PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
THE JAPANESE SPIRIT.
Bellario Sir, if I have made
A fault in ignorance, instruct my youth:
I shall be willing, if not able, to learn:
Age and experience will adorn my mind
With larger knowledge; and if I have done
A wilful fault, think me not past all hope
For once.
Philaster, Act. II. Sc. I.
The following pages owe their existence to Mr. Martin White, whose keeninterest in comparative sociology led to the opening of special coursesfor its investigation in the University of London.
My thanks are due to Mr. P.J. Hartog, Academic Registrar of theUniversity, as well as to Dr. and Mrs. E.R. Edwards, who inspired mewith the courage to take the present task on my inexperienced shoulders.But above all I render the expression of my deepest obligation toProfessor Walter Rippmann. Had it not been for his friendly interest andhelp, I would not have been able thus to come before an English public.For the peculiarities of thought and language, which, if nothing else,might at least make the booklet worthy of a perusal, I naturally assumethe full responsibility myself.
With these prefatory words, I venture to submit this essay to thelenient reception of my readers.
We have had illuminating books upon Japan. Those of Lafcadio Hearn willalways be remembered for the poetry he brought in them to bear upon thepoetic aspects of the country and the people. Buddhism had a fascinationfor him, as it had for Mr. Fielding in his remarkable book on thepractice of this religion in Burma.[1] There is also the work of CaptainBrinkley, to which we are largely indebted.
These Lectures by a son of the land, delivered at the University ofLondon, are compendious and explicit in a degree that enables us to forma summary of much that has been otherwise partially obscure, so that weget nearer to the secret of this singular race than we have had thechance of doing before. He traces the course of Confucianism, Laoism,Shintoism, in the instruction it has given to his countrymen for thepractice of virtue, as to which Lao-tze informs us with a piece of'Chinese metaphysics' that can be had without having recourse to thedictionary: 'Superior virtue is non-virtue. Therefore it has virtue.Inferior virtue never loses sight of virtue. Therefore it has no virtue.Superior virtue is non-assertive and without pretension. Inferior virtueasserts and makes pretensions.' It is childishly subtle and easy to beunderstood of a young people in whose minds Buddhism and Shintoismformed a part.
The Japanese have had the advantage of possessing a native Nobility whowere true nobles, not invaders and subjugators. They were, in thehighest sense, men of honor to whom, before the time of this dreadfulwar, Hara-kiri was an imperative resource, under the smallest suspicionof disgrace. How rigidly they understood and practised Virtue, in thesense above cited, is exemplified in the way they renounced theirprivileges for the sake of the commonweal when the gates of Japan werethrown