To say that the Japanese are not a savage tribe is of course unnecessary; to repeat the remark, anything but superfluous, on the principle that what is a matter of common notoriety is very apt to prove a matter about which uncommonly little is known. At present we go halfway in recognition of these people by bestowing upon them a demi-diploma of mental development called semi-civilization, neglecting, however, to specify in what the fractional qualification consists. If the suggestion of a second moiety, as of something directly complementary to them, were not indirectly complimentary to ourselves, the expression might pass; but, as it is, the self-praise is rather too obvious to carry conviction. For Japan's claim to culture is not based solely upon the exports with which she supplements our art, nor upon the paper, china, and bric-a-brac with which she adorns our rooms; any more than Western science is adequately represented in Japan by our popular imports there of kerosene oil, matches, and beer. Only half civilized the Far East presumably is, but it is so rather in an absolute than a relative sense; in the sense of what might have been, not of what is. It is so as compared, not with us, but with the eventual possibilities of humanity. As yet, neither system, Western nor Eastern, is perfect enough to serve in all things as standard for the other. The light of truth has reached each hemisphere through the medium of its own mental crystallization, and this has polarized it in opposite ways, so that now the rays that are normal to the eyes of the one only produce darkness to those of the other. For the Japanese civilization in the sense of not being savagery is the equal of our own. It is not in the polish that the real difference lies; it is in the substance polished. In politeness, in delicacy, they have as a people no peers. Art has been their mistress, though science has never been their master. Perhaps for this very reason that art, not science, has been the Muse they courted, the result has been all the more widespread. For culture there is not the attainment of the few, but the common property of the people. If the peaks of intellect rise less eminent, the plateau of general elevation stands higher.
But little need be said to prove the civilization of a land where ordinary tea-house girls are models of refinement, and common coolies, when not at work, play chess for pastime.
If Japanese ways look odd at first sight, they but look more odd on closer acquaintance. In a land where, