Theoretically, the birth of a new presupposes the birth of new Asians and is, therefore, the responsibility of every Asian. But, as a matter of fact, owing to differences in subjective and objective conditions, such a new birth is likely to begin with one or two countries which take the lead and serve as the backbone of a new . Jawaharlal Nehru of has been consciously seeking to take such a lead in recent years; the may also qualify for that leadership after the peaceful transfer of political power from one administration to another as a result of the national elections of last year. But judged from a realistic point of view, the birth of a new Asia through the birth of a new seems to involve fewer difficulties and promise quicker results.
Unfortunately, however, judged by what I know of the Japanese character, it is rather doubtful whether could shoulder that great responsibility. It might well be that, as the bitter lessons of the past decades have shown, a powerful and strong might prove to be a stumbling block to the birth of a new Asia and be the undoing of herself. The Japanese people themselves should do some searching of the heart to see if there might not be any justification for those fears. Ruling out the use of diplomatic or polite language in discussing such a momentous question, I should like to offer some friendly advice to the Japanese people in my capacity as a friend of theirs.
The most conspicuous virtue of the Japanese as a nation is their love for whatever is good. As Mencius puts it, "To love the good is better than anything else in the world." This love for whatever is good lies at the root of the achievements of the Meiji reforms. In the centuries before the Meiji Restoration, owing to contacts with ; assimilated elements of Chinese civilization and, through , those of Indian civilization. The scale, speed, and degree with which she assimilated them far surpassed any similar attempt by any other nation. Likewise, her assimilation of Western civilization since 1868 has been but a natural development of the Japanese love for whatever is good. To expend all of one's life force in the pursuit of whatever is good and identify one's life with it thoroughly and completely would have been difficult enough for an individual, and much more so for a nation. In this respect the Japanese should be rightly proud of themselves, and should not, out of a questionable national pride, hinder the continued development of the greatest of their virtues.
The most conspicuous weakness of the Japanese as a nation is not what people generally call imitation and the lack of creative power, or the consequent effacement of selfhood due to excessive addiction to imitation. All these are neither here nor there. Personally, I am inclined to believe that the real weakness of the Japanese people's character lies in their inability to share their love for whatever is good with others. To "share" includes the ideas of encouraging, working in concert with, and helping others to attain what one considers to be desirable. The best example of sharing with others one's love of whatever is good is found in the last chapter of The Book of History, which says: "Whatever merit others may have should be cherished as if it were our own. Whatever wisdom we find and love in others should be cherished as if it had come from our own mouths. Only thus can we get along with the world!" This passage shows that the spirit of sharing with others one's love for whatever is good is looked upon as of equal importance in Chinese civilization with the spirit of loving whatever is good. It also shows that he who loves whatever is good will certainly share his love with others, for the one is inseparable from the other. Unfortunately, the Japanese as a nation have ·not been able to combine the two aspects of one and the same spirit in a happy union: they themselves love whatever is good, but do not care to share their love for the good with others; nay, they may even go in the very opposite direction.
Let me give a couple of none too trivial illustrations to prove my point. When I was studying in the years ago, the Japanese instructors were uniformly rather reserved towards the Chinese students with regard to the subjects taught. We took the same course on Military Strategy with the Japanese boys, but we were not given the same instructional materials. When the lecture notes were printed and offered for sale to the Japanese boys, we were not allowed to buy them. Though a few Chinese students finally succeeded in buying some of those lecture notes by paying more money for them, and though, on secretly reading them over, I found them to be much better than what was handed out to us Chinese students, their contents were, judged by modern standards, of the ordinary sort and did not touch on any secrets of national defense. This system of differential instruction was not confined to the , nor to my class. It was applicable to all Chinese students receiving military education in . Consequently, all mildly patriotic Chinese students in were anti-Japanese. The fact was that the Japanese did not wish so to educate the Chinese that the latter would not want to fight . On the contrary, they simply wished so to educate the Chinese that the latter would be forced to fight sooner or later, but would be inferior to the Japanese in fighting power. Such an approach, though bordering on the ridiculous, was adopted by the overwhelming majority of the Japanese people.
One of my neighbors, who had studied medicine in one of the Japanese Imperial Universities, once told me a bit of his mind. "When the British and Americans come to to teach medicine to Chinese students," he said with a sigh, "they do a thorough job of it, so that all good doctors in are either British or American educated. The Japanese have also educated large numbers of medical personnel in , , and ; and , in particular, may be described as falling within the sphere of influence of Japanese medicine. But the medical personnel they have educated can only serve as assistants or instructors and have no high standing among the medical profession. This is a great failure of 's cultural policy." Though my friend thinks of it as a failure on the part of , the Japanese themselves may have a different idea and think of it as a signal success.
I was once asked by a Japanese friend: "Why are the British- and American-educated Chinese students so active? Why are the Japanese-educated ones so inactive, in spite of their numerical strength?" I remember that, in reply to those questions, I merely smiled and said that it must be due to political reasons. But I think the most fundamental reason is to be found in the refusal of Japanese "experts on ," and of Japanese individuals having dealings with , to cooperate wholeheartedly and sincerely with Chinese students returned from on the cultural plane. Many Japanese individuals who are engaged in work in pay lip service to Sino-Japanese friendship and associate with the Chinese merely for the sake of temporary convenience and as a matter of expediency. That is why most of the Japanese-educated Chinese tend to think that to associate with the Japanese would not only be profitless, but would also lay themselves open to dishonorable suspicions. This is the accumulated impression which decades of history have left to us of in the cultural sphere.
