by Chinweizu
The primary
function of the body’s immune system is to identify and protect what is self
and destroy what is not-self. What the immune system learned while the fetus was
still in the womb was that anything it came into contact with during that time
must be regarded as self. A society’s ancestral culture is the social analogue
of the body’s immune system. It identifies what is socially self, i.e.
whatever displays the ancestral culture, and protects it from the intrusive and
alien. When it is functioning properly, the immune system will repel invaders.
One of the ways in which an immune system can go wrong is to assault cells that
it is supposed to protect. When a culture is functioning properly, it will react
to invaders by mobilizing its society for resistance. Likewise, when a culture
goes faulty, it may not only (like an AIDS-afflicted immune system) fail to
protect against the alien invasion; it can even (as in auto-immune disease)
attack its own society.
The notion that culture is the ultimate backbone of a people, the immune system
of a society, is alien to the niggerized consciousness of the populations of
PanAfrica. Many of their comprador elite now see African culture as nothing more
than a source of fossilized arts and museum pieces to be sold to earn foreign
exchange! Others view it as a disgraceful, primitive paganism that should be
smashed and consigned to the bonfire. That is a most dangerous situation and
needs to be urgently ended if the peoples of PanAfrica intend to survive. To
help bring home to Africans the true nature and vital function of culture, there
is probably no better example than Meiji Japan.
How and why did
Japan survive the Pan European attempt to colonize and destroy it and, within 50
years, 1868-1904, convert itself into a world power? How and why did a Japan
that was overawed by Commodore Perry and his few gunboats in 1853 turn itself
into a power that defeated Imperial Russia in 1904? To see the Meiji spirit and
Japanese culture in action, the book to read is Lafcadio Hearn, Writings from
Japan, ed by Francis King, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984; especially the essays
“The Japanese Family”, “A Conservative”, “Christian Converts” and
“A Glimpse of Tendencies”. But the whole book needs to be read to get a feel
for Japanese culture and how it came to the rescue of the Japanese people and
saved them from the White Peril that overwhelmed the rest of the non-European
world.
By way of introduction to the Meiji example, here are some excerpts from
Lafcadio Hearn:
1. In many ways a human society may be compared biologically with an individual
organism. Foreign elements introduced forcibly into the system of either, and
impossible to assimilate, set up irritations and partial disintegration, until
eliminated naturally or removed artificially. Japan is strengthening herself
through elimination of disturbing elements; and this natural process is
symbolized in the resolve to . . . leave nothing under foreign control within
the empire. It is also manifested in the dismissal of foreign employees, in the
resistance offered by Japanese congregations to the authority of foreign
missionaries, and in the resolute boycotting of foreign merchants. (p. 268)
2. On "the queer superstitions of the pre-Meiji era concerning"
Occidentals
Although recognized as intelligent and formidable creatures, Occidentals were
thought of as more closely allied to animals than to mankind. They had hairy
bodies of queer shape; their teeth were different from those of men; their
internal organs were also peculiar; and their moral ideas those of goblins.
–(p. 296)
3. On Foreigners and foreign help
What is worse for the alien than miscomprehension is the simple fact that he is
in the position of an invader. (p. 263)
There is also the definite conviction that foreign help is proof of national
feebleness (p. 268)
4. On the family as social unit
Though the individual is now registered, and made directly accountable to the
law, while the household has been relieved from its ancient responsibility for
the acts of its members, still the family practically remains the social unit,
retaining its patriarchal organization and its particular cult. (p. 221)
4. The law of duty
From servant to master – up through all degrees of the household hierarchy –
the law of duty was the same: obedience absolute to custom and tradition. The
ancestral cult permitted no individual freedom: nobody could live according to
his or her pleasure; everyone had to live according to rule. The individual did
not even have a legal existence; the family was the unit of society. Even its
patriarch existed in law as representative only, responsible both to the living
and the dead. (p. 287)
5. Ancestor Worship
A samurai boy . . . was educated to revere the ancient gods and the spirits of
his ancestors; he was well schooled in the Chinese ethics; and he was taught
something of Buddhist philosophy and faith. But he was likewise taught that hope
of heaven and fear of hell were for the ignorant only; and the superior man
should be influenced in his conduct by nothing more selfish than love of right
for its own sake, and the recognition of duty as a universal law. . . .
