Vedas are philosophical and religious documents originated in India from B.C. 1500 to B.C. 500. Vedas have been told basically by oral tradition. Our mind is connected with everyone overall, and has been moving to the future from the past as one body. However, an individual inherits the karma which is different each other, and stands alone on the surface and fights each other. In spite of practicing such an individual karma, after step-by-step severe trainings, the individual who can refuse the desire and attachment feels that an individual footstep unites with the truth of great universe and can get true peace before long in this world. This is the basic way of thinking of the Veda.
Upanishads are compiled texts on philosophical instructions of Vedas located in the end of Veda documents. The old one was formed in about B.C. 500 and the new one was made after A.D. Four big Vedas such as Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharvaveda have a lot of mysterious and symbolic expressions.
On the other hand, Upanishads have a guideline of how we should live. However, as for the basics of Upanishads, interpretation of symbolic expression based on the sound itself of words handed down from ancient times plays a key role.
Upanishads or Vedas do not in fact refer to any religion, but address humanity in general and are applicable to all, irrespective of the generation.
A market economy in a capitalist society cannot but globalize more and more from now on. Therefore a company hires a man who is good at English conversation as a world common language positively so that a company does not miss an advancing abroad. As a result, families except English-speaking countries are desperate in an attempt to make their children learn English intensively. Can such a situation really be good for children? I am worried that they neglect learning the wisdom and the way of thinking handed down by their original language from ancient times.
A young English teacher from Australia who is one of my friends said that children hardly make progress on English conversation at a cram school in Japan and that it is only self-satisfaction of their parents. In order to progress English conversation, we should go out to a English-speaking country and should spend several years in the country where we can use only English, like a sumo wrestler from a foreign country can speak Japanese in several years exactly. If we do so, we will be able to learn various nuances of the words from the living there.
Japanese students have packed difficult grammar, words and phrases in their mind as ever. There is no use trying to do such a thing. If we think so, people who live in an English-speaking country seem to gain great profit in this globalized world. The reason for becoming so is that English-speaking countries have strongly overwhelmed countries of other linguistic areas from a historical viewpoint. The language in a strong country has ruled the communication of the entire world as a common language to the world.
People in an English-speaking country can go out all over the world with their English culture and language without esteeming and learning the culture and language in a weak country. Is it good for the global peace? Because of such a doubt, Esperanto was founded as a common language to the world by Zamenhof in 1887. Esperanto speakers oppose the fact that a specific and strong language rules the world. They aim to esteem each race's language as a valuable culture no matter how small the race is, and to be a bridge of an equal, cultural exchange between races. They were convinced that Esperanto was able to contribute to world peace. Kenji Miyazawa also went along with such an idea and learned Esperanto.
However, unfortunately, in the real situation, there is only English as a world common language. After all, do we have to study English thoroughly? That's not true. The English which we learned in Japanese junior high school is enough to talk. If you talk in a basic word and sentence of English steadily and a person of an English-speaking country thinks that your English is childish and strange, you should say to him, “ It is quite natural for us. We are troubled unless you make an effort so that you can understand our expression because we have not lived in your country.”
In India, various languages like Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali and Tamil, etc. are official languages, but English is still used as one of the common languages. However, English in India is that of the India pronunciation, and is familiar with the Indian's life. It is not necessary to speak fluently like people who live in English-speaking countries.
It is often said that we Japanese cannot speak English well though we have studied English at the junior high school and the high school. However, it was a center in the English Language Education of Japan to be able to read English for the last time. I think that it was good. It is important to be able to read English sentences and an English book. However, talking means intimate contact with the culture of the English-speaking world.
There must be something we can call original language and culture for us. If we imitate the nuance of the foreign language as a word and a sentence, and are going to memorize them one by one spending much time in defiance of such a precious property of our own country, it is very ridiculous. We should only entrust such a thing to the professional interpreter who has lived in the English-speaking country for many years. Or the translation machine which can be exchanged easily on the spot will be invented sooner or later.
I think it's also necessary that we think once more about what kind of location English exists in now as spoken language and about what kind of location each race's culture and language is driven into.
He was born in Tokyo in 1919 and died at 88 years old in 2008. He has left a great achievement about phonology and origin of Japanese. He also gave us a rich idea about interpretation of Tale of Genji, one of the most important classic literatures in Japan. His thought that Tamil which is ‘national language’ of South India affected the formation of Japanese caused a sensation through weekly magazines etc. This thought seems not to be evaluated very much in the academic society of that field. However, we need not think that only Tamil is a Japanese origin.
