I

AMONG all the surprises which Japan has sprung upon the astonished Occident, by far the most comprehensive is that which is as yet the least comprehended, namely, the manifest differentiation from the Oriental type which she has evinced by her marvelous capacity for progress, a capacity which we had arrogated to ourselves as the peculiar possession of Western civilization.

Among the prime causes which brought the mighty Muscovite Empire to its knees before Japan was the nonrecognition by the Russian government of the wide mental gulf which separates the Island Realm from the Asiatic continent. General Kuropatkin, as he clearly reveals in his history of the war, plainly saw what the disastrous result of his nation's ignorance would be. He had spent some time in Japan, and had beheld with his own eyes the evidences that a spirit wholly different from that associated with the Asiatic name animated its people, and had become convinced that, if the trou

ble came to the issue of war, his own nation would surely find itself confronted by a foe in all essentials comparable to any of the great Western Powers.

This conviction he earnestly sought to impress upon his government, but his counsels were unheeded. The stolid Grand Duke Alexieff, to whom, as Viceroy of the Far East, the whole matter was referred, knew Japan merely as an Asiatic nation and therefore to be treated with the overweening contempt attaching, in his mind, to everything Oriental. It was his counsel, based upon ignorance and contempt, which prevailed; and the blunder of despising one's enemy was repeated on a scale seldom before known in history. Russia's armies were mown down and her fleets annihilated because of her non-recognition of the fact that a western power had arisen in the Far East, made formidable by a capacity for progress which completely differentiated it from the Oriental nations with whom it had hitherto been classed.

This differentiation, notably in view of the fact that the object-lesson fur

nished by Japan has at last impressed itself upon slow-moving China, gives unusual interest to the puzzling question of the ethnological origin of the people who are to-day arousing Asia from its age-long sleep. Moreover, this interest has a vital bearing upon international considerations. Japan has so far merely won her place among the great powers of the world. Not yet by any means has she surmounted the bar of racial prejudice and thus entered the charmed circle of Western society, to which birth and breeding are the only talismans securing admission. On the score of breeding, indeed, there ought to be no question whatever as to the qualifications of the nation whose agelong training in the courtesies of life has given her preeminence in the practice of what we concede to be the finest flower of civilization. There remains, therefore, only the question of birth to consider.

The trend given to this ethnological inquiry in my own mind was suggested by my first visit to a Japanese theatre. Just prior to my departure from Boston, about a score of years ago, I had witnessed at Harvard a Greek play in which the Hellenic methods and features of dramatic representation had been reproduced with the most careful attention to detail. Imagine, then, my surprise at finding in a Tokyo theatre a native drama staged and performed in all essentials like that which I had just seen on the other side of the globe. There was the Greek chorus, in musical recitative interpreting the motive of the play, its weird strains varying in accord with the changing action of the scene, while the stately demeanor of the actors, who were often masked, and above all, the quasi-religious strain pervading the whole, completed the illusion that I was witnessing a performance of the old Hellenic drama; an illusion which even the quaint Ori

ental setting of the piece could by no means dispel.

Even more remarkable was the Greek atmosphere of restraint pervading the play. The story, although the bloody and gruesome tale of the Fortyseven Ronins, was put upon the stage with the nearest possible rendering of the Greek idea that nothing repulsive, or calculated to shock refined sensibilities, should find direct expression. In the hara-kiri scene the victim, with stately dignity, retired to a room appointed for the consummation of the fearful rite. There followed a few moments of impressive silence, and thena white plum-blossom fell from a tree overhanging the door to tell that all was over. There was probably no one in the audience who did not recognize the immense suggestiveness of the scene, or who was not deeply moved by it, fully according as it did with the sensitive and gentle nature of a people who ever shrink from even the mention of grief and death. Here again was another distinct and unmistakable classic motive suggesting mental kinship with the ancient leader of the Western world.

After passing some hours thus in an atmosphere permeated with Hellenic ideals, it was not strange that when we left the theatre the passers-by in their graceful flowing robes took on the semblance of a throng of Greek philosophers in a street of old Athens; and when, a moment later, there came into view a band of young men clad in white tunics, their heads encircled by blue fillets with the knots tied in front, proclaiming that they were on their way to their annual carouse under the falling cherry-blossoms, the illusion was complete, for to eye and mind alike the Bacchic procession of ancient days was there surging through the streets of the Japanese capital. Was it a mere passing illusion, or did it not rather supply a hint toward a possible

solution of one of the most puzzling problems which ever perplexed the brain of the ethnologist? Who are the Japanese?

II

Unfortunately, or, it may be, most fortunately for the purpose of this particular inquiry, the science of ethnology, which strictly speaking has to do only with the data of skulls, statures, complexions, and the like, can give us very little help. In fact, we may say that, so far as its own special field of research is concerned, it has accomplished little or nothing of value in any of its inquiries; so little, indeed, that it has been forced to stray into the linguistic realm, and to summon to its aid the sister science of comparative philology in order to win its only commanding triumph; the result of that excursion being Max Müller's now generally-accepted classification of races, based solely on the factor of language.