[Accordingly] the young samurai [grew up] fearless, courteous, self-denying,
despising pleasure, and ready at an instant’s notice to give his life for
love, loyalty, or honor. (p. 293)
6. National motivation and solidarity
[To] a people of forty millions, uniting all their energies to achieve absolute
national independence, . . . the existence of foreign settlements in Japan,
under consular jurisdiction, was in itself a constant exasperation to national
pride, an indication of national weakness. (p.265)
The average Japanese would prefer to work fifteen hours a day for one of his own
countrymen than eight hours a day for a foreigner paying higher wages. (p. 265)
7. The Japanese soul and the English language
. . . the idea of making English the language, or at least one of the languages
of the country, and the idea of changing ancestral modes of feeling and thinking
. . were wild extravagances. Japan must develop her own soul: she cannot borrow
another. A dear friend whose life has been devoted to philology once said to me
while commenting upon the deterioration of manners among the students of Japan:
‘Why, the English language itself has been a demoralizing influence!’ There
was much depth in that observation. Setting the whole Japanese nation to study
English (the language of a people who are being forever preached to about their
‘rights,’ and never about their ‘duties’) was almost an imprudence. The
policy . . . helped to sap ethical sentiment. (pp. 271-272)
The above are from Lafcadio Hearn’s observations on the Meiji Japanese of the
1890s, in the decade when they were furiously preparing to burst forth as a
world power.
The spirit of Meiji was expressed in slogans, such as: Sonno-joi (Revere the
Emperor! Expel the barbarians!); fukoku-kyohei (rich country, strong arms!) and
fukko (Return to Antiquity). Such slogans were actually implemented. In keeping
with fukko, for example, Shinto (the way of kami), the ancient indigenous
religious beliefs and practices of Japan, with it multitude of kami (sacred
powers: ancestor spirits and nature spirits), was strengthened and
institutionalized as the state religion, State Shinto. Shinto festivals and
ceremonies became integrated into the affairs of government. Shinto moral
teaching was made compulsory in schools, the doctrine of the divinity of the
Emperor was inculcated, and the government took up the administration of the
country’s more than 100,000 shinto shrines. Everybody (whether Buddhist,
Christian or Shintoist) was required, as a patriotic duty, to make obeisance at
Shinto shrines. The effectiveness of this anchoring of modernization on the
ancestral religion and culture was demonstrated by the fervent national spirit
which enabled Japan to become a world power within 50 years. The cultural source
of that effectiveness was recognized by the Americans when they attempted to
smash the cultural foundations of Japanese power. In 1945, after Japan’s
defeat in WWII, despite their democratic propaganda for religious freedom, the
American conquerors decreed the abolition of State Shinto, forbade the
government to support Shinto shrines, and suppressed the doctrine of the
emperor’s divinity.
Lest we think the Japanese thereafter lost their cultural anchor, here is an
observation of the Japanese in the 1990s by Graham Hancock:
For no matter how modern, rational and scientific Japan has become, it is still
a land in which powerful and ineffable spiritual forces are perceived to move in
secret behind all things, to pervade all things, and to underlie the very fabric
of reality. . . .
-- Hancock, Graham Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age, London: Michael
Joseph, 2002, pp. 567-568
In other words, despite pulling off two miracles -- industrial modernization in
the 19th century, and spectacular economic recovery in the 20th century – the
Japanese still remain animists!
How, you may ask, did Japan contain the 'demoralizing influence' of the English
language? According to Professor Kinichiro Toba of Waseda University:
My grandfather graduated from the University of Tokyo at the beginning of the
1880s. His notebooks were full of English. My father graduated from the same
university in 1920 and half of his notes were filled with English. When I
graduated a generation later my notes were all in Japanese. So … it took three
generations for us to consume western civilization totally via the means of our
own language.
--quoted in Chinua Achebe, “What has Literature Got to do with it?” in Hopes
and Impediments, London: Heinemann, 1988, p. 110
Thus,
throughout their Meiji industrialization project, and while preparing their post
WWII re-emergence as an economic power, the Japanese took care not to repudiate
their ancestor worship, their animism, their ’pagan’ Shinto religion, and
the other core aspects of their ancestral culture. Not for them the foolishness
of abandoning Japanese religion and language as a precondition for
modernization.
In stark contrast to the Japanese, whenever African societies have been invaded
by alien forces in the last millennium, their Islamized, Christianized, or
Eurochauvinized members not only repudiated their ancestral culture; they also
enthusiastically joined in assaulting their own culture and demonizing their own
ancestors for alleged paganism, “unbelief” or primitivism. These “fifth
columnists” have zealously destroyed African religions, customs and traditions
instead of identifying with and protecting them. In making its members attack
itself, such alien-perverted, partially disintegrated, ‘triple-heritage’
pseudo-African societies have manifested the cultural equivalents of auto-immune
diseases. African Afrophobia and Negrophobia are symptoms of this class of
cultural diseases.
A strengthening, not a weakening, let alone repudiation or liquidation of
ancestral Japanese culture was the foundation for the modernization of Japan.
Quite unlike Africans who have been brainwashed into thinking that, in order to
learn to fly, they must first cut off and throw away their own feet. Of course,
having thrown away their ancestral cultural feet, Africans have found it
impossible to modernize. They have no feet left to stand upon and sprint for
take off!
Lagos, January 2005
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© Chinweizu 2005