According to an interpretation by Ohno who visited South India by himself and studied, South Indian’s culture has some point in common with that of Japan as for not only the language but also the life style, for example ‘Dondoyaki’( New year’s fire festival) and ‘Shimenawa’(the Shinto straw festoon). In addition, the stone circle similar to Japan was found, too. I also visited South India and confirmed them. Therefore I think it is possible very much that people speaking Tamil arrived at Japan through a marine route.
One of important points by his Tamil study is that he understood worldwide universalism of Dravida culture in the background of Tamil. It means that universal culture can't help spreading worldwide with a language. It is ancient Japan that accepted it at the end by marine traffic.
Old Indian Dravida people were moving south to South India from the Indus area by Aryan's invasion from west and built the culture of Veda which was mixed with an Aryan culture there. Therefore, the culture of people who speak Tamil and Telegu has a possibility that it connects with ancient civilization such as Indus civilization and finally Mesopotamia civilization etc.
I was able to visit a data room of huge Veda documents collected in the Kanchipuram university in South India. Hundreds of thousands of ancient documents written in Sanskrit on palm leaves were kept there. Several young researchers soaked palm leaves which had become old and dirt into a medicine, washed away them carefully and dried them one by one. Then they took these palm leaves which had become readable to a photograph and also continued the work to store as digital in a different room. It is said that palm leaves of the whole world several thousand years ago have gathered there.
Conversely it is expected that Veda documents written in Sanskrit spread through the whole world from here in the ancient times. It seems to show that this place has universal culture from the ancient times and to show that it has spread to the whole world from here. I think it necessary to study the relation between Tamil and Japanese by taking a world history view of the spread of ancient civilization into consideration in the future.
He was born in Osaka in 1887 and died in 1953. He was the most speculative and rare folklorist and scholar of Japanese literature to whom Japan has ever given birth. He had a tendency of homosexual, and was single through life. At the age of 28, He contributed to the folklore magazine which Kunio Yanagita published. Kunio Yanagita was the founder of Japanese folklore. Yanagita gave great attention to Orikuchi there. Origuchi looked up to Yanagita as the master through life.
Orikuchi ran through the whole country and gathered folkloric documents originally, but his method became a target of the criticism by Yanagita who was going to establish folklore as authoritative social science. According to Yanagita, Orikuchi relied on too literary intention and intuition.
I had an interest in folklore through books of Yanagita, such as ‘Document of hunting words’ and ‘Tale of Tohno’. However, I have got tired of the logic of him who was particular about scientific proof and an inductive method before long. Nevertheless, we can see his literary talent fully in a certain kind of Yanagida's sentences. There is a small story called ‘child’s eyes’ among such sentences. An affair at the roadside he passed by car from Ishinomaki, a town of northeast of Japan, was written there.
“A horse of a carriage which was resting
far turned a neck suddenly and plunged into a byroad, pulling the
carriage. When a small packhorse driver who had just graduated from an
elementary school fell down having a rope in the hand, a rear wheel of
the carriage was riding over his abdomen. Still a child stood up straight, ran
about three steps after horse, looked back toward me, held his abdomen by both
hands and fell down again.
Anyway he was taken to the hospital and he was saved
at that time, but there were innumerable question and assertion about the
serious affair of a person, inside the color of the child's eyes for only a
brief moment. What I felt as if I had been asked about that was the question why
I had passed here at this time. And that question reminded me of the following
things. That is, various arrangements for me went wrong from this morning, the
plan changed several times and I was about to pass through just this place by our car. I thought that a series of events seemed to be as a kind of
fate.”
According to Orikuchi, when an event which came to attract a certain attention occurred to ancient people, they accepted it as the ‘Ho’ which God caused and they tried to know the meaning. The child asks about the meaning of the accident sensuously. Yanagita is fascinated with the eyes of the child who shows ‘Innumerable question and assertion about the serious affair of a person’ and considers the meaning about details that he arrived at the site. Orikuchi also found out his route by asking the meaning of the fact which he came across in folklore fieldwork for which he walked through the whole country.
There is a thought of ‘ Kotodama’, namely
power of words, as one of Shinobu Orikuchi's achievements. This is the idea
that words show those powers by bringing out or by chanting. He says that the
words which a Shinto priest or a high government official advocated towards the
people had an important meaning with that alone in the ancient society. Such a
thought has also an aspect which is difficult to understand for modern people
who depend on read information much. However a thought of power of words
occupies the important location also for ancient Veda.
