JAPANESE PATRIOTISM

Waikato Times, Volume 123, Issue 20693, 31 December 1938, Page 13 (Supplement)

JAPANESE PATRIOTISM

A Burning Sentiment :: Cultivated In Family

(Maurice Dekobra in “ TO PENETRATE into Japan is to enter into the warm hot-house of patriotism. 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, esj • ciallj 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 of frontiers, .ill 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 under their breath when they see an Englisman stand to attention at “God Save the King,” all Frenchmen who smoke their

Fienchman in Japan.’’) cigarette and put their hands in their pockt! s at the playing of the “Marseillaise,” all * eT L. C h mud-slingers, scoffers, and members °* the “Advanced Thought” ought to come and visit Japan, live amongst the Japanese and hear their heart-beats of this amazing rhen 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.” Whether it be instinct or virtue, it Obsesses the Japanese Mind. Since 1868 it has burnt into it, it has enfl and devoured it in the shadow of Fuji Yama. fanned by the victory over the Russia of the Czars, it has not erased to grow in intensity. Cultivated by tr»* Japanese family. this mother-germ, patriotism, is here, neither foreign nor limited to moments of distress. It is a lasting condition of national hyperaesthesia which insire a spirit of sacrifice, passion to duty to the Emperor even to voluntay death by hara-kiri.