(On the Edo-Gawa River, 10 miles to the Tokyo Bay)Antoine de Saint Exupéry and Arou Naito
It might be a merit, if you can read works of Antoine de Saint Exupér in French.
I think that I once read some of them in the Japanese version when I was young.
I think that I felt that his work was poetry.
I think that I thought that a poet was a very minority in this world.
Since then I have rarely refereed to works of Antoine de Saint Exupér, since his works did not directly refer to Jesus Christ.
Yet, I have to refer to Antoine de Saint Exupér in this difficult time of late 2000’s.
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Antoine de Saint Exupéry is said to have been shot down by a German fighter plane, while flying a US-made fighter plane for a reconnaissance flight on July 31, 1944.
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In 1998, a fisherman named Jean-Claude Bianco found a silver identity bracelet bearing the names of Saint Exupéry and his wife Consuelo[9] and his publishers, Reynal & Hitchcock and was hooked to a piece of fabric, presumably from his flight suit.
In 2000, a diver named Luc Vanrell found a P-38 Lightning crashed in the seabed off the coast of Marseille. The remains of the aircraft were recovered in October 2003.[9] On April 7, 2004, investigators from the French Underwater Archaeological Department confirmed that the plane was, indeed, Saint Exupéry's F-5B reconnaissance variant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint_Exup%C3%A9ry
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Japanese author Mr. Naoki Kojima wrote some about Antoine de Saint Exupéry in his book, “Ittou-wo sageta Otoko-tachi (Men with a Light Inside),” on personalities of various Japanese, one of whom is a Japanese scholar of French literature who translated The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) written by Saint-Exupéry into Japanese.
( http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/images/4101262160/ref=dp_image_0/250-5959548-1337801?ie=UTF8&n=465392&s=books )
The author Mr. Naoki Kojima wrote some about his thought on Antoine de Saint Exupéry, since he is a big fan of Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
In short, the Japanese author found a new type of the beautiful in a life style and an underlying idea on adventure of the French author who was also a pilot.
If you love adventure, you can be a torero or a bullfighter. Or you may even like to test your spirit of adventure in gamble. However, there is no true beauty in these acts.
Yet, if you are engaged in a flying mission, say, to deliver mails for citizens or the military, your flying an old-model plane over a hostile territory through a bad weather can be a process for purification of a soul directed to the universal virtue of mankind.
It is a new type of the beautiful or the art that the Japanese author was so much impressed with as he found it in the flying practice of Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
It is indeed a type of beauty Europeans love as even German pilots of fighter planes during WWII wanted to avoid fighting and shooting the flying author Saint Exupéry if they had encountered with the French pilot in the air.
Put simply, it is an extension of the hunting culture to find the beautiful in dynamic movement combined with heroism and dedicated to a non-nonsense mission. Antoine de Saint Exupéry reached universal human love in this extension.
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But, the more your heart comes to love the beautiful of the human nature, the more you will see an ugly side of the human nature in the material world.
Conversely, there is an ugly thing that can be only clearly conceived by those who love the beautiful of the human nature to the extent that one can appreciate a piece of work of Antoine de Saint Exupéry so as to translate it into Japanese by adopting the title “The Prince of a Star” for Le Petit Prince.
Arou Naito, a Japanese scholar of French literature who translated Le Petit Prince into Japanese in 1953, namely when he was 70 years old, must have been such a person who saw ugly things in Paris during his stay there in 1923 for an academic purpose.
It is because he wrote a letter to his wife in Japan soon after his arrival at Paris, namely 85 years ago, telling that Paris was a good place but it was full of prostitution.
Arou Naito wrote that he had been surprised to find many whores in Paris as well as many Japanese males fitting in the situation so shamelessly.
Actually, Arou Naito who came to Paris for study at the expense of the Empire of Japan wrote that he had been taken aback at finding many Japanese males whose traveling to, and staying in, Paris were also government-financed simply got associated with whores in Paris as if for granted, while their wives were defending their home in Japan.
The author of the Japanese book “Ittou-wo sageta Otoko-tachi (Men with a Light Inside)” Mr. Naoki Kojima wrote that this vicious habit of Japanese males in Paris had begun with ex-samurais dispatched by the Empire of Japan in the early Meiji era to Europe in order to absorb and learn advanced European culture.
Professors, scholars, officials, military officers, students, and businessmen from Japan all enjoyed a life in Paris with a whore with a few exceptions in those days.
It is unfortunately true that in a samurai code of moral conduct there was no stern prohibition on such behaviors, unlike a true Christian code of conduct. But, the situation in Paris, Arou Naito deplored, was far worse than in Japan in this context.
The author Mr. Naoki Kojima wrote that this vicious habit of Japanese males in Paris had been especially augmented by a bad example of Prince Saionji Kinmochi (1849 – 1940), a Japanese politician, statesman and twice Prime Minister of Japan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saionji_Kinmochi
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Prince Saionji Kinmochi stayed in Paris from 1871 to 1880. It is reportedly said that he had been associated with many whores in Paris.
Yet, after coming back home, until his death before WWII, he enjoyed the most influential political power in the Empire of Japan.
He actually was the last Genro (the elder statesman) who had an official right and duty to recommend the Emperor a politician for the prime minister.
The fact that Prince Saionji Kinmochi continued to have such an influential power until immediately before WWII is very grave.
(After the end of WWII, the noble class was abolished in Japan following a request from the U.S., though, without objections from the Japanese people. Today, Japan has the Imperial Family, but no noble class and accordingly no Lords and Dukes.)
So, it is not simply because Prince Saionji was born in a noble family, since there were some democracy developing before WWII in the Empire of Japan, that Prince Saionji succeeded in the political sector, but his experiences of study and life in Paris and other European cities for so many years must have helped him build his career in the political circle in the Empire of Japan still under the influence of ex-samurais.
It is said that Prince Saionji had no lawful wives but had some lovers and children.
It is also said that just before WWII, namely before his death, he gravely wondered where the Imperial Military was driving the nation.
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Arou Naito, who had an opposite life in Paris to the one Prince Saionji had had decades before, survived WWII and encountered Le Petit Prince to translate it into Japanese, though he was 70 years old then.
The translation and Japanese expressions Arou Naito presented have moved hearts and minds of many Japanese during hard times after WWII.
Yet, what I want to emphasize is that if Prince Saionji had been a man like Arou Naito, the Empire of Japan must have taken a different course before WWII so as to avoid the tragedy caused by US atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Any leaders in the world must be like Arou Naito, if not Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
They must be so, since we cannot commit the fate of the world in the 21st century to whores in Paris, New York and Washington D.C., and London as well as their clients.
( http://www.fukuchan.ac/music/j-folk0/tabibitoyo.html )
Mat 7:15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Mat 7:16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
Mat 7:17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
Mat 7:18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
Mat 7:19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
Mat 7:20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.