Origin of The Term
Originally Yamato-damashi did not bear the bellicose weight or ideological timbre that it later assumed in pre-war modern Japan. It first occurs in the Otome (乙女?) section of the Genji Monogatari (Chapter 21), as a native virtue that flourishes best, not as a contrast to foreign civilization but, rather precisely, when it is grounded on a solid basis in Chinese learning. Thus we read:
'No, the safe thing is to give him a good, solid fund of knowledge. It is when there is a fund of Chinese learning (zae 才) that the Japanese spirit (yamato-damashii 大和魂) is respected in the world.' (Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji tr. Edward Seidensticker, 1976, 1:362)
Read more about this topic: Yamato-damashii
Famous quotes containing the words origin of, origin and/or term:
“The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.”
—Georges Bataille (1897–1962)
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Frankly, I do not like the idea of conversations to define the term “unconditional surrender.” ... The German people can have dinned into their ears what I said in my Christmas Eve speech—in effect, that we have no thought of destroying the German people and that we want them to live through the generations like other European peoples on condition, of course, that they get rid of their present philosophy of conquest.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)