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strove for a better condition of life it was forced to adopt the ideals
offered by European culture. And indeed that culture strikes us today
as having spread to the point of becoming the culture of the world.
But at the same time, living as we do on the edge of the Orient and yet
surrounded by the products of European culture, it seems to us that
those products have lost the life they must have had in the beginning
and assumed abstract qualities that are altogether inhuman. The tyranny
of machines produces a marvelous change in the externals of human
life but exerts merely a destructive influence as to the heart of that
life. The tyranny of machines day by day further limits man's ability
to live according to his inner code, deprives him of that moral backbone,
and forces him to live in conforrnity with rules imposed from the out–
side.... We believe that, since the Renaissance at least, a strong cur–
rent of non-conformism can be found at the basis of the European
spirit. The resultant culture seems to us to have been formed by a small
number of individuals who relied upon no one but themselves, who
looked at everything with their own eyes, felt with their own hearts
and sought out unflinchingly the possibilities of their own selves-and
by an intelligent public capable of appreciating them, always, to be
sure, after a certain interval. But the fusion of conformism with the
tyranny of machines which is spreading over the entire world today
is nothing but the contrary of this characteristic of European culture.
This barbarous fusion is dividing the world of the present into two
groups of very powerful States, one of which is dominating our life
and the other threatening us."
In the light of these conclusions, Mr. Nakamura asks Andre Gide:
"How is
man
to behave on the eve of the conquest of the world by the
union of conformism with machines?" And he adds, "Faced as we are
by the destruction of the entire human race, it seems to us that the
redemption of the soul, that is the achievement of
man's happiness,
is the primary question, superseding all military and political prognoses."
Andre Gide's reply to this unexpected and challenging letter follows:
Paris, 2 January 1951
Dear Mitsuo Nakamura,
Your long and excellent letter of 29 November reached me
yesterday. The details you furnish as to the popularity of my books
in Japan, as to the attention granted my writings by a people with
whom I did not think any moral and intellectual common ground
could be hoped for, could be possible, bring me joy; for now you