For Orikuchi, ancient
times were the worlds before ‘Ritsuryo system’ (a constitutional form of
government) was in order and before the entire Japan was controlled as a
country. He says, “ The land where we live, mountain, river and grass, that is,
all things which was given the soul from this ancient times have grown and
lived as a country land, have lived as grass and tree, and have grown up as
mountain and river. ” He explains a Japanese festival and an origin of a song from
there. Furthermore, he also progresses his logic about ‘Norito (ancient
congratulatory address) and the epic of the old legend. That is, ‘Husu' (Lying
down) means that the soul attaches to things. ‘Huri’ (Waiving) means that the
soul detaches from things.
He also finds out the culture of narration which is peculiar to Japanese culture in the early modern entertainment, such as Senshu Manzai , rice-planting dance, a Noh play and Kabuki. Through a traditional entertainment of such narration and festival, and his unique interpretation about Japanese literature such as Manyoshu and Tale of Genji, Orikuchi says that these ancient cultures of Japan have been still supporting peace and tranquility for the life of present-day Japanese people.
It was an event when I visited South India. I approached a gathering place of several taxis in order to take a taxi in Madurai. I negotiated the price with a man who had approached to me. The price was settled, but he guided me to take not his taxi but another man's taxi. In the gathering place of not only taxi but also auto-rickshaw, there is a man who manages there. He negotiates the price with a visitor. If the price fixed, he decides which taxi the visitor ought to ride on. It might be that he adjusts his members' tasks so that they secure employment equally by a kind of caste-like mutual help organization.
Caste is a community culture which continues from the Indian ancient times and is too complicated to be considered as merely class system. It consists of Varna and Jati. Varna is divided into four names such as Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra. Jati is subdivided by the division of traditional occupations. Gandhi described Varna as follows.
“Varna is a system to engage in the occupation inherited from an ancestor in order for people to make living. Varna is not a thing which imposes on Hindu people. Varna is the law that people who was entrusted with realization of the human public welfare discovered. It is not a thing invented by human beings but one of the universal natural rules. It is the expression of a tendency which always exists and is working like the law of universal gravitation of Newton. Varna has existed like the law of gravitation has existed before it was discovered. Thus, Hindu people were able to discover the law.
Western people discovered some laws of nature and were able to increase material possession easily by applying it. Similarly, Hindu people discovered this social tendency that they could not resist and was able to achieve what other countries have not achieved in a mental area. It is a big cause of economical and cultural ruin that we were not able to obey the law of Varna. It is one of causes of unemployment and poverty, and it is the cause of the untouchable and betrayal. The way of thinking of ‘superiority or inferiority’ completely contradicts Varna. All the Varna is equal because communities depend on each other.
Varna means the high or low class today. That's a disgusting distortion to the original ideal way. Our ancestor found a law of Varna by severe penance. They tried to do their best and were going to live with the law. We misinterpret it and make ourselves a laughingstock of the world today. The world might ignore it at present, but the world should accept it in the future. It prescribes that all people should follow the law of their existence by performing with obligation and spirit of service determined by each birth.” (‘ Harijan’1934/9/28)
“The merit of Caste is not based on the difference of the possession of wealth. Caste is nothing but an expansion of family's principle. Both are influenced by blood and heredity. The spirit that exists in the base of Caste is not a haughty superiority complex. It is division of different systems of one's culture. It is the superior adjustment of the possible social solidarity and progress. It only recognizes different opinions and the lifestyle which matches it. However, it is no use denying that a certain kind of hierarchy has developed in Caste.”(‘Young India’1920/12/29)
I think that we can understand well how deeply Gandhi understood Caste as the culture peculiar to India. Gandhi developed intense argument concerning Caste system with Ambedkar. The origin of Ambedkar was Untouchable. He converted to Buddhist and was related to Indian constitutional establishment as the Minister of Justice later. He denied Caste from the basis as a bad habit of India, and protected democracy and the machine civilization of Europe as a symbol of freedom, equality and advancement. A lot of Indians I met was eager to evade talking about Caste as a system. Indeed, there will be the scene where Caste system as a reality brings quite a few bad effects.
However, in this democratic society, the nominal and formal equality simply because of being democracy, and the inequality which is brought by it are seen anywhere. For instance, there is an idea which some people who built up the property have. That is, because they won their property by making effort, the government should not use the income by the tax for poor people who do not make an effort. But, can an extraordinary property be really built up by only their effort? They might have had a vast inheritance, lucky, and a strategy, too. Or, even if it is their effort, is it purely normal to enjoy a huge property as a private possession?
