The Moral Vision
Per Ardua ad Astra
~ 46 ~
PER ARDUA AD ASTRA
(Through Hardship to the Stars)
According to an English scholar, Ian Nash, who
spent eleven years in Japan making a detailed study
of the language and nation, what shook the
Japanese most profoundly was not upheavals in
politics, but the great Kanto earthquake, which
devastated the whole of the most populated eastern
part of Japan on the first of September, 1923.
Another terrible blow was the reduction of two of
the great cities of Japan to smouldering mounds of
waste by the dropping of atomic bombs. This lead
to the ultimate defeat of Japan in the Second World
War in 1945.
One might imagine that any country which has
been dealt such shattering blows would never be
able to rise again from its ashes. But this is far from
being true, for Japan has not only rehabilitated
itself, but now figures most prominently of all on
the world commercial and industrial scene. Japan
has become a great hive of technological activity in
spite of having launched itself on an industrial
