Preface

In the cultural and intellectual history of modern Japan, Mori Arimasa (1911–76) remains a significant presence, as a scholar, writer, translator, and philosopher. And perhaps even more, for the general Japanese reading public, he is still admired as the example of a special kind of hero. Mori was the rare Japanese intellectual with the courage to leave the security of the familiar mental constructs of his own society in order to seek out the contours of the deeper realities of a foreign culture.

Many Japanese people, of course, travel abroad, but as a young man, Mori became convinced that to truly know another culture must require the kind of immersion only made possible by living and working in that culture. He therefore made a highly unusual decision: He gave up his prestigious teaching post in Japan to order to go and live in Paris, where he remained for several decades. This challenge to himself, and his personal responses to his life in France, provide the subject matter for the first of his memoirs, By the Waters of Babylon, published in Tokyo in 1957 and long established as a classic account of how disparate cultures can entangle themselves in the thoughts and feelings of a single individual. This present translation is the first of his many writings to be made available in English.

Mori was the grandson of Mori Arinori (1847–89), the famous statesman active in the opening up of Japan during the Meiji period (1868–1911) and Japan’s first minister of education. Mori began his studies of French culture and history in Tokyo during World War II at the University of Tokyo. His interests came to focus on European philosophy, and soon after the war, he was appointed at his university as a professor. His knowledge of France and Europe was already profound.

After Mori’s arrival in Paris, his highly personal accounts of his experiences there made his writings serve as a major conduit through which his generation in Japan learned about European culture in general, and the civilization of France in particular. During these two decades, Mori’s published observations, which fall in a different category than do his more formal writings on philosophy, continued to find a wide audience.

Mori’s personal response to French culture helped his many readers come to terms with what they perceived to be a crucial need to rejoin the larger world after the debacle of the war. This was the generation that found itself looking both backward, to see how and why Japan failed to understand the reality of the West before the war years, and forward, in order to attempt to ascertain what strategies Japan might now adopt in order to seek out more positive relations with the West in the future.

Mori’s particular fascination with France was by no means unusual. Many Japanese intellectuals, writers, and artists, once first exposed to European culture in the latter part of the nineteenth century, found that France and French culture maintained the greatest appeal to them, more than of any other European country. By and large, this fascination still remains strong today, and Mori’s writings in the early postwar period helped cement the ongoing nature of those enduring cultural and spiritual connections.

Nor, of course, is such a fascination with France confined to Japan. A long line of Russian, German, and British writers have long had similar responses, and Americans have their own enthusiasts as well, from Henry James and Edith Wharton to Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and James Baldwin, among many others.

Mori did not always find his chosen path to be one of ease. He indicates quite clearly that he felt considerable trepidation about his commitment to his project at the beginning of his stay, and occasionally during later periods as well. Many passages in Babylon reveal a kind of gentle anguish, and indeed, there is often an implicit sense of personal exile behind his responses to much of what he sees and hears in Paris and elsewhere.

In following Mori on his intellectual and spiritual path, the careful reader eventually comes to a deeper understanding of the central issue that underlies so many of the author’s individual observations: the crucial difference between an intellectual understanding of a foreign culture and the far more difficult effort needed to actually absorb the realities of that culture. For Mori, it is the experience itself that authenticates.

Mori is an immensely learned and enthusiastic guide to French and European high culture. His knowledge of and deep interest in the literature, history, philosophy, architecture, sculpture, and the other visual arts of France and Europe is extensive, and he is happy to share his intimate personal insights with his readers, who therefore find themselves pulled into his inner journey along with him.

Even though Babylon was written almost seventy years ago, the contemporary reader will find very little that seems dated or no longer relevant. This is surely because Mori unerringly seeks out the most profound layers of French and European cultures, in order to explicate to himself just how those differences define themselves when compared to the culture of Japan that he has now left behind. It may be not so surprising then that, for Mori, the deepest strata in the larger history of the French experience lie entwined with the Christian, and specifically Catholic experience, along with the psychology and the world view that develops from it. This is what separates France from Japan, and this is what remains endlessly fascinating to an outsider like Mori, for whom this reality must remain ever slightly out of reach. He shows a striking frankness in so openly acknowledging this gulf.

As I mentioned previously, for Mori’s many original Japanese readers, Babylon provided a call to experience something of the realities and challenges of a greater world beyond their own experience, in that period just after the isolation of World War II. I believe that this appeal remains true for readers today, including those who read the book in English. For indeed, in every generation, any individual seeking to confront the nature of another culture must still continue to make the same journey toward understanding. Mori can still define that challenge and provide some wise and enlightened guidance as to how to proceed as well.

For readers wishing to know more about Mori and his contributions, there are two essays that follow the text itself. The first, by Professor Michiko Yusa, provides valuable insights into Mori as a philosopher and thinker, and the second, by myself, chronicles the social and literary background within which Mori thought and worked.