Comparing Cultures Pre-War    

Einstein

   
   Albert Einstein characterized Western culture as
"individualism in the extreme, cut-throat competition, exerting one's utmost energy, feverish laboring to acquire as much luxury and indulgences as possible." 

   To him, Japan was "harmony and equanimity, strong family bonds and public civility enforced by social norms." 

   Finally, he observed, "The Japanese rightfully admires the intellectual achievements of the West and immerses himself and with great idealism in the sciences. But let him not thereby forget to keep pure the great attributes in which he is superior to the West - the artful shaping of life, modesty and unpretentiousness, and the purity and calm of the Japanese soul."

   Less than a decade later, the Japanese soul was crushed by the spirit of militarism. And Einstein was forced out of Germany by the Nazis.

   He urged Western powers to threaten Japan with an economic boycott. Instead, the war that drew in his adopted country (USA), and sunk the Japanese ships he had sailed on, ended only with a bomb - a power derived from the law Einstein had set down as a clerk in the Swiss patent office: E=mc2.

Smithsonian