[Transcriber's Note: Page numbers are retained in square brackets.]
1904
Contents
"Perhaps all very marked national characters can be traced backto a time of rigid and pervading discipline"—WALTER BAGEHOT.
[1]DIFFICULTIES
A thousand books have been written about Japan; but amongthese,—setting aside artistic publications and works of a purelyspecial character,—the really precious volumes will be found tonumber scarcely a score. This fact is due to the immense difficultyof perceiving and comprehending what underlies the surface ofJapanese life. No work fully interpreting that life,—no workpicturing Japan within and without, historically and socially,psychologically and ethically,—can be written for at least anotherfifty years. So vast and intricate the subject that the united labourof a generation of scholars could not exhaust it, and so difficultthat the number of scholars willing to devote their time to it mustalways be small. Even among the Japanese themselves, no scientificknowledge of their own history is yet possible; because the means ofobtaining that knowledge have not yet been prepared,—thoughmountains of material have been collected. The want of any goodhistory upon a modern plan is but one of many discouraging wants.Data for the study of sociology [2] are still inaccessible to theWestern investigator. The early state of the family and the clan; thehistory of the differentiation of classes; the history of thedifferentiation of political from religious law; the history ofrestraints, and of their influence upon custom; the history ofregulative and cooperative conditions in the development of industry;the history of ethics and aesthetics,—all these and many othermatters remain obscure.
This essay of mine can serve in one direction only as a contributionto the Western knowledge of Japan. But this direction is not one ofthe least important. Hitherto the subject of Japanese religion hasbeen written of chiefly by the sworn enem