Rabindranath Tagore in Japan 1916
The Following address was given by Sir Rabindranath Tagore to a large and enthusiastic audience on the evening of June 1st of 1916 at the Public Hall at Tennoji. The moment he began to speak the audience was carried away by the beautiful and sonorous melody of his voice. The address elicited repeated cheers and acclamations. Sir Tagore, receiver of the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature, is not only a poet and a dramatist, but is also a philosopher, historian, musician, teacher, and a patriotic leader. Among his famous works are Gitanjali, The Gardener, Original Writings, Art Lectures, Short Stories from Sanskrit Literature.
大正５年６月１日午後７時より、大阪天王寺公舎堂に於て講演 （日本語）
It has come to me as a delightful surprise to be received with such overwhelming warmth of welcome as has fallen to my lot since my arrival in your country. I had a dismal idea that poetry could have very little expectation from young nations who have to compete with others having a longer start and a more hardened conscience, who have to make up for their lost time for having come late in the arena of the modern age, the age of commercial scrambling and political piracies. Surely Natural Selection has a vigorous contempt for all poets, who are born neither with the protective convenience of a tough skin nor with the canine teeth of formidable ferocity. The traditional harps of the poets are an encumbrance in the race of life, and Struggle for Existence runs its course triumphantly trampling upon rhymes and rhythms under its ruthless feet.
Therefore it was a great relief to me to be treated in a manner that convinced me that your hearts still have room for the green of the earth and blue of the sky － and your cherry blossoms will still have their chance in their competition with shrill machines and brand new inventions of the iron age of the corrugated iron sheds, gramophones and cinematograph shows.
From my young days, my thoughts have constantly twined to Japan. And since, in later years I have witnessed the wonderful rise to eminence in Asia of your great nation, it has been one of my special desires to visit Japan, where the East and the West found their meeting place and carried on their courtship far enough to give assurance of a wedding. It was my desire to know where and how Japan's Past found its affinity in its Present, and where lies the secret of her power which has the flexibility of a tempered steel blade which bends but does not break and whose strokes are all the more sure for being adaptable to new circumstances.
When my thoughts went back to Japan in earlier days, it was to remember those times when the Buddhist monks, starting from my country, crossed over the high mountains, traversed the great upland plains, and passed over the mighty rivers of China, till they reached the sea. They encountered difficulties, not only of climate and geography, but also of language and custom. Yet they went forward, strong in their belief in man's fellowship; and they proved the truth of their belief in living deeds. In their case, therefore, while the outward difficulties were so great, the inward path was made straight before them by the enthusiasm of their faith and the devotion to those truths of life, which they had discovered and explored. When those who had learnt the message from them reached at last the shores of Japan, their ideals found a home among your people.
I could not help contrasting the almost insurmountable difficulties, which these earliest pilgrims from our shores must have encountered, with the ease and comfort in which I have just been able to accomplish my journey. What must have taken many years in those earlier days can now be completed in less than a month. Yet this modern civilization with all its mechanical appliances for making life comfortable and progress rapid on the outside has become itself a barrier in its turn with regard to the inner spirit of man, because it has made our life so intricate that it has lost its transparency of simplicity. Our things are more in evidence than ourselves. Our engagements are too numerous, our amusements are too frequent. The surface scum of life has become thick and muddy. All the odds and ends, the vast waste materials of civilization floating about it, have created a growing barrier, not only shutting out our deeper nature but smothering it to a great extent. Exhibition of man's nature has taken its place on the surface, where his richness is in his materials, his strength in his organization, his heroism in his ambitious undertakings, and his mind in his science. Man's heart is squandering its strength in its craving for the dram-drinking of sensationalism, - pitifully asking for its continual doses of fresh news and fresh noise, - losing its healthy taste for food in its insatiable thirst for stimulants. It is the stupendous unreality of this modern civilization, always changing its shapes and shifting its course, furiously riding upon the dust storm of unmeaning restlessness, scattering about it in the wind shreds of things torn and mangled, decaying and dead, - all this is making the real man invisible to himself or to others. In the days of heroic simplicity, it was easy to come near to the real man, but in the modern times it is the phantasm of the giant time itself, which is everywhere and the man is lost beyond recognition, and while the means of communication are multiplying fast the communication itself is diminishing in its reality.
The whirlwind of modern civilization has caught Japan as it has caught the rest of the world, and a stranger like myself cannot help feeling on landing in your country that what I see before me is the temple of the modern age where before the brazen images an immense amount of sacrifice is offered and an interminable round of ritualism is performed. But this is not Japan. Its features are the same as they are in London, in Paris, in Berlin, or the manufacturing centres of America. Also the men you meet here for the first time have the same signs of the push and the pull of the rotating machine wheels of the present age. They jostle you, they drag you on with the rush of the crowd, and they rapidly take note of your exteriors and offer their exteriors to be taken in snapshots. They have the curiosity for the superficial details, but not love for the real person. They are satisfied with the unessentials, because these can be gathered easily and got rid of as soon, these can be handled and soiled and swept away in the dustbin with as little loss of time as is possible. For everything must make room for the next ephemera, the shock of the sensations has to be carried on and the men who have no time to lose must be amused in a hurry. They try to break chips off the permanent for making playthings for the temporary. At the first sight what you see most in this land is the professional, and not the human.
These are the drawbacks of the present time. And the obstacles that I shall have to surmount in order to come near to the heart of your country are more difficult than those which our ancestors had to deal with in their communication with you. For it was only the barrier of nature, and not human nature, which stood in their way. But now man has to be reached through the barrier of time, and not space, and this is the most difficult task to perform. But I must not lose heart. I must seek and find what is true in this land, - true to the soul of this people, - what is Japan, what is unique, and not merely a mask of the time which is monotonously the same in all latitudes and longitudes. I earnestly hope that I shall not have to be satisfied with bird's eye views and flashlight impressions, with snapshot pictures of all that hides you from view, and I shall claim my privilege as a poet, whose only gift is the gift of sympathy and love, to be allowed entrance into a corner of your living heart, and to carry away your love with me to the land which can justly feel proud of herself for being able to send to you as her gift in the past, not machines, not munitions of war, but her best that she could offer to all eternity.
The Following address was given by Sir Rabindranath Tagore to a large and enthusiastic audience on the evening of June 1st of 1916 at the Public Hall at Tennoji. The moment he began to speak the audience was carried away by the beautiful and sonorous melody of his voice. The address elicited repeated cheers and acclamations. Sir Tagore, receiver of the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature, is not only a poet and a dramatist, but is also a philosopher, historian, musician, teacher, and a patriotic leader. Among his famous works are Gitanjali, The Gardener, Original Writings, Art Lectures, Short Stories from Sanskrit Literature.
大正５年６月１日午後７時より、大阪天王寺公舎堂に於て講演 （日本語）
It has come to me as a delightful surprise to be received with such overwhelming warmth of welcome as has fallen to my lot since my arrival in your country. I had a dismal idea that poetry could have very little expectation from young nations who have to compete with others having a longer start and a more hardened conscience, who have to make up for their lost time for having come late in the arena of the modern age, the age of commercial scrambling and political piracies. Surely Natural Selection has a vigorous contempt for all poets, who are born neither with the protective convenience of a tough skin nor with the canine teeth of formidable ferocity. The traditional harps of the poets are an encumbrance in the race of life, and Struggle for Existence runs its course triumphantly trampling upon rhymes and rhythms under its ruthless feet.
Therefore it was a great relief to me to be treated in a manner that convinced me that your hearts still have room for the green of the earth and blue of the sky － and your cherry blossoms will still have their chance in their competition with shrill machines and brand new inventions of the iron age of the corrugated iron sheds, gramophones and cinematograph shows.
From my young days, my thoughts have constantly twined to Japan. And since, in later years I have witnessed the wonderful rise to eminence in Asia of your great nation, it has been one of my special desires to visit Japan, where the East and the West found their meeting place and carried on their courtship far enough to give assurance of a wedding. It was my desire to know where and how Japan's Past found its affinity in its Present, and where lies the secret of her power which has the flexibility of a tempered steel blade which bends but does not break and whose strokes are all the more sure for being adaptable to new circumstances.
When my thoughts went back to Japan in earlier days, it was to remember those times when the Buddhist monks, starting from my country, crossed over the high mountains, traversed the great upland plains, and passed over the mighty rivers of China, till they reached the sea. They encountered difficulties, not only of climate and geography, but also of language and custom. Yet they went forward, strong in their belief in man's fellowship; and they proved the truth of their belief in living deeds. In their case, therefore, while the outward difficulties were so great, the inward path was made straight before them by the enthusiasm of their faith and the devotion to those truths of life, which they had discovered and explored. When those who had learnt the message from them reached at last the shores of Japan, their ideals found a home among your people.
I could not help contrasting the almost insurmountable difficulties, which these earliest pilgrims from our shores must have encountered, with the ease and comfort in which I have just been able to accomplish my journey. What must have taken many years in those earlier days can now be completed in less than a month. Yet this modern civilization with all its mechanical appliances for making life comfortable and progress rapid on the outside has become itself a barrier in its turn with regard to the inner spirit of man, because it has made our life so intricate that it has lost its transparency of simplicity. Our things are more in evidence than ourselves. Our engagements are too numerous, our amusements are too frequent. The surface scum of life has become thick and muddy. All the odds and ends, the vast waste materials of civilization floating about it, have created a growing barrier, not only shutting out our deeper nature but smothering it to a great extent. Exhibition of man's nature has taken its place on the surface, where his richness is in his materials, his strength in his organization, his heroism in his ambitious undertakings, and his mind in his science. Man's heart is squandering its strength in its craving for the dram-drinking of sensationalism, - pitifully asking for its continual doses of fresh news and fresh noise, - losing its healthy taste for food in its insatiable thirst for stimulants. It is the stupendous unreality of this modern civilization, always changing its shapes and shifting its course, furiously riding upon the dust storm of unmeaning restlessness, scattering about it in the wind shreds of things torn and mangled, decaying and dead, - all this is making the real man invisible to himself or to others. In the days of heroic simplicity, it was easy to come near to the real man, but in the modern times it is the phantasm of the giant time itself, which is everywhere and the man is lost beyond recognition, and while the means of communication are multiplying fast the communication itself is diminishing in its reality.
The whirlwind of modern civilization has caught Japan as it has caught the rest of the world, and a stranger like myself cannot help feeling on landing in your country that what I see before me is the temple of the modern age where before the brazen images an immense amount of sacrifice is offered and an interminable round of ritualism is performed. But this is not Japan. Its features are the same as they are in London, in Paris, in Berlin, or the manufacturing centres of America. Also the men you meet here for the first time have the same signs of the push and the pull of the rotating machine wheels of the present age. They jostle you, they drag you on with the rush of the crowd, and they rapidly take note of your exteriors and offer their exteriors to be taken in snapshots. They have the curiosity for the superficial details, but not love for the real person. They are satisfied with the unessentials, because these can be gathered easily and got rid of as soon, these can be handled and soiled and swept away in the dustbin with as little loss of time as is possible. For everything must make room for the next ephemera, the shock of the sensations has to be carried on and the men who have no time to lose must be amused in a hurry. They try to break chips off the permanent for making playthings for the temporary. At the first sight what you see most in this land is the professional, and not the human.
These are the drawbacks of the present time. And the obstacles that I shall have to surmount in order to come near to the heart of your country are more difficult than those which our ancestors had to deal with in their communication with you. For it was only the barrier of nature, and not human nature, which stood in their way. But now man has to be reached through the barrier of time, and not space, and this is the most difficult task to perform. But I must not lose heart. I must seek and find what is true in this land, - true to the soul of this people, - what is Japan, what is unique, and not merely a mask of the time which is monotonously the same in all latitudes and longitudes. I earnestly hope that I shall not have to be satisfied with bird's eye views and flashlight impressions, with snapshot pictures of all that hides you from view, and I shall claim my privilege as a poet, whose only gift is the gift of sympathy and love, to be allowed entrance into a corner of your living heart, and to carry away your love with me to the land which can justly feel proud of herself for being able to send to you as her gift in the past, not machines, not munitions of war, but her best that she could offer to all eternity.
