During a day trip to Yokohama, I have visited a very special location in Japan: a kind of ‘temple’ paying tribute to several religions and wisdoms of the world, where Socrates has been included.
At first, this ‘temple’ used to be the villa of Kenzō Adachi (1864 -1948), a prominent politician. He had it built in 1933, at Honmoku Cape, a headland near the ocean at that time. It was a nice spot to view the sea, but now it is rather removed from the shore, due to Yokohama harbour’s constructions. However, thanks to a big surrounding park, the villa remains quiet.
Purposefully built with an octagonal shape, this three-storey building has been called ‘Hasseiden’, which literally means ‘Eight saints’.
As found in a French dictionary of symbols, the number 8, like in ‘octagonal shape’ and ‘eight saints’, means the infinite wisdom with multiple forms that is in the core of every kind of intellectual effort, education and research.
On the second floor of the villa, eight statues are enshrined in a huge niche of a spacious room. Commissioned by Kenzō Adachi, these statues were made (in bronze, copper, wood or other material) by the most famous Japanese sculptors of his time.
Facing the statues you can see (from left to right): Jesus-Christ, Socrates, Confucius, Shakyamuni (a.k.a. the Buddha), a mirror, Shotoku-Taishi, Kobo-Daishi, Shinran and Nichiren.
Jesus-Christ and Shakyamuni are founders of two religions, Socrates and Confucius are philosophers. The four other men were founders of different sects of Buddhism, in Japan.
It is interesting to notice that the mirror in the center may have to do with ‘viewing’, as the word ‘mirror’ comes from Old French mirour, based on Latin mirare ‘look at’, according to Oxford Dictionary of English. Moreover, ‘mirror’ is translated in Latin by speculum, which has given the English verb ‘(to) speculate’, i.e. observed from a vantage point, from the verb speculari, from specere ‘(to) look’ (O.D.E.). Hence, the mirror may be a symbol of what these wise or religious men do: speculating, debating or teaching.
It was also what Socrates did in ancient Greece!
The statue of Socrates, made by Yuzo Fujikawa in 1933, is in bronze. A short biography on a panel says that he is one of the greatest philosophers in ancient Greece.
His life and death have been reported mostly by Plato and Xenophon, his students.
In Xenophon’s Symposium, Socrates is thus described: short body with wide shoulders, prominent belly, aquiline nose, thick, wide mouth and head almost completely bald.
Yokohama Socrates statue does not much fit this description, as the philosopher seems idealized. And he is holding a small bowl like Buddhist priests, who have six attributes of which a bowl (to beg for alms or to give an offering to the deities). Perhaps it is to make Socrates look more familiar to Japanese people. Or is it to remind that Socrates was condemned to death (for impiety and corruption) and had to drink a lethal cup of hemlock?
I will not tell more about his life …
But I would like to remind one of his famous axioms – so well-known that it is now written (in fake Greek script) on T shirts in modern Greece!
It says: Εν οιδα οτι ουδεν οιδα (Hen oida oti ouden oida) The only thing that I know is that I don’t know anything.
Why does Socrates say that – is he not the one who knows? It is because the philosopher tries to understand the meaning of ideas to reach wisdom; therefore, he must go beyond his own knowledge. And knowing that we do not know is already knowledge, as ignorance is the first step of knowledge!
This discussion comes from a funny little French book: Socrate anti-stress (‘Socrates against stress’), Paris (2012); this is the beginning of Philosophy…
To finish with Socrates and the (sacred) number 8, I just wish to remind you that the symbol of infinity in mathematics is an eight (8) laid down: ∞.