名文精読 10/24講 2024年7月5日（金）

課題テキスト

以下は、内村鑑三が、いわゆる「不敬事件」の後に、在米の友人David C．Bell宛てて書いた手紙の一節である。文構造に留意しつつ全文を日本語に訳出せよ。テキストのコンテキストとして、「不敬事件」についても、リサーチのこと。

"Since I wrote you last, my life has been a very eventful one. On the 9th of Jan. there was in the High Middle School where I taught, a ceremony to acknowledge the Imperial Precept on Education. After the address of the President and reading of the said Precept, the professors and students were asked to go up to the platform one by one, and bow to the Imperial signature affixed to the Precept, in the manner as we used to bow before our ancestral relics as prescribed in Buddhist and Shinto ceremonies. I was not at all prepared to meet such a strange ceremony, for the thing was the new invention of the president of the school. As I was the third in turn to go up and bow, I had scarcely time to think upon the matter. So, hesitating in doubt, I took a safer course for my Christian conscience, and in the august presence of sixty professors (all non-Christians, the two other Xtian prof.'s beside myself having absented themselves) and over one thousand students, I took my stand and did not bow! It was an awful moment for me, for I instantly apprehended the result of my conduct. The anti-Christian sentiment which was and still is strong in the school, and which it was a very delicate affair to soothe down by meekness and kindliness on our part, found a just cause (as they suppose) for bringing forth against me accusations of insult against the nation and its Head, and through me against the Christians in general."

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