The outcome of such wandering from its own domain having thus been measurably satisfactory, it might not now be amiss for the ethnologist to go still further afield and essay a search along the lines of the deeper and more abiding features of humanity grouped under the name of character. If comparative philology has so greatly helped him, why not enter the more fascinating and possibly more fruitful realm of comparative temperament? For an inquiry based on the mental qualifications of peoples to be classified in the same racial category, would be a clue to determine racial kinship, of far greater weight than the study of common elements of language, deemed by so eminent an ethnologist as De Rosny to be the unsafest of guides. It is only when such broader and deeper lines of relationship are established, that inquiry into resemblances of lan

guage, physiognomy, mythology, traditions, and folk-lore can safely be used as corroborating the conclusions of the main line of research.

The curious fact that since their advent in the modern world the Japanese have been variously called the Yankees, the English, and the French of the Far East is of itself an unwitting recognition of their possession of distinctive Aryan qualities. Alert and enterprising as the Americans, sturdy, persistent, self-respecting, and ambitious as the typical Englishman, keen-witted and versatile as the Gallic nation, inquiries as to their mental kinship with some of the dominant peoples of our own time might be fruitful of results; but as our quest is one of birth and antiquity, the resemblances to be noted between this unique people and the best representative of the ancient Aryan type will better serve our purpose.

The striking capacity for progress evinced by the Japanese is now so generally recognized that it would hardly need further mention, were it not for the curious fact that in one important regard the new-found nation has far surpassed its ancient prototype. It has kept its capacity alive, while that of Greece has seemingly perished. Japan, in spite of its Asiatic environment, and notwithstanding its long centuries of political repression, has not only held its own in this respect but has actually become in many ways the leader of the modern world and the teacher of the Occident, as its conduct of its late war has strikingly testified.

Nothing, moreover, could be more admirable than the wise discrimination with which its government has met the problems of its new life, selecting for its internal administration, with a marvelous wisdom and judgment, only those features of Western polity which were easily adaptable to the people's traditions and environment. Even

American progressives might sit at the feet of the modern Japanese, so wellbalanced and even-tempered have been the steps of their advance since the dawning of their new day. In this regard, if in no others, they are demonstrating their intellectual and temperamental kinship with the ancient Greeks. A no less remarkable parallelism exists between the leader of the ancient world and the teacher of the modern Occident in the cultivation of the spirit of refinement, a word which we Westerners need to be constantly reminded is the only synonym for civilization. As were the Greeks in their time, so are the Japanese of to-day, the acknowledged exemplars of the refinements which should mark intercourse between man and man. And here also may be found an evidence, even more marked than that just adduced, not only of the survival of an ancestral trait beyond anything observed in Greece, but also of its survival in greatly increased force.

The chief thing which makes Japan so fascinating a land to dwell in is the consciousness that you are there living in an atmosphere of universal kindliness and courtesy. In the modern life of the West and, so far as we know, in that of Ancient Greece, this refinement of manners may be described as belonging to only a few classes or conditions in society, but in the newold nation the habitual demeanor of even the humblest of its people toward each other gives evidence of an ingrained civilization of its own, surpassing that of any Occidental people of any age. And thus again a temperamental quality in which the Greeks were preeminent is found developed in even greater force among the people of the Island Realm of the Far East.

Closely akin to it and in fact growing out of the demeanor of the people toward each other, was the hospitality

to thought which Greece evinced, and which is even more conspicuously a trait of the Japanese mind. The annals of neither of the two peoples are stained with the blood of religious persecution. Just as Paul found in Athens an altar to the unknown God' regarded with reverence, so the common confession of ignorance in which the Japanese have been nurtured by their centuries of training in rationalism has kept them ever free from that evil spirit which in the West has always actuated those who know, or who think they have been informed, as to who or what the Deity is.

This common confession of ignorance among the Japanese has borne its legitimate fruit. Their hospitality to every religious teacher who has come among them from foreign lands, from the most ancient times down to the present day, is perhaps the proudest distinction which any nation can boast. It is not, as many have argued, a sign of indifference to all religion; rather is it an outcome of their ardent desire to welcome any one who might throw light upon their ignorance and thus help their country onward to a higher stage of morality and well-being. That has ever been and is to-day the reason why propagandists of alien creeds have ever been met with the finest of courtesy. Only in a solitary instance, when suspicion was aroused that the spread of the tenet of the Pope's temporal sovereignty might menace the integrity of the nation, have the fires of persecution been kindled. It is entirely safe to say that the Japanese sword, so quick to leap from its scabbard at the least hint of danger to the state, has never once been drawn against any man because of his religious opinions. The unexampled fury which three centuries ago swept every vestige of the Jesuit faith from the land, and sealed its ports from all contact with