An Encounter Between Two Asian Civilisations (Rabindranath Tagore and the Indo-Japanese Cultural Confluence of the Early Twentieth Century)

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Rabindranath visited Japan five times between 1916 and 1929. A conference was organised by The Asiatic Society, Kolkata in March, 2017 to commemorate the centenary of Rabindanath's first visit to Japan. The essays in this book, emerging out of the conference, explore the entire spectrum of the cultural and intellectual encounters between these two ancient civilisations using the visits as a context. Authors have touched upon a wide range of subjects history, culture, art history, poetry, aggressive nationalism, and the role of Japanese women in society to name a few. These may be summed up as: a) Tagore's perceptions of tradition and modernity in the context of Japan; b) the ideas of Pan- Asianism; c) Tagore's critique of aggressive nationalism; and d) Japanese response to Tagore's creativity and his thinking.

Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty, Vice-President, The Asiatic Society, Kolkata, was a member of the West Bengal Education Service and retired from Presidency College. He was the Historical and Archaeological Secretary from 2006 to 2014. He edited two volumes published by the Asiatic Society, Kolkata.

Shyam Sundar Bhattacharya, Philological Secretary, The Asiatic Society, Kolkata, is a linguist with experience of working in different capacities in three premier institutions of Government of India- -Anthropological Survey of India, Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore and Language Division, Office of the Registrar General, India. He has contributed to the areas of sociolinguistics,linguistic demography and so on.

The Asiatic Society, Kolkata, had decided to organize an International T Conference on 15th March, 2017 based on a suggestion received from Professor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, the former Vice-Chancellor of Visva- Bharati, Santiniketan, West Bengal. The initial idea was to observe the centenary occasion of Tagore's first visit to Japan in 1916. It was thought to be a befitting proposition to fruitfully look back into the historical context where two: formidable civilizations of the continent of Asia confronted each other through exchange of ideas embedded into the core of each other's cultural excellence. Both these ancient civilizations had their marks of differential turning points in the great journey of progress from a relatively tradition based institutional structure to a path of progress embodying economic growth as a marker of overall development. In course of this sojourn, while India, by and large, stuck to a controlled exposure in the broad game of power, hegemonic in quality of leadership, Japan by conscious cultivation of the existing knowledge somehow decided to push through military preparedness in achieving the leadership in a different power domain. Not only as individual but perhaps also as a spokesman of the pristine Indian culture and civilization, Tagore terribly felt disturbed and pained in such a historic development of a Nation which owes the heredity of a custodian of a different culture and civilization bearing age-old traditional social ethics and cultural values. This was the beginning of an accidental politico-historical juncture of these two great Asian Nations to know each other even more deeply and seriously through the interactions of their cultural Ambassadors, Tagore and others on our side and Okakura Kakuzo and others on their side. At the end of the story the journey culminates looking for spiritual unity of the civilizations beyond Asia, integrated into the overall international humanism.

The decision of the Council of the Asiatic Society to commemorate the 100 Tyears of Rabindranath's first visit to Japan in 1916 was seen as the opportunity to take a close look at the larger theme of what has been titled as "An Encounter Between Two Asian Civilisations: Rabindranath Tagore and the Early Twentieth Century Indo-Japanese Cultural Confluence".