A musical called Rent was staged in U.S.A. and became the topic, ten and several years ago. The scene where poor young people who were not able to pay the rent insisted on the right of residence to live was impressive. A person has not the right to live if he cannot pay a rent. This idea is that a person who doesn’t work must not eat. However, if the chance to work or the chance to earn a certain amount of money aren't equal, or if we declare that it merely depend on a personal effort, I doubt whether democratic society is the society where we have reached at the end really. Gandhi didn't always deny democracy, but it was certain that he had a kind of doubt against a modern civilization of Europe which had given birth to democracy though he admitted the good result of it. It can be said that Caste system is a problem of having the important meaning when trying to think about freedom and equality in modern democracy.
When we read Gandhi's autobiography, we
know well how Indian tradition and culture, mainly that of Gujarat which is his
hometown, navigated his life. Especially his sticking to vegetarianism and Caste
will not be meaningful if we do not think that it is also the question from the
Indian earth against the Western modern rationalism. Though he was a bashful and
ordinary man primarily, he has left us such a symbolic footprint while also
involving himself in mass communication and the political world. I think indeed
it's because he was born in India, not in Western. He also had the desire of honor
and exhibitionism as ordinary man. And he felt intense anger against oppressors
but at the same time, he felt extreme sense of shame and despair to himself
which was helpless.
Nevertheless, he let himself out against the affair which
happened to him. What became a support at his heart at that time was the one which
became his blood and meat inherited from his father and mother, and the one
like religious tradition based on Hinduism. The affair happening forcedly to
him was a problem of his family. At the same time it was exploitation and
pressure by the Europe Great Powers in those days to people in South Africa and India. And especially the one which supported him when he could not but arrive
at himself who was helpless was moral teachings as Indian legacy which was
inherited from his mother.
We need to think of religious and ethnic background of
India which brought up Gandhi’s thought. Furthermore, we need to think that his
thought is not only the thought of individual or his race but also the thought
which is related to human being's universal idea continuing from the ancient
times.
I am going to annotate here about Kukai who was one of the greatest Buddhists in
Japan because, inside Kukai's mind, I found his way of thinking different from
the teachings of Buddha and I thought it connected with Veda of ancient times
India. Like ancient people who had faith in Veda, Kukai also devoted himself to
connecting the particularity of himself to universalism of the whole universe.
He told about it as follows.
“Dainichinyorai (Mahaavairocana) or the truth itself of cosmos is the
same as the true character of yourself. If you enter such a contemplation, every
kind of action and every kind of figure are equal with the principal Buddhist
image in original way and it seems to be the empty space at all.”(‘Sokusinn joubutu gi’[Living body entering Nirvana justice] )
He thought that the desire and the problem in him were always related to the most advanced problem of the world. It was the faith without disappearing even after he made a voyage to China, and also it connected with his confidence that he was able to fight with best sophists of that time in China equally. Then what is the universal problem that he continued to watch inside of himself? One of those seems to have been a sexual problem, a problem of the men and women.
When I visited India first and walked a Hindu temple in India, I was overwhelmed by a lot of statues of men and women connecting with each other. It was time when I visited the Prince of Wales museum of Mumbai without knowing how to understand the flooding of these erotic statues. When I entered the exhibition room of the Tibetan Buddhism, I found the picture map where men and women were entwined with each other. And I was able to hear Japanese explanation from an earphone. It told me that this entwining showed that the insight of the woman was combined with a heart of the pity of the man, and that the world was formed by this fact.
In this way, man and woman are intertwined more symbolically in the picture map of the Tibet esoteric Buddhism. Still, the intertwining of man and woman who decorate surroundings of pantheons of Hinduism is overwhelming too. However, it is too simple to attribute this intertwining to the admiration for the genital and the good harvest which are symbolized in Lingga (penis) and Yo-ni (woman's parts) of Hinduism. Thus I thought something by facing that commentary at this museum suddenly. That is, even if Shiva is a god of destruction, he is still a man. He has a spirit of a man who is soaked in the pity. On the other hand, Siva's wife, especially Kaali or Durga, demonstrates a satanic brutality which refuses man's pity. Her brutality is strong realism, and that is why it reflects reality most. It is the insight which understands the dynamics of reality.
Western philosopher Hegel expressed such a relationship of man and woman by ‘The phenomenology of Mind’ well. He told as follows. That is, it is a woman or especially a mother that has the spirit which secures property and survives reality without being discouraged in the face of the misfortune of war and natural disaster. On the other hand, a man gets upset for a misfortune, interprets a phenomenon abstractly and tries to comfort himself. And also, he argues that society or a man of power is bad. However, a woman feels the mechanics of the real power in her bones and adopts a policy to survive daringly. But both natures of man and woman are necessary for the social formation. This intertwining each other is just dialectics.
