Philadelphia Reflections: Inazo Nitobe, Quaker Samurai

Philadelphia Reflections: Inazo Nitobe, Quaker Samurai

Inazo Nitobe, Quaker Samurai

Inazo Nitobe

The story of Inazo Nitobe (1862-1933) comes in two forms, one from the Philadelphia Quaker community, and the other from his home, in Japan. One day in Philadelphia, a ninety year-old Quaker gentleman, rumpled black suit, very soft voice -- and all -- happened to remark that his Aunt had married a Samurai. A real one? Topknot, kimono, long curved sword, and all? Yup. Uh-huh.

That would have been Inazo Nitobe, who met and married Moriko, nee Elkinton, while in college in Philadelphia. He became a Quaker himself, and when the couple returned to Japan, the Emperor then found himself with a warrior nobleman who was a pacifist. You can next sort of see the hand of his Quaker wife in the diplomatic suggestion that there were vacancies for Japan at the League of Nations and the Peace Palace in the Hague, and perhaps, well perhaps there could be service to his Emperor as well as his new religion. Good thinking, let it be done. As far as Philadelphia is concerned, Nitobe next appeared when Japan was invading Manchuria, and the Emperor had sent him on a tour of America to explain things. At the meetinghouse on Twelfth Street, Nitobe took the line that Japan was bringing peace and order to a chaotic barbarian situation, saving many lives and restoring quiet. After a minute of silence, Rufus Jones rose from his seat. He was having none of it. And that was that for Nitobe in Philadelphia.

The other side of this story quickly appears if you go to Japan and ask some acquaintances if they happen to have heard the name Inazo Nitobe. That turns out to be equivalent to asking some random American if he has ever heard of Abraham Lincoln. To begin with, Nitobe's picture appears on the 5000 Yen ($50) bills in everybody's pocket. He was the founder of the University of Tokyo, admission to which is now an automatic ticket to Japanese success. He wrote a number of books that are now required reading for any educated Japanese. A number of museums, hospitals, and gardens are named after him; one of them outside Vancouver, at the University of British Columbia.

Nitobe's father, Jujiro Nitobe, had been the best friend of the last Shogun, deposed by the return of the Emperor to effective control, after Perry opened up Japan to Western ideas. The Shogun was beheaded, of course, and the tradition was that the victim could ask his best friend to do the job, because he would do it swiftly. Jujiro was unable to bring himself to the task, refused, and his family was accordingly reduced to poverty. Subsequently, the samurai were disbanded by the newly empowered Emperor, given a pension, and told to look for peaceful work. Inazo Nitobe was in law school when the Emperor's emissary came and said that Japan did not need culture, it had plenty of culture. The law students would please go to engineering school, where they could help Japan westernize.

Nitobe later wrote a perfectly charming memoir, called Reminiscences of Childhood in the Early days of Modern Japan , which dramatizes in just a few pages just how wide the cultural gap was. His father brought home a spoon one day, and this curious memento of how Westerners eat was placed in a position of high honor. One day, a neighbor ordered a suit of western clothes, and hobbled around it it, saying he did not understand how Westerners are able to walk in such clothes. He had the pants on backward.

One of Nitobe's greatest achievements was to struggle with his appointment as governor of Formosa (Taiwan). Japan acquired this primitive island in 1895, and Nitobe had the uncomfortable role of the colonist in Japan's first experience with colonization. He sincerely believed it was possible for Japan to bring the benefits of Westernization to another Asian backwater, and just as the British found in their colonies, there was precious little gratitude for it. Although he was undoubtedly acting dutifully on the Emperor's orders when he later came to Twelfth Street Meeting, he surely knew -- perhaps even better than Rufus Jones -- that there was something to be said on both sides, no matter how conflicted you had to be if you were in a position of responsibility. The most revered man in his whole nation almost surely saw himself as a complete failure.