As to the political relations of the past between and , we Chinese may be pardoned for forgetting them, but not the Japanese. To put it in a nutshell, it may be said that it was a basic assumption of the Japanese Empire to predicate her own greatness upon the weakness, anarchy, and even downfall of her neighbor. Whenever there was an additional ray of hope for , would show a greater determination to encroach upon 's sovereign rights. This Japanese attitude may be aptly illustrated by another passage from the same chapter of The Book of History, from which I have just quoted. "Whatever merit others may have would be hated with all the jealous ferocity that you can command ... That is the way to set the whole world against you!" Herein is to be found the basic cause of the Tsinan Incident of 1928, the Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931, and the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of July 7, 1937. As a result, not only was unable to devote her energies to national reconstruction, but even Japan herself had to undergo the humiliations of a military defeat. Hence The Book of History concludes that he who is jealous of another for having made good "will not be able to keep his children and people out of harm's way. How dangerous, indeed!" That is an old lesson garnered from one of the Chinese classics which it behooves the Japanese people to note and remember.
The Japanese inability to share their love for whatever is good with others, or their jealousy of others for having made good, has been manifested in the post-war period in two directions and has contributed to the post-war confusion and hardships in . One manifestation is the anti-American sentiments fanned up by Japanese liberals and rightist elements. It would be understandable if Japanese leftists should be anti-American; it would be even understandable if the Japanese should be critical of American policy towards . But the universality and ferocity of anti-American sentiments among Japanese liberals and rightist elements cannot be adequately explained except by reference to the peculiar frame of mind in which the Japanese find themselves in the post-war period. Whether the question is considered from the viewpoints of 's fundamental political interests, her geographical situation, or her economic condition, I refuse to believe that anti-Americanism is the correct line for Japanese liberals and rightist elements to follow. But Japanese public opinion often takes an extraordinary view of Japano-American relations and of world relations, so that Japanese national policy is always in a state of flux under the surface and no stability can be counted upon. I do not think that this is due to any lack of knowledge and foresight on the part of the Japanese. I rather think that whatever knowledge and foresight they have been obscured by their peculiar psychology of the moment.
Another manifestation of the same tendency is making itself increasingly felt in Japanese society. I have always admired the Japanese people's love of knowledge, their orderliness, and their respect for their teachers. But among Japanese college and university students today, a tendency to pull down and destroy seems to be stronger than their desire for self-betterment. Love of knowledge is on the wane, and affection between teacher and student is becoming rarer and rarer. Everybody is fully charged with pent-up emotions and filled with discontents. Like naughty little children, these malcontents are intent upon destroying whatever they can lay their hands upon, and, again like naughty little children, never stop to consider the consequences. This is really a most deplorable situation.
One of my friends who had recently come back from the United States via Japan told me what he had seen on his trip from Tokyo to Sentai, where his alma mater is situated. " has changed," he lamented. "My alma mater does not look like her former self before the war. The confusion on the train from to Sentai is worse than the situation on trains from to ." Things like these are but manifestations of the general tendency to destroy and pull down. When the refusal to share with others one's love for whatever is good is turned to the domestic scene, there is developed an attitude of hostility towards society. Anyone who entertains such an attitude tends to look with contempt upon all things which he cannot call his own, and to pull down everything which he cannot subdue and dominate. In this way, the Japanese people's inability to share with others their love for whatever is good is now turned against their original basic spirit of loving whatever is good and has contributed to the creation of mace confusion and chaos in addition to the sabotaging activities of the Communists and has delayed the political, economic, and social development of Japan. It is only natural that many Asian countries should be afraid of 's recovery and dare not cooperate with her for fear of unpredictable consequences.
It has been a common practice in the post-war years for the Japanese to advertise their poverty before foreigners. It is true that the war has destroyed a strong and great Oriental Empire. Others would be able to understand if the Japanese purposely parade their own poverty in order to encourage themselves to greater exertions, or to strengthen their bargaining position in Japano-American diplomatic negotiations. But they should never advertise their poverty before other Asians. For among the Asians the Japanese are surely much better off than the rest. In Asia, must learn first to give and then to reap the fruits of giving; she must first help before she can hope for help from other countries. That is, at least, the attitude which she should take in spiritual and cultural matters. That is what we may call the Oriental spirit of sharing one's love for whatever is good with others. It is only in this way that a new Asia may be born through the birth of a new . Only with the birth of a new Asia can there be birth of a genuinely new .
The Japanese are expecting much of themselves; is also expecting much of the Japanese. The brilliant achievements of the Meiji Restoration have redounded to the glory as much of all Asians and colored peoples as of the Japanese themselves. But owing to the Japanese people's inability to share their love for whatever is good with their neighbor, the latter has been a victim rather than a beneficiary of those glorious achievements. On this point the Japanese should have enough courage to make a critical re-appraisal of their past records.
Be it said, however, that among the few Japanese friends I am privileged to know, there is not only a surfeit of the Japanese people's innate love for whatever is good, but also the same measure of the complementary spirit of sharing that love with other persons. It may be that my observations as recorded in the foregoing paragraphs fall quite beside the mark. It may also be that wise and enlightened Japanese individuals have already made a critical re-appraisal of their past records and have emerged from it chastened and ready for newer tasks and responsibilities.
* This is the English version of an article which Mr. Hsu Fu-kwan wrote in Chinese for a Japanese periodical. The New Asia Monthly, edited by Professor Hsinzo Dno of , .