Esoteric Buddhism, different from Buddha's thought slightly, insists that it is not a true salvation if we cannot be helped in this world. This is the idea to be common to the teachings of Hinduism and Veda, too. Esoteric Buddhism teaches that we should work together in competition, make an effort, overcome the desire, and achieve salvation in this world in the last. What are desires that we should overcome? Those are possessive instinct, desire for honor, appetite, lust of conquest and sexual desire. However, those things of all are elements which form all the world too.
By the way, Veda has a way of thinking
called Ashrama stage (four consecutive life stages). That is, Brahmacharya
(student life) is a period for learning about Veda, Grihastha (household life)
is a period for working hard after getting married, Vanaprastha (retired life)
is a period for living in the forest after leaving home and Sannyasa (renounced
life) is a period for being all alone after throwing away all possessions. It
is a thought that you can get over every desire by passing through these stages,
quit carnal desires really in the last, and fill up in your existence. In the
final stage, you can fill up alone overcoming sexual or carnal desires
exceedingly and play.
However, you live with your wife till Vanaprastha. In
the esoteric Buddhism, a woman as a wife was existence of the wisdom to support
the real world with her insight. At the same time, she was existence that knew
the secret of various desires. Veda also accepts the sex differences of man and woman as a fundamental
factor of the life and shows that man and woman should live together. However,
Veda also shows that man and woman should part from each other in their last
life stages. Therefore, the sexual image of
intertwining a man and woman seen in Hinduism suggests glorification of the
period at which a man is led by a woman. At the same time, it seems to suggest
the journey of their life as fate that they must part with each other before
long.
The sexual consideration seen by esoteric Buddhism
is related to a thought of such Hindu and Veda through Tantrism. A sexual
ceremony of ancient Tantrism which is often talked isn't meaningful unless we
understand the darkness and nothingness which lie deeply inside the delight of
sexual intercourse. And such a ceremony isn't also meaningful unless we understand
something such as mysterious fear that we have to walk alone before long.
“Sexual delight as desire is eternal delight as a woman who supports this world
and at the same time it is the one like the original delight with which this
universe is supported. I understood it, got over it, and arrived at the truth
of Dainichinyorai in the continuous hard study at last.”
Kukai seems to have thought that way in his writing of his late life.
Kant was born in Konigsberg, capital of East Prussia, in 1724. He spent most of the life there and died in 1804. Among writings of Kant, books which gave me courage in my university days were ‘Critique of Pure reason’ and ‘Critique of Practical reason’. I understood that these books had preached the human freedom. In these books, I thought Kant had told as follows. That is, the ability for our recognition has a certain limit in the range of the objective world that we recognize commonly. The reason is because we cannot explain something beyond objective causality in a space-time frame. However, the thing called Pure reason can ride far over a limit of the ability of our recognition, in a practical field, namely in the moral domain. This is the thing called human freedom. On the other hand, the thing called the thing-in-itself exists in the other side of the limit of the ability of recognition and keeps touching off the ability of recognition. Human morality ability ties to this thing-in-itself directly. And we can find something that touches off our desire inside of the self without a relation with objective causality there. Human freedom is well-grounded only here. Morality or conscience exists not only in an ethical standard but also in achieving an ideal world of the desire of human by own responsibility.
I was chasing a certain girl who seemed to be a little loose at that time. However, even if she was a little loose, I affirmed the desire that I wanted this girl. And I thought that it was morality for me to live in this desire positively. As a result, I interpreted morality by connecting my desire with the thing-in-itself on my own way. It was very funny logic. But, in those days, I thought that my interpretation about Kant was ‘Copernican Revolution’. In other words, the thing-in-itself was the very thing which moved my desire helplessly, and I was not able to escape from there. I felt that I couldn’t become true myself unless I transformed into new myself by following the route which the desire showed, no matter what the result was. Afterwards, I came to think that the mystery of such a route which was given each human being was connected to a concept of Guardian deity of Hegel, Intentionality of Husserl, Care of Heidegger and Atman of Veda, somewhere.
Kamakoti-Peetham is in Kanchipuram which is located in the west of Chennai, for about one hour from Chennnai with a bus. Kanchipuram is one of the seven holy places in India, and a lot of Hinduism temples have been built there. It is assumed that Shankara who was a famous Veda scholar is the founder of Kamakoti-Peetham. And Acharya (or Sankaracharya) that succeeded him maintains this facility now. I met the 69th Acharya and the 70th Acharya there. However it was the 68th Mahacharya (Great Acharya) that had got this Kamakoti-Peetham famous as the place where people all over the world had come asking for his teachings.
He lived to be 100 years old by moderation
and severe training. He traveled all over India on foot and preached the
teachings of Veda. His teachings were left as the enormous lecture texts. He
talked together with Gandhi once. Mahacharya spoke in Tamil. Gandhi spoke in Gujarati.
