Half for one's own happiness,
and half for the happiness of others
"As Japanese, we resolve to love our native country of Japan"* rolls off the tongue easily when saying the creed, but above all else, the starting point you should take for really thinking about loving your native country is one of how you should be as a human being. I think the day will arrive when all of you will come to understand this, but when it comes to the thing that is the most important in the world, that thing is individual people, isn't it? To bring it close to home, it's about whether or not your family and friends can live in happiness, right? Some of you will boldly say, no it's ideas, or country, society, or a spirit of earnest loyalty to one's company. But for me, the things for the purpose of "a single human being" come first, and putting first ideology, systems of thought, and other things that do not treat human beings as valuable is out of the question; I think they are mistaken.
When you think about the existence of human beings, the starting point is one's own self, and it is only when you value yourself that it all begins. In other words, when you come to treat yourself as valuable, for the first time you become able to respect other people. "I don't want to go through suffering, but who cares if it happens to someone else." A person who can only feel things on this level does not simply have a problem with others, but he will end his own life without having been able to treat himself well. Am I wrong?
It is partly because my father died when I was small and I struggle together with my mother in taking care of my two little sisters, but I grew up with a deep feeling of wanting to help my sisters and mother eat even if I couldn't eat anything. This is a love that wants to give. I was only a child, so I couldn't earn any money, and the most I could do was help my mother. In the end the three of them died before long, so I actually wasn't able to do anything for them. Yet, that desire to be considerate, to protect, and in even the smallest way to make some happy... isn't this a feeling or thought that naturally arises and goes out from the hearts of people in every area and every country? Thus, even as you regard yourself so do you regard others, and especially so when the others are weaker than yourself. Yet, even if it is only half way, you can be considerate of others, and throughout I always valued this feeling that had budded in my youth. Moreover, it was precisely because I always valued it that it became the foundation of my later thinking that "half for one's own happiness, and half for the happiness of others," and "when I support the life in others, I too am brought to life."
* The original version of the Creed (shinjo) was written specifically for Japan.
(August 1974, lecture at a university students' camp)
