The World Famous...Tourist   

Einstein

   He discovered space-time. Then he discovered that there was much he didn't understand, riding a rickshaw in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). 

   Albert Einstein and his wife, Elsa, toured the world from October 1922 through March 1923. They saw Egypt, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Palestine and Spain. 

   Like others, he was amazed at the beauty of Japan and the refinement of its culture. He wrote, the Japanese are "pure souls as nowhere else among people."

   His diary, which will be published in English next month, shows him as a tourist. He felt "ashamed of myself for being complicit in such despicable treatment of human beings..." (the rickshaw runners). He found "diplomats and other big shots" at the German embassy in Tokyo "boring and stuffy." 

   Einstein was surprised that, for all their architectural and artistic talent, the Japanese people never seemed curious about things scientists live to understand. But he praised them for their "earnest respect without a trace of cynicism or skepticism."
  
   He himself was curious about them: "Among us we see many Japanese, living a lonely existence, studying diligently, smiling in a friendly manner. No one can fathom the feelings concealed behind this guarded smile."  

   Einstein enjoyed that Japan was free of anti-Semitism, while in Germany, being a famous Jewish scientist came with risks. A fellow Jewish scientist already had been assassinated by Nazi thugs in 1922. 

Tomorrow: His view of Jerusalem

Smithsonian