However they seem to have understood each other with Sanskrit and Hindi. The
talks gave a deep impression to Gandhi.
One of the faiths which the 68th Mahacharya held to Veda is to have emphasized the importance of chanting words.
Veda itself has been originally handed down by chanting words.
New Ahacharya in Kamakoti-Peetham is found in the streets as a child who has the great nature, like Dalai Lama is found. That child is given special education as the gifted. He continues hard study. While he is young, he is made to memorize four large Vedas such as Rigveda in order to talk orally without watching anything. The 68th Mahacharya also grew up in this way, and when he reached manhood, he came to preach his teachings for many people.
He describes that it is important to chant Veda merely in the same way as a Buddhist sutra. Chanting a word of Veda, transmitting it as vibration in the air, reaching a target and having influence on the target. He says that such a series of movement is important.
Ancient people used to chant various sentences quite naturally. So, he tried not to be lost what a chanting word means. Therefore, he put Sanskrit here and there into the transcript of his lecture, as a chanting word .
When I entered a university, so-called a campus dispute had just still started. I who came out of the provinces wanted to learn what I did not know so far from teachers of the university. However, university professors were being crucified by students. I sympathized with university professors criticized too intensely first. However, I saw the professors get angry excessively and cry in a dither at the pursuit of students. So, I came to think that such their figure might be the ruin of the intellectual who had been defended and spoilt by the state and the mass communication.
A lot of students worried about what kind of life they would live when they have to enter the society in the future, during the university life which has no vision. We have to find a job in the company. We have to sharpen the body for a company. And we have to send a life full of labor. Would such a life be good for us? Would we be able to take the responsibility to spend a life in pleasant surroundings even if we marry and have the family? After all, I participated in the movements of the students who kept going on strike and I continued staying the same class for a few years.
I went to a library in the university and decided to read Marx's whole writings while taking notes. The Capital was a wonderful book, but many difficult problems were forced on me conversely. He proved the following. That is, the market economy by commodities cannot help commoditizing labor power too and cannot help expanding to all parts of the world. And a panic breaks out inevitably as an outcome of contradiction of commoditizing of labor power. Then, laborers unite themselves and overthrow the government which protects capitalism, and they realize a communist society ultimately.
However, advanced states like Japan, Europe and America have been actually getting over the panic which might become a trigger of the revolution, by the protection of the monopolistic capital and the inflation measure of the public investment etc. As a result, funds more than required ran through the whole world as speculative money, and outwardly the capital was enlarged more and more, and nobody has questioned about the contradiction of laborers who have no choice but to sell their labor power as commodities any longer.
The student movement spread socially nationwide in those days. We thought that the society would suddenly change after ten years, but nobody was able to imagine that the capitalism market economy which drove away us into working till late at night from early in the morning would disappear easily from this world. Rather, in the world, it followed that all countries were swallowed by the big undulation of the market economy under the name of democratic glorification after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nobody can imagine the new rise of socialism or communism states as possibility realistic beyond capitalist states now. Then will not a book of Marx be a thing which gives us prospects anymore? However, I still remember his next sentence.
“After the subordinate dependence of the individual under the division of labor becomes extinct, that is, after the confrontation between mental labor and physical labor becomes extinct, after labor is not merely a means of production, after we need labor for our true life, and after all sources of the wealth of the cooperative come to overflow while productivity grows with the individual's complete development, for the first time then, the horizon of the right of the bourgeois who is narrow-mindedness is stepped over at all and the society will write on the flag in the following way. Each person can get what he or she wants depending on his or her ability! Each person can get what he or she wants depending on his or her need!” (‘Critique of the Gotha Program’)
This is a certainly ideal conception theoretically. But, is the overflowing of the wealth possible as reality? That is the problem. As far as a labor market is opened theoretically, can we get to the equalization of wealth sometime? However, the difference of the rich and poor between hierarchies or the races is still remarkable. Will this be a problem to be settled by the game between capitalism states someday? In other words will the necessary wealth already exist as an absolutely needed quantity on this earth in order to maintain the life of people of the whole world? And will the wealth pervade towards a bottom layer someday? There is the enormous wealth of developed states including USA. However, isn’t uneven distribution of this wealth the only ground of the capitalism? Then, will the dispute between the states or between the races continue more there? There should be an end in such pattern someday. When and how is it realized?
