This article was published in Jogaku zasshi, November 22, 1890
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In a poem encouraging learning by Sima Wengong, there are the following lines:
If a young man has not yet married,
There are surely beautiful women seeking a suitable match.
These two lines must have inspired countless young men. If a man is not outstanding, then let it be; but if he is in love, he ought to become the finest man in the world and seek the finest partner in the world. Who can know whether this was not precisely what Heaven had in mind when it created men and women and brought them together? It is said that human life is like a desert, but one smile from a beloved can dispel ten thousand measures of sorrow. The power of love is sufficient to overturn the entire world and make everything appear anew. It makes the short tall, the long short, the crooked straight, and transforms the fierce and the violent, the honest and the unworthy. It makes those who grieve laugh, and those who laugh weep. It can kill thousands and make thousands die laughing. Its power is beyond anything one might imagine. Must a person first study reason and then eat and drink? Just as we do not debate the merits of our tastes and appetites, so the barriers erected by reason and experience are ultimately no more than three feet high when it comes to love. If one looks at all things through the eyes of a lover, then love is everything, and everything is love. The high heavens, the broad earth, birds flying and fish swimming: the question of love runs through all these things, alive and active. It is surely one of the fundamental principles governing the universe.
Indeed, there is no reason within emotion. If one insists on demanding an explanation, the only answer one will receive is: It is reasonable because I feel it. If one were to challenge the young women of the world and ask them why they long for worthy men, they would surely reply: “I love him. And why? Because I love him!”
When a person falls in love, they see only the beauty of the beloved. Oblivious to everything else in the world around them, they fix their gaze solely upon that one person, which is why Shakespeare said, ‘Love is blind.’ There is a form of love befitting a true man, and another that is merely childish or immature. To say ‘no’ when one ought to say ‘yes’, to remain silent when one’s heart burns with passion, to restrain one’s impulses just as one is about to take flight, or, when the inner turbulence of emotion is at its most intense, to mask it with an outward appearance of utter ordinariness, such is the love of a naive, immature soul. Consider Priscilla from Longfellow’s poem: she waits in silent, stoic endurance, for it is the lot of a woman to wait, until a voice breaks her silence. In contrast, the love of a true man is this: to shatter hard rock to reach a brilliant diamond; to leap across a thousand peaks and traverse vast, surging oceans for the sake of one’s beloved; to endure biting, freezing cold and cast aside the fear of death; to press forward, undeterred, toward the radiant light that is love. It is the way of a hero to sacrifice lesser loves for the sake of a greater one, and to undertake a pilgrimage of a thousand leagues for the sake of the one who holds his heart. We should be grateful to Heaven for bestowing upon the human realm the gift of love, a supreme impetus that warms our existence and stirs us to action. If this love were to be extended throughout society, and further still to the collective of all humanity, how could this world be anything other than a realm imbued with deep, sentient feeling? Oh, Love, you who bring about a revolution within the human spirit and body! Love, you who pioneer new frontiers of the imagination! Love, you who forge heroes and men of great stature! Love, you who bind families together and fortify nations! I long for a great poet to emerge, one who will fully articulate the nature of love, leaving the many petty, narrow-minded thinkers of our day struck with utter astonishment.
Postscript:
A word addressed to Kikuno Fumi concerning the discussion.
I have long heard your name, and I am grateful that you have now favoured me with such earnest and thoughtful words. However, I do not know whether I am capable of doing what you suggest. You do not seem to wish to hear me speak about this. Dr Kato’s astonishment, and so forth, was merely something that appeared in Jogaku Zasshi. If there is anything in me that enables me to stand confidently before others, it is that I possess an individuality and independence of my own. This is true both in my writing and in my actions. I am not someone who deliberately conceals his name, but neither do I feel any particular need to attach my name to what I write.
I respectfully offer this reply.
