The Spirit of Japan

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About this book

The Spirit of Japan is a lecture by Sir Rabindranath Tagore, delivered for the students of the Private Colleges of Tokyo. The speaker is glad of the opportunity once more of speaking before leaving Japan, though the stay there has been so short that one may think the right to speak about the country has not been earned. The speaker describes the town of Kobe, seen from a balcony on the hillside on a first arrival in the country, as a huge mass of corrugated iron roofs that appeared like a dragon, with glistening scales, basking in the sun.

The speaker warns, "Never think for a moment, that the hurts you inflict upon other races will not infect you." A question in the lecture says that the tower of national selfishness, which goes by the name of patriotism, which has raised its banner of treason against heaven, must totter and fall with a crash, weighed down by its own bulk.

About the author

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali poet, composer, painter, and thinker whose reshaping of literature and music left a lasting mark on the subcontinent. In 1913 he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and he wrote the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh.