Japan

The Golden Chain “Mother and Japan: A Journey of Discovery” PDF (8 pages)

SABDA newsletter “The Mother's Japanese collection” PDF (5 pages)

(Peter Heehs:) “[The secret revolutionary society in Calcutta], after Jatin and Barin's departure, virtually ceased to exist. Most of the recruits drifted away. Those like Abinash who did not lacked organization, direction, and resources. Left to itself the Bengali revolutionary movement might well have perished of inanition at this time. It was saved not so much by the renewed efforts of its originators as by a general enthusiasm that took hold of the province that year. This was roused by two unrelated events: the Russo-Japanese War and the Partition of Bengal.
         Japan's success in bottling up the Russian fleet in Port Arthur in February 1904 and the subsequent land victory at Mukden were sufficiently astonishing. But the destruction of Russia's Baltic Fleet at Tsushima in May 1905 “electrified the Asiatic world”. Writing in The Indian Review, the Madras editor G. A. Natesan declared: “Almost for the first time in the history of the world an Asiatic power, hitherto somewhat despised and not taken into account, has humbled a huge European power.” … One result of the unexpected outcome was a transformation of the attitude of other countries towards the victor. The average Westerner “was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace; he calls her civilized since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields”, wrote Okakura in his classic Book of Tea. Indians also had been in the habit of looking down on the Japanese... Now suddenly Indian journalists, Indian barristers and Indian schoolboys were hailing the Japanese as the champions of resurgent Asia.”

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See also

• ONE ASIA