Two Views of Liberty, Occidental and Oriental (?) (Critical Essay‪)‬

YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED that I put a question mark after the title of this paper. I must explain why. When our friend professor Matsushita suggested this subject for our Tokyo meeting, my first impulse was to object to it. No doubt, I took it for granted that there are "Oriental" and "Occidental" people. Besides, I knew that many people shared and still share Rudyard Kipling's idea that East is East and West is West. Finally, I did not ignore the fact that many Westerners feel comfortably proud of what they think to be their most peculiar trait when compared with "Oriental" people: their faith in individual (political and economic) freedom.