Though such question exists, capitalism has driven away our life into a stress and a continuous noise while globalizing increasingly and competing for the speed and the efficiency. Even if some people in prospering capitalism states have no money, they are able to borrow as much money as they can under a certain condition and to consume by it in this world. Surplus supplies are produced one after another and sold using the mass media, and people also throng shopping everywhere. And supplies are produced in large quantities again. Can this continuous circulation be called prosperity of a capitalistic society? Under such circumstances, as Marx says, will such a day come really as the time at which development of the production capacity brings overflow of the wealth and at which all the people can meet the need?
And the next is words of Marx in ‘Saint Max’.
“It is a result of the division of labor that
the artistic talent entirely concentrates only on the particular individual,
and the ordinary people are prevented from doing so in association with this.
In the communist society, there is no painter. However there is just man who may
have other things to do to the utmost but also does drawing a picture above all
too.”( ‘The German ideology’)
As Marx describes in ‘Critique of the Gotha Program ’, he explains that the separation between mental labor and physical labor is a basic problem which obstructs the life which we should have originally. A professor has no hesitation to be a university professor in the present world. If he has accumulation of the knowledge as a professional, he must take responsibility for his act and knowledge. However he can live in a unique defended world where he can accumulate knowledge without such a responsibility. No matter what he says, his speech is taken up in media and administration and looks good in its own way. I sometimes come to want to think that such world is already disgusting. Once, there were the words of simple life of people who lived a usual life and behave. I feel like we must come back there, again.
Finally it is ‘A letter to Vera Zasulich’.
“The vitality of various primitive communes (for several thousand years) was
bigger than that of Semite, Greek, Roman social (for a thousand or several
hundred years), even more bigger beyond comparison than that of the modern
capitalist society (just for two or three hundred years)”.
Such an expression shows that Marx is great after all. We must review wisdom of human beings who kept the vitality of several thousand years once again to imagine the world which is far from the capitalism. However, what should a community in the communist society which Marx imagined learn from the primitive community? Can we get over private property system, and a frame called the state which is the big pivot of the capitalism?
As Marx says, can people achieve the society where they can obtain things at any time according to the desire? Hegel says that the state and private property system are the best idea or form which human beings arrived at as society. Isn't good that we can call the results of the effort by a certain man things as his own property or things naturally evaluated as a private possession? Naturally the strength and weakness of the contribution degree for achievements are different like a human being is different each other even if we say ideally, “No, this is the joint result with us all.”
However, such a way of thought as advocating private property system may have been born simply because our present consciousness just has adjusted to such a system. Therefore, on the further side of the private property system, we may have to imagine the world of more different joint ownership awareness. Hegel says the state and private property system also are never eternal for human beings society, evolve dialectically and change.
By the way, when I talked with an Australian friend, I asked him how many years human beings were able to survive on the earth now. He answered that it was 100 years more. I remember that I was very surprised to hear that at that time. “In this situation, human beings will become extinct soon.” he said. He looked earnest, not a joke at that time. Indeed, we may be growing only sense of emptiness as to continuing the life as it is. And human beings may slide down like lemmings before long and may surely perish. However, many economists are optimistic. They say as follows.
The present global prosperity has been brought by capitalism-like market economy society. And the stabilization of market economy is guaranteed by the dealings between the states. Therefore, it is impossible that a new society which turns into this society appears in the future.
Will it be really so?
It is ‘Unfinished symphony’ that has been always made to listen at the age when we began to listen to a thing called the classical music. I can always imagine various melodies of this eternal, immortal music with nostalgia. It has been said that the beauty of melody which a clarinet of the second movement begins to sing calmly is the celestial music, that is, the music which cannot be thought as the thing of this world. Furthermore, as for Symphony No.5, in the movie on which the work of Glenn Gould was recorded, he played the first opening melody of the first movement with the piano, saying,“How do you like this?”. The melody was indescribably filled with pleasure.
And Mass No.6 goes to the ending with the melody full of grief terribly. The impromptu collection of the piano sonata touches a heart deeply. Sensual piano trio No.2 is also beautiful. The indoor string music tunes were constructed like later years Beethoven, for example, String quintet, String quartet No.15 and Octet tune with beautiful adagio of clarinet. And highlights are the song collection after all. Fischer-Dieskau's ‘Winterriese’ and Fritz Wunderlich’s ‘Die schöne Müllerin’ are wonderful. Also Hermann Prey's ‘Harfenspieler’, ‘Wanderers Nachtlied’, Barbara Bonnie’s ‘Du bist die Rhu’ and Gerhaher’s ‘Im Frühling’ etc. are the songs which are memorable for me deeply.
Kenji Miyazawa was born in 1896 in Hanamaki city, Iwate prefecture, northeast of Japan and died in 1933.
