structural changes the entire world is undergoing. But nevertheless, this inward-looking, antiglobalist Japanese psychology has brought about a vicious cycle, causing Japan to move more slowly in its own structural reforms and increasing the national sense of impasse. I believe that Japan can break free of this cycle by recalling Nitobe Inazô—his sense of mission, his willingness to take action, his internationalist outlook, and his ability to present Japanese views to the rest of the world. We must reaffirm what his life stood for.

In 2002 Lee Teng-hui, the former president of Taiwan, published a work titled Bushidô kaidai: Nôburesu oburîju to wa (An Explication of Bushido: The Meaning of Noblesse Oblige). Lee sees Nitobe as a very important figure, and he learned much from his 1900 Bushido: The Soul of Japan. In his work Lee notes that Japan’s cultural and spiritual traditions—the discipline, ethics, and sense of duty that Nitobe analyzed and presented to the world in his book—are today falling by the wayside. The Taiwanese author laments this loss as though it were his own.

In some ways Nitobe is better known as an international historical figure than as a Japanese one. Domestically he makes only minor appearances in history texts, and his Bushido, while an international bestseller, has not been widely read in Japan. Why has this man not received the historical recognition due him? One reason for this may be that the Morioka Nanbu domain where he was born, located in today’s Iwate Prefecture, was far from the center of political dealings during the period following the 1868 Meiji Restoration. This may in fact have been one factor that pushed him to look to international society as a stage for his activities. As early as age 12 he began learning English at the recently established Tokyo School of English. At 16 he entered Sapporo Agricultural College, another new school with a strongly international orientation, and at 17 he was baptized as a Christian.

From age 23 to 30 Nitobe studied abroad, spending time in the United States and Germany. Upon his return to Japan he became active in the field of education, but his hard work caught up with him in the form of sickness. A recuperative stay in Monterey, California, provided him with the time to write Bushido in English. Published first in 1900, when Nitobe was 39, this book sought to describe the heart of Japan to foreign readers. The main theme of this work was not the militaristic bushidô (literally, “the way of the samurai”) that would infuse Japan’s warlike actions in later years; this was rather an exercise in comparative culture, contrasting Japanese thought with that of the West and elucidating the former to readers in America and elsewhere.

Nitobe hoped this book would increase global understanding of Japan. It is safe to say that the results exceeded his expectations. The publication of Bushido was a worldwide sensation, attracting major interest among academics and in the press. The Japanese author became a global celebrity practically overnight. US President Theodore Roosevelt took time out of his schedule to read Nitobe’s book, and he was pleased enough by it to buy several dozen copies, which he presented to key people from a number of nations, urging them to give it a read.

Nitobe was prodded to write his book by an encounter with the Belgian legal scholar Emile Louis Victor de Laveleye, who questioned him: “Do you mean to say . . . that you have no religious instruction in your schools? . . . No religion! How do you impart moral education?” Nitobe was chagrined at being unable to answer Laveleye on the spot; Bushido was meant to help answer that query. It is also easy to guess that Nitobe might have written the book to answer the many questions about Japan that his American wife, Mary, undoubtedly had for him.

Whatever the genesis of this book, it sold well around the world. It was translated into more than 20 languages, including German, French, and Chinese. Amazingly, Bushido remains widely read to this day. The original English text was erudite enough to be hailed as reminiscent of the writings of the British essayist Thomas Carlyle. This was no simple introduction to Japanese culture: Nitobe touched on the core beliefs of Christianity, as well as quoting liberally from a bewildering array of thinkers and writers from the Western tradition, including Plato, Montesquieu, Dante, and Shakespeare. His analysis drew on Japan and other Asian sources too, making Bushido a work that gives equal weight to Eastern and Western culture. Foreign readers of that era had almost no knowledge of Japanese thought, and Nitobe comes across as a fervent teacher, applying his passion and his knowledge to the task of remedying this situation.

This book vaulted Nitobe into the international spotlight. He was later tapped as an under secretary general of the League of Nations, a post he filled in Geneva for seven years. During this time he rubbed shoulders with scientists like Marie Curie and Albert Einstein and the philosopher Henri Bergson. This group of intellectuals formed the core of the International Committee for Intellectual Cooperation, the forerunner of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). A young Einstein played the violin for Nitobe at the latter’s home, just north of Geneva; one of Nitobe’s grandchildren would later note that her grandfather had been most fond of the scientist, whom he found a fascinating fellow.

Nitobe Inazô’s reputation was somewhat tarnished late in his life by the actions of his nation. While he argued for the pursuit of global peace through dialogue and exchange, an increasingly militaristic Japan was adopting a tough policy in China, as marked by the 1931 Manchurian Incident. But Nitobe continued to seek international understanding for the conditions his home country found itself in. In April 1932, at the age of 71, he headed to America for a grueling schedule of over 100 speeches in the face of mounting anti-Japan sentiment there. His feelings during this time are summed up in a poem he left behind: Kuni o omoi / yo o ureuru koso / nani goto mo / shinobu kokoro wa / Kami zo shiru ran (With thoughts for my nation, I grieve for the state of the world; God must surely know the pain of a heart that bears all of this). The American press was harsh on Nitobe during this tour, though, and he returned home to Japan in disappointment.

To this day one hears criticism of Nitobe claiming that in his declining years he defended Japan’s actions in Manchuria, coming to terms with Japan’s military leaders and becoming a supporter of the nation’s imperialist policies. According to Harada Akio, a former public prosecutor general who has done serious research on Nitobe, this criticism is based on misinterpretations of statements made in a certain context. Nitobe was arguing for a more objective recognition by all sides of the state of world affairs and the interests that bind nations together, based on the facts of the matter, according to Harada; he was not pressing Japan’s side of the argument alone. Harada also notes that Nitobe’s final efforts were aimed at getting America, which at the time—and in light of the circumstances in which Japan found itself—was taking a one-sided approach to Japan in its foreign policy, to adopt a more fair and tolerant stance. He writes that Nitobe recognized that if events were allowed to follow their course it would only lead to confrontation between the nations and harsh conditions for Japan.

Nitobe went back to Japan a disappointed man. But just five months later he was heading back across the Pacific, this time for a conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations in Banff, Canada. He was stricken with terrible stomach pain on the train on the way to the gathering, but he appeared as the Japanese delegate just the same. Following the conference he headed to Victoria to recuperate, but his condition worsened. On October 15, 1933, at the age of 72, he passed away with his wife Mary at his side. An autopsy found that most of his pancreas and about half of his large intestine had been eaten away. During his final years it seems that Nitobe had lost most of his physical strength and mental energy in his disappointment with Japan and its headlong rush into militarism.

The New York Times on October 16 carried a lengthy obituary. It described Nitobe as “the father of Japanese liberalism” and included quotes from intellectuals of the day who praised him for his carefully crafted speeches, his polished, polite demeanor, and his penetrating insight, with which he sought to push the nations of the world along the path to closer relationships of mutual understanding and lasting friendship. At this point Japan had already left the League of Nations and the Japan-US relationship was rapidly deteriorating, but the paper did not skimp on its praise of this Japanese man, a testament to the persuasiveness of his sense of mission and his deep desire for peace.

Today’s Japan lacks the kind of fierce drive and ability to present Japanese views to the world that Nitobe had in such great amounts. This might be chalked up to the fact that the country is in a period of major historical change causing it to direct its focus inward. But I believe that it is precisely because Japan is in this sort of era that it needs to learn from the passion and drive of Nitobe Inazô.

Since the beginning of the 1990s Japan has experienced a number of historical events—the collapse of its bubble economy and the subsequent stagnation; the 1993 ousting of the Liberal Democratic Party from power that marked the end of the “1955 setup” pitting the LDP against the Socialist opposition; the shifting political landscape that followed this upheaval, with one administration after another taking turns at the country’s helm; and the great earthquake that struck Kobe and the poison gas attacks on the Tokyo subway, both in 1995. These events have all shaken Japan, but every single one of them can be classified as a purely domestic development. During this time the world has not stood still: It has seen changes to its structures on a historic scale—the end of the Cold War and the worldwide shift from socialist to market economies, systemic reforms carried out by nations to boost their competitiveness, and sweeping changes in global industrial structures brought about by the massive flows of direct investment washing around the globe. In the midst of these new waves of globalization, however, Japan has kept its gaze on its own affairs, remaining a dim presence on the international stage.

Recently the World Economic Forum worked together with survey institutions in a number of nations to gauge the perceptions of globalization held by people in those nations. The results of this investigation were announced at the 2002 WEF gathering normally held in Davos, Switzerland, but moved that year to New York following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks there. These results make it clear that Japan is taking a very passive approach to globalization. Out of the 25 nations covered in this survey, Japan placed a dismal twenty-third in the ratio of respondents who said the effects of globalization on themselves and their families would be positive. More than 70% of respondents in 12 nations, including Britain, China, India, South Korea, and the United States, saw globalization as a positive force in their lives; only 32% of Japanese respondents agreed.

Japan has modernized and developed by carrying out broad exchange with the rest of the world and learning from other nations. Today our nation is shying away from this external education and reducing its willingness to make its views known to the rest of humanity. Now more than ever, Japan has need of the spirit of Nitobe Inazô. He may be disappearing from our ¥5,000 bill, but we must ensure that his spirit will live. This is the goal of those of us who are involved in the Nitobe-related events that will take place in the months to come. (Kojima Akira, Senior Managing Director and Editor in Chief, Nihon Keizai Shimbun)

© 2003 Japan Echo Inc.