Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic

that the emotional life is fundamental in the Japanese temperament. Japan is a nation of hero-worshipers. This is no exaggeration. Not only is the primitive religion, Shintoism, systematic hero-wors

ing. This revenge administered, they committed harakiri in accordance with the etiquette of the ethical code of feudal Japan. Their tombs are to this day am

frenzy of passion, his eyeballs glaring, his hair flying, and his hands hold with a mighty grip the two-handed sword wherewith he is hewing to pieces an enemy. I am often amazed at the difference be

ith which educated, Christian young men awaited the coming to Japan of an eminent American scholar, from whose lectures impossible things were expected. So long as he w

ve preferred to ride on horseback, in order that he might see the city and the people, yet as the highest dignitaries never did so, but always rode in entirely closed "norimono" (a species of sedan chair carried by twenty or thirty bea

se. They are the same in every land where militarism, and especi

y their followers. The people are accustomed to commit their guidance to officials or to teachers or advisers whom they can regard as heroes. Sin

ied the samurai. He was a man of impressive and imperious personality. Yet it is a significant fact that when he was brought back to Japan by his former pupils, after an absence of about eighteen years, during which they had continued to extol his merits and revere his memory, it was not long before they discovered that he was not the man their imagination had created. Not many months were needed to remove him from his pedestal. It would hardly be a fair statement of the whole case to leave the matter here. So far as I know, President Clark and Rev. S.R. Brown have always retained their hold on the imagination of th

t and its fame throughout the Empire and even to foreign lands. The unpretentious, unprepossessing-looking man who was chosen temporarily, though endowed with common sense and rather unusual ability to harmonize the various elements in the school, was not deemed satisfactory. He was too much like Socrates. At last they found a man after their own heart. He had traveled and studied long abroad; was a dashing, brilliant fellow; would surely make things hum; so at least said those who recommended him (and he did). But he was still a poor student in Scotland; his passage money must be raised by the school if he was to be secured. And raised it was. Four hundred

oupled with insight into the great moral issues of life. Such has been the character of not a few of the "moral" teachers. I have recently read a Japanese novel based upon the life of one such hero. Omi Seijin, or the "Sage of Omi," is a name well known among the people of Japan; and his fame rests rather on his character than on his learning. If tradition is correct, his influence on the people of his region was powerful enough to transform the character of the plac

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nce of these facts, it will not do to think that the ideal hero of all the Japanese is, or even in olden times was, only a military hero full of swagger and bluster; in a

and reveals a nature in the people that is capable of heroic actions. Men appreciate and admire that which in a measure at least they are, and more that which they aspire to become. The recent war revealed how the capaci

a, is a hero to many even outside the Church. Mr. Ishii, the father of Orphan Asylums in Japan, promises to be

possession of a strong idealizing tendency. Prof. G.T. Ladd has called them a "sentimental" people, in the sense that they are powerfully moved by sentiment. This is a conspicuous trait of their chara

they might become great "statesmen" and might guide the nation into paths of prosperity and international power. The modern hero is one who gratifies the patriotic passion by bringing some marked success to the nation. He must be a gentleman, educated in science, in history, and in foreign languages; but above all, he must be versed in political economy and law. This new ideal of a national hero has been brought in by the order of society, and in proportion as this order continues, and emphasis continues to be laid on mental and moral power, rather than on rank or official position, on the intrinsic rather than on the accidental, will