JAPANESE TOLSTOY.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, Issue 18084, 5 June 1923, Page 6

JAPANESE TOLSTOY.

THE APOSTLE OF A HEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT. LONDON. A recent Japanese religious book has quickly obtained a circulation ot 2(JU,UUO. It is called “The Life ol Repentance,” and is written by a neve leaciler named Nisiii'da, one of the products of the religious and intellectual fermentation going on today in Japan. Niskida (Ang’lice: “Westfield”) may be described as a compound of "Buddhism, Communism, and Christianity as Tolstoy understood it. Hr. Aibertus Pieters, the manager of “Skinseik Kwan,” the newspaper evangelisation movement in Japan, who is in close touch with, the movements of religious thought in that country, describes Him as being to per cent. Buddhist, 10 per cent. Communist, and 15 per cent, Christian. The great problem for Hishida was the economic tangle of modern society rather tkan sin in a religious sense. Why should men make money by buying goods and selling them at a higher price? It is not robbery? Why also this eternal struggle between labour and capital? Why_ should there be such a thing as interest on capital ? Is there no way out ? Nisliicla turned especially to Tolstoy’s writings in his search for a solution. But he read Tolstoy’s teaching through Buddhist spectacles, and came to the conclusion that the way out for him was to die to liis old life and begin a new one in which he would have nothin a and seek to gain nothing. Nisnida says that so long as man retains any nation of his own individuality being* worth while he will seek to gaip. things for himself, which is the-root of all evil. Having come to this point, Niskida went out on to the streets as a mendicant, exactly like the Buddha of old, with this exception—that he added the modem Christian idea of social service. Hence he is not content to beg and do nothing, but works wherever he finds something that needs doing, preferably some dirty manual job, like cleaning out cesspools. This, he says, calms the mind. He never asks for wages, and prefers even not to accept money when offered to him. If any, in the spirit of doing something for _ their fellowmen, choose to give, him the kitchen scraps, he will eat them gladly, but will not look upon them as wages. From the Christian teaching he lias adopted the idea of faith in some higher power, and of prayer to it, yet his pantheistic conception of that _ power, _ although the words might fittingly he in the mouth of Christians, have a different idea behind them. Nishida’s ideal state of society is that we should all eat only such food as everyone can have, wear only such clothing as the poorest can obtain, and dwell only in such houses as all may occupy. Then, he says, there would be no envy, no lust of possession, no quarrels or wars. This Japanese Buddhist Tolstoy is having a profound effect on many of the younger generation to-day, for his own life is a very noble one. Young men are seeking to follow it, and are putting on old clothes and taking on manual work and forsaking their previous mode of existence.