It is indeed a very great honour to me to see so many come to hear me on this occasion. I have also been greatly honoured by the very warm and generous words spoken about me and my people by His Excellency the President. I accept these words with deep gratitude because I know that they are a compliment not to me personally, but to my people who, as the President has said, have suffered greatly for the common cause of East Asia.
You have asked me to speak today, but at a time like this when it is deeds we want and not words it gives me a certain misgiving in coming to speak to you just words.
What words can I speak to you when the people of Tokyo, the people of Nippon are astounding the world with their deeds? Nevertheless you have come to listen, and I must therefore speak.
This morning I paid my homage at the Meiji and the Yasukuni Shrines. But on this occasion I paid my homage with a new feeling. This time the Meiji and the Yasukuni Shrines have become, not so much Japanese shrines as East Asiatic shrines. I bowed my head in the deepest gratitude at the Meiji Shrine, because it was the great Emperor Meiji who created modern Nippon, and it is modern Nippon which has created East Asia.
The great Emperor is not only the founder of Nippon, but, with a proper adjustment of the vision, one sees in him the real founder and the father of modern East Asia. It is the idealism, the courage, the Asiatic vision, born in the mind of the great Emperor which must be the foundation of our new order in the East.
And when I went to the Yasukuni Shrine, there I found, I felt there that the spirits there are not only guarding Nippon, but they are guarding East Asia now. The spirits of many heroes who died in Burma, in Malaya, in the Philippines, the spirits of the men who have sacrificed everything in the cause of these East Asiatic countries repose in the Yasukuni Shrine today. Therefore the Yasukuni Shrine really has become an East Asiatic shrine. And it is with the memory of the visit I paid this morning, it is in the mood and exaltation of this visit, that I wish to speak to you today.
I have no prepared speech for you. I want to speak to you from my heart to your heart. I will speak to you the words which occur to me while I am standing before you. In fact, consider me not so much as speaking to you as trying to think aloud.
There is only one subject about which I can speak to you, and that is the war--our war, our struggle for East Asiatic existence. Broadly speaking, there are two aspects of the war, one a material aspect and the other a spiritual one. I do not wish to speak to you about the material aspect, because so many men who are far more competent than I am, have already spoken to you about it. And as I come practically from the outer rim of this war, it would be presumption on my part if I tried to discuss this subject in the very centre of the war itself, namely, Tokyo.
As for the spiritual aspect of the war, the centre is everywhere, not only in Nippon and East Asia, but in the whole world. The spirit of this war, the new spirit born out of it, pervades the world and everyone has his own angle in looking at it. When I refer to the moral or the spiritual side of the war, I am doing so in a very broad sense. I am referring to ideas, thoughts, emotions, the spiritual effort and struggle behind the war.
In order to make myself clear, I wish to give you, as I see it, something of the background of this spiritual struggle. As I read history, that is the story of man, it is fundamentally and at the bottom a spiritual struggle--the struggle of life to create a higher life, and yet a higher life. And the material side of things, the guns and planes and tanks and such things are only a weapon, only an instrument in the service of this vast fundamental spiritual struggle. The final issue will always depend upon the strength of the spirit behind the struggle.
I say that the issue will be decided, not by planes and tanks, but by the spirit of man, by the spirit of the "Kamikazé." In the East it will be decided by the Asiatic will to survive, the Asiatic will to live and conquer. And this struggle, as I read history, is at its roots the struggle of man's spirit against his environment. Where the spirit has kept in equilibrium with its environment, with the world round it, it has conquered; but where the human spirit has failed to keep this relation with its environment, it has been defeated.
This has been true from the beginning of history, from the days of Babylon and Assyria and Egypt. Babylon was great when the spirit of the Babylonians was great, but when that spirit failed, Babylon fell, for the people had lost the spiritual struggle and their spiritual equilibrium with the world.
And then came Greece. When the spirit of Greece was strong, Greece conquered the world; but when that spirit weakened, Greece fell. Then came Carthage, Rome, the Moors, the Tartars, Spain, Holland and France; and finally in the last centuries came our enemies, the Anglo-Saxons. Also in the past, Asia as a whole fell and was destroyed because the Asiatics had destroyed the spirit of Asia. Our spirit was not strong enough, not in equilibrium with the word, and therefore we Asiatics as a whole were destroyed.
Therefore as I see it, the whole story of man is one ceaseless struggle, and elemental, spiritual struggle, in which material success follows spiritual success, and material failure similarly follows spiritual failure.
What about our enemies the Anglo-Saxon race? I want to speak dispassionately and without malice. I will try to explain how I see their history. For 300 or 400 years or even more our world has passed through a period when the material facts of life have been more important than the spiritual facts. It was a time when the world was expanding, when the world was discovering new things, was discovering all the wonders of a materialsistic [sic] period, discovering steam, and railways, and ships, and new uses of iron, and electricity, and the telegraph. It was an age of almost magical materialistic discovery and development.
And the Anglo-Saxons were a materialist race; and being a materialist
race they were well equipped for success in the materialist age. Just as the wolf and the fox and the vulture are better equipped than we are to steal and to kill, so also the Anglo-Saxons were really the wolves and foxes and vultures of the new predatory age. They were better equipped than others to steal other people's property and to maintain a complete equilibrium with the world of that time.
So during that long materialistic age which lasted for some centuries, during that period when the wolves and the foxes and vultures were best adapted to the existing environment, many others, the idealists who were not so well adapted, went under. But like all stages of history, the materialistic age had to come to its end. Man doesn't stay forever at one level; man goes on from stage to stage and the materialistic age is just one of these stages.
The first blow was struck at the materialistic age, the age of the wolves and the foxes and the vultures, a hundred and fifty years or so ago, with the great French Revolution. During the French Revolution, mankind discovered that there were not only the wolves and the foxes and their philosophy and freedoms and ways of living, but there were fraternity, eqaulity [sic], and liberty in the world.
But the Anglo-Saxons and their allies, the Czar of Russia, the reactionary monarchs of old Prussia and France, being in actual possession of the world, of the material wealth of the world, defeated the French Revolution materially. The Anglo-Saxons and those Powers, because they were then the masters of the material world, defeated the French Revolution in the material struggle.
The Anglo-Saxons, that is the British in those days, won the material war against the French Revolution; but was the Revolution defeated? No, because the British and their allies represented a material power, while the French Revolution represented a far greater, the ultimate power, a spiritual power.
One hundred and fifty years ago the French were beaten. Britain, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Prussia came together at the Congress of Vienna. They tried to preserve the old order. They tried to destroy the new order of liberty, fraternity and equality, but did they succeed? Within fifty years the ideas of the French Revolution had conquered the West; within 100 years or so two dead empires had disappeared, while today the ideas of the French Revolution are a ferment everywhere.
In the year 1815, they got together at the Congress of Vienna. They tried to revive the dead Austro-Hungarian Empire, the dead Empire of Czarist Russia, the dead Monarchy of the Bourbons, with material force and success in their material war. Today, where is the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Wiped out! Where is Czarist Russia? Wiped out! Where is the dead monarchy of Louis XVIII? All have been wiped out. The spirit has proved to be stronger than the flesh, mind stronger than matter, and always the spirit has won.
So also let me tell you that I am not now looking at the war from the
materials side; I am not thinking of the ships and the tanks and the armies. I am looking at the war only from the spiritual side. Let me tell you that just as in 1815 all the might of Britain could not preserve the dead French Empire, so also in 1945 all the might of America will not preserve the dead British Empire and the equally dead Anglo-American materialism.
The Anglo-Saxons are essentially materialists. They prospered in a materialist age. But that age has definitely come to an end and with its end, the materialist powers mustend [sic]. That is the immutable law of human progress. Just as we, the non-materialist people, went under in a materialist age, so also the materialist people must go under in a non-materialist, spiritual age.
I tell you with my utmost conviction that on the spiritual front, on the moral front of the war, we have already won and our enemies have already lost. The materialist age has definitely begun to pass away, and there is a new age, a new order, a new spirit, which not all the material strength of the enemies can destroy or prevent from conquering.
So this is the first part of what I wish totell [sic] you today. It is that on the spiritual front our enemies, the Anglo-Saxons, having no war aims, having no spiritual dynamism or equilibrium with the new spiritual world, are definitely domed to destruction.
And who are to be their successors in the new world order? Let us ask ourselves this question. Because they have lost, it does not mean that we have won and inherited the world. It is not so simple as that. In order to inherit the world they have lost, we must deserve it and establish a spiritual as well as material equilibrium with it. Whether the Anglo-Saxons are beaten or not, if we wish to inherit East Asia, we must deserve the inheritance. I am saying this as an East Asiatic to East Asiatics. Le us not repeat the mistakes of the past, either the mistakes of our people or the mistakes of our enemies, if we wish to inherit East Asia.
Ask yourselves two questions only. Why did Asia as a whole lose her past heritage? Civilization began in the East. The world's progress began in the East. Why did we lose what we had gained in the past? The answer can be very simply given. It is that East Asia lost the past because she could not move out of it into the future. She got stuck in it. In a materialistic age she could not adjust herself to the materialistic environment. She tried to be spiritual both in spiritual and materialist times, with the result that she could not move when the world was moving, and so she was left behind.
In other words, for instance Burma lost her independence, and practically all East Asia, with the exception of Nippon, lost its independence because in a materialist age, they tried to remain spiritual and nothing else. When the world was moving toward the right, we tried to move to the left or to remain stationary, and therefore we lost both the left and the right and everything else. The world left us behind because we had lost contact with it. In a materialist age those who were materially fit survived and
prospered.
Why are the Anglo-Saxons, the materialist Powers, going to lose the world domination, the world supremacy, which they have enjoyed for centuries? The simple answer is that they are just materialists, and their materialism is not sufficient, does not equip them for the new and more spiritual age. Therefore if we East Asiatics wish to inherit East Asia, to build up our East Asiatic world, we must avoid the mistakes of both the materialist and the spiritual races. We must avoid the over-spirituality of ancient Asia, and we must also avoid the over-materialism of the Anglo-Saxon Powers.
The new world is neither for the materialists nor for the idealists; it is for the realists. Therefore if we East Asiatics as we are determined to do, wish to complete this East Asiatic revolution which is going to restore East Asia to us, we must carry through this revolution as realists with the right mixture of idealism and materialism, not too much of one nor too little of the other.
To me, as I see it from the point of view of world history, what is happening in East Asia is not a war; it is a peoples' revolution, the revolution of a billion or more of the East Asiatic peoples. Our enemies may fight against our armies and our navies and our air forces, but no enemy upon earth can fight or beat a people who compose half the world's population. No enemy on earth can defeat a people's revolution if the people remain revolutionary with a single revolutionary will, a single revolutionary mind.
It is therefore for us to wage this war to pursue this East Asiatic struggle as a revolution. It is for us to be revolutionists, pursuing the East Asiatic revolution as the past great revolutions were pursued and consummated. A revolutionist does not think in terms of days or months or years. A revolutionist thinks in decades and in centuries. A revolution is not only for one period or one generation. A revolution is for the whole future of a whole people or world. We are not thinking merely of winning the war; we are thinking of winning the racial destiny of our whole East Asiatic world. In a revolution we do not think of one man, or a thousand men, or a million men. We don't think of this home or that home, or this town or that; we think in terms of whole countries and peoples.
This is what I want to tell you as a last message, that we should approach this war or any war to follow, even to the extent of ten or a hundred wars, we should approach all as a part of the East Asiatic revolution, a revolution which concerns not only our armies and governments, but every single person in East Asia. It is everybody's revolution, and the revolutionary front is in every home and every town. That is the way to win a revolution. If we pursue this East Asiatic revolution as the revolution of the East Asiatic peoples, if we have learnt our lessons from the past as to why materialist Europe failed, why spiritual Asia of the past failed, if we profit by these lessons, we will inherit the future world in the East.
I have every confidence in the success of the East Asiatic revolution. I have three reasons for my conviction and confidence. First of all everywhere
I have been to, in Nippon and in my country, everywhere, I find that there is one radical difference between this war and the past World War. This war is a war of the peoples, not only of big armies and other material fighting forces. It is a people's war, a people's struggle for existence, and that is why I believe in the success of the revolution.
On my way from Fukuoka to Tokyo my train carried me through a long stretch of your country. Everywhere I looked, I noticed that everyone in Nippon is working, fighting, living for the war. The farmer in his field, the man carrying the goods, the soldiers training, everyone was working. When I saw that I said to myself that such a great people could never be defeated so long as everybody is an East Asiatic revolutionist in Nippon. This is one reason why I believe in the final success of our East Asiatic revolution.
My second reason lies in the Joint Declaration of East Asia. In that declaraction [sic] we have profited by the mistakes of Europe and Asia in the past. We have avoided the over-materialism of Europe and also the over idealism of past Asia; we have tried to create a synthesis of materilaism [sic] and idealism for our new world order, and to establish our equilibirum [sic] with the new world on this new basis. So long as the spirit of the joint declaration is our guiding principle, and so long as we remain faithful to it we will inherit East Asia for all eternity. The new principle has created a new spirit in our East Asiatic peoples, a new unity and trust.
That is my second reason. I will now give you my third reason for believing in our final victory. It is based on something that has astonuuded [sic] the whole world, something that displays the basic spirit and meaning of our East Asiatic revolution, namely the spirit of the "Kamikazé." That is going to be the real foundation of new East Asia, the armor of East Asia which no enemy can destroy, this spirit of self-dedication, the spirit to win or to die.
I tell you very sincerely that I was never so moved in all my life as when I read of the exploits of the "Kamikazé" in Taiwan and in the Philippines. And I said to myself, East Asia will never die so long as the spirit of the "Kamikazé" lives.
Well, I have given you as best I can the reasons for my conviction that the East Asiatic revolution will break down everything before it and conquer. I have given you explicit reasons why I believe in the success of our East Asiatic revolution with all my body and soul. And I will tell the enemy that whatever may happen East Asia will never consider herself beaten, that the East Asiatic revolution will never be ended until East Asia regains, until East Asiatic nations regain East Asia and East Asia becomes Asiatic again.
I thank you all for having so patiently listened to me. It may be that I have spoken some things in haste or in the passion of the moment, or may be that my view is incomplete. If so, but I don't think it is so, I hope you will understand my words in the spirit in which I have spoken them.