“Our fathers lived considerably happily although being poor. There were both the art and the religion there. Now, we have nothing but labor and subsistence. The religion is tiring. It is replaced with modern science, and the science is cool and dark. Now, the teacher of religion and the artist monopolize truth, good and beauty, and sell them.” (‘Farmer art outline essentials’)
The division between mental labor and physical labor in the capitalist society which Marx described and the actual condition of workers who were living hard working life are recognized clearly here. Kenji had an advanced thought for those days though he spent life in a remort corner of northeastern Japan.
Among works of Kenji, there are some works to which we were familiar when we were children, such as ‘ Night on the Milky Way Railroad’ and ‘ Kazeno Matasaburo’. Here, I will introduce ‘ Vijichiarian Grand Festival’, the story about vegetarianism.
A scene is a place called Hirty, a small village of Newfoundland. The great speech contest of people, vegetarians and their opposers, takes place pleasantly. Of course Kenji is a vegetarianism group, but a speech contest advances while showing a certain level of understanding to a debater who asserts that eating meat is necessary. And ‘I who is a Buddhist’ who seems to be Kenji himself goes on the platform finally and talks.
‘I’ speaks a personal opinion about a
problem which was argued at that time. The problem was whether Buddha had been
a vegetarian. After that, ‘I’ talks as follows.
“All creatures have done the
continual change repeatedly from something of immeasurable Kalpa. All souls
feel a person sometime. All souls are born as a livestock sometime and are also
born in heavens sometime. Meanwhile, various souls, that is, friend, lover,
brother, parents and children, etc. approach and draw apart. Infinite pairs approach
and draw apart, during eternity. The ladies and gentlemen of pagan religion
will think this thought is too earnest and too terrible. However, this world is
so earnest as to be terrible definitely. I intended to speak only this.” Saying
so, ‘I’ gets off from the platform.
But, a zoologist who went up on the
platform immediately after that makes the face red-hot and cries. “ F, for what
reason do you put on a, a chapeau of the, the sheep although you should not eat
an, an animal?”
He trembles for excitement and drinks water awfully. Now, it
causes a big fuss. The hall is full of the thunderous laughter.
However, a series of arguments except ‘me’ proved to have been a play to enliven a festival after that. While a cheer and applause do not stop sounding, ‘I’ is absentminded in this excessive disappointment. “The fantasy of ‘Vijichiarian Grand Festival’ has been already broken. Please finish the later ending with something like a common dance of the end of the moving picture by a reader without permission.” Kenji says in this way and ends this story.
Here, Kenji compares other vegetarians who are trying to enliven a festival interestingly with ‘myself’ who states that this world is so earnest so as to be terrible definitely. And he expresses the emptiness of the heart which exists in both of other vegetarians and ‘myself’. ‘I’ thinks that ‘myself’ which is too earnest, may have narrow-mindedness which is not flexible adversely. At the same time, we can see the loneliness in ‘myself’ who cannot help living only such a way of life. Kenji was able to express such situation, as a children's story. It shows his talent.
Kenji came across the Lotus Sutra at 18 years old. When winter came, he practiced Zen for the cold season training and walked around a town street at night while chanting “Namumyou Horengekyo ”(I prostrate myself before Glory to the Lotus Sutra.) in a loud voice. People in the town pretended not to see his behavior because they thought it regrettable for Kenji's parents. But Kenji's high-pitched voice was far and clear at winter cold season night. After that, he became a teacher at the prefectural agriculture school and made efforts for poor farmers by his original fertilizer principle until he died. During this period, Kenji carried out vegetarianism, and died of illness at the youth of 37 years old.
In seeing that a person has thoroughly consistency on his thought like this through his life, some people say that it is narrow-minded because it prevents human diversity. Some people drive away the problem into the area of non-human
mystery. There also are a lot of Kenji theories that Buddhism has swallowed
Kenji in the last years of his life.
But what I want to say is as follows. That
is, the thought which one human being has is an element which
forms the world variety of human being itself, but as far as it is expressed,
it might have a true meaning for the first time when it is in one-sided
expression or in opposit expression against other thought. We can admit such a situation also on the
life of Gandhi. Vegetarianism and fasting which Western rationalists can’t
understand at any cost can be expressed only with the form which confronts modern
rationalism. It may be said that such expressions are after all unavoidable
expressions of Gandhi.
“We always have to feel it in the mind. All
people are united and we have to make love spread over all people. However, in
Karma or in the behavior, each person is different. This is the teachings of Veda.”
An Indian expert is saying traditionally so. Though each person does different
behavior, each person will be able to leave behind the footprints which can be
understood in common as a human race each other someday, after all.
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