When I met the Chinese writer Ba Jin, he repeatedly declared, "Youth is the hope of mankind."

Perhaps it's only natural that a person who has been persecuted for his or her beliefs would come to trust only young people. During the decade of China's Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, Ba Jin was beaten and persecuted. He was labeled "a great poisonous weed," and his writings were condemned as harmful and seditious. Now he has dedicated his life to the creation of a record of his beliefs for the sake of future generations.

Talking with Ba Jin (Tokyo, May 1984)

After hearing about the horrors he had experienced, I could sense the profound weight of his statement about youth. In the same way, my beloved teacher, the second Soka Gakkai president Josei Toda, often stated with some bitterness, "I don't expect the old to achieve anything. I place my hopes on the young." He never forgot the memory of one friend after another recanting their Buddhist faith in the face of imprisonment by the Japanese military authorities during the Second World War.

Ba Jin and I met for the first time in April 1980 at an SGI facility in Shizuoka. A group of junior high school girls from Tokyo greeted us by enthusiastically singing in chorus, filling the garden with song in the gentle spring sunlight. Following their performance, Ba told the students that his greatest joy was to see the spiritual growth of young people. He sincerely thanked them and repeated, "Youth is the hope of mankind. Our efforts for Sino-Japanese friendship are really for the sake of all of you, as well as for the young people of China."

"Youth is the hope of mankind." Ba actually first learned these words from Bartolomeo Vanzetti, an innocent man whose guilty verdict in a politically motivated murder trial in the U.S.A. created a worldwide uproar in the 1920s. Despite many calls for his acquittal, the death sentence was eventually carried out. As a student in Paris, Ba exchanged correspondence with the imprisoned Vanzetti, and a spiritual baton was passed from the prisoner who stood falsely accused and condemned to death to a young student in a foreign land. "May the next generation not commit such foolish, ignorant acts."

Altogether, Ba Jin and I have met four times. Each time, I sensed behind his aura of humility an inner strength that comes from an unshakable conviction. Ruthless persecution drove many people to commit suicide during the Cultural Revolution. I asked him once if he had ever contemplated death during those bitter days. "No, I never considered it . . . I experienced much pain and hardship during that time, but through it all my only thought was that I had to keep fighting; I had to make it through to the very end."

During the Cultural Revolution, Ba Jin was treated in an utterly dehumanizing fashion. He was vilified as a "reactionary" and a "Mafia boss of the literary world." His house was raided by the Red Guards and his wife was cruelly beaten. Convicted as a "monster and a demon," a hated class enemy, he was placed in a private prison and tortured there for days on end. He was insulted, abused and denounced before a large public assembly, forced to confess to crimes he did not commit.

His pen, the very life of a writer, was taken from him. In addition, his wife, who was his only support, was also persecuted. When she fell ill, she was refused treatment on the grounds that she was the wife of a "poisonous weed." By the time she was finally admitted to hospital, it was already too late and she died three weeks later.

Even a decade after the Cultural Revolution, Ba spoke of suffering from nightmares and physical pain caused by the emotional and mental scars of those years.

Ba Jin was robbed of everything—his beloved wife, his work. They even tried to undermine his dignity as a human being. Yet when things were at rock bottom, he cried out defiantly: "I will show you how I can survive!"

Eventually, the storm passed. Surveying the ruins of his country, Ba pledged to write about the Cultural Revolution in order to keep such a tragedy from ever happening again. He decided to leave a record for future generations, identifying how to prevent any recurrence. And he resolved not to die until he had accomplished that goal. I will never forget the way his eyes flashed as he shared this determination with me. There are some things that violence cannot take from us: Smoldering embers of the human spirit flare even more brightly and bravely when the authorities attempt to extinguish them.

As a warrior of the pen, Ba Jin inherited the spirit of his teacher, the renowned Chinese writer Lu Xun. Writing of his youthful days studying under Lu Xun, Ba describes his teacher by comparing him to a character in a short story by the Russian author Maxim Gorky. This character, Danko, tore out his own blazing heart and used it as a torch to light the way for the people. In the same way, says Ba Jin, "Lu Xun for several decades illuminated my path with the flames of his burning heart." The importance of remembering his mentor's noble spirit is deeply etched in his mind; to this day, he says, this memory gives him the courage to go on.

When Ba Jin was a guest speaker at a lecture series in Kyoto in 1980, he declared: "I do not write to earn a living or to build a reputation. I write to battle enemies.

"Who are they? Every outdated traditional notion, every irrational system that stands in the way of social progress and human development, and every instance of cruelty in the face of love. These are my great enemies.

"My pen is alight and my body aflame. Until both burn down to ash, my love and my hate will remain here in the world."

"Writing, he asserts, is nothing more than telling the truth and confronting lies."

Born in 1904, Ba Jin confessed that now age and ill health at times make his pen feel as heavy as lead. Yet he continues to write every day, even if only a few lines. He has a fire in his heart that he must express, a spiritual debt that must be paid.

For him, writing is a serious affair where one must live with the knowledge that each word, each sentence one writes could sign one's death warrant.

"No great work of literature has ever been composed at the command of a ruler," says Ba Jin. "It is always the people who determine literature's greatness." Writing, he asserts, is nothing more than telling the truth and confronting lies.

In June 1984, I visited Ba Jin's home in Shanghai. "Our young writers are making such great strides that I almost can't keep up with them," he exclaimed. "I'm going to find myself left behind!" Delighting in the growth of the next generation, yet determined to continue progressing himself, Ba Jin's voice is that of an eternal youth.

I took my leave early because I was worried about his health. Ba rose from his seat determined to see me off. He picked up his walking stick and, supported by his daughter Li Xiaolin, walked with me out of the house and through the garden. Though I repeatedly asked him not to trouble himself any further, he insisted on walking with me all the way to the street. Waving from the car window, I saw a scene that remains to this day a treasured memory: Ba Jin and his entire family, including his grandchildren, waving back at me.

I sensed a communication between us that transcended words and speech—maybe because we have both experienced trials in our lives. As I continue to pray for Ba Jin's health and long life, like him, I also see the light of hope in the young. And I pray that all my friends will remain forever young at heart.