PATRIOTISM IN JAPAN

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LX, Issue 23, 24 March 1939, Page 5

PATRIOTISM IN JAPAN

COMPARISON WITH THE WEST

To penetrate into Japan is to enter into the warm hot-house of patriotism (says Maurice Dekobra, in "A French man in Japan"). That is a statement of fact which calls forth both admiration and anxiety from the resident foreigner.

I do not mean to say that the people of the West are wanting in patriotism, but with us, especially in France, it is, so to speak, sporadic, and manifests itself only in critical moments. It does not in the least resemble the patriotism of the Japanese, who is constant and expresses every day, every hour, the uninterrupted and feverish condition of his mind and his love of collectivity.

All pleasure-lovers, all sceptics, all those who think internationally, all despisers of frontiers, all those who proudly say: "Europe is my country!" all insulters of national flags, all Utopians of the universal fraternity, all Frenchmen who shrug their shoulders when they see people salute a flag as it passes, all Frenchmen who guffaw ynder their breath when they see an Englishman stand to attention at "God Save the King," all Frenchmen who smoke their cigarettes and put their hands in their pockets at the playing of the "Marseillaise," all French mudslingers, scoffers, and members of the "Advanced Thought," ought to come and visit Japan, live among the Japanese and hear the heart-beats of this amazing country. Then they would have some real understanding of the word "patriotism."

What's the use of definitions ? Patriotism may be, according to Balzac: "The momentary negation of personal interests," or according to Gerano. "An instinct which becomes a virtue." Wfiether it be instinct or virtue, it obsesses the Japanese mind. Since 1868 it has burnt into it, it has enflamed and devoured it in the -shadow of Fujiyama.

Fanned by the victory over the Russia of the Tsars, it has not ceased to grow in intensity. Cultivated by the Japanese family, this mothergerm patriotism, is here, neither foreign nor limited to moments of distress. It is a lasting condition of national hyperaesthesia which inspires a spirit of sacrifice, passion to duty to the Emperor, even to voluntary death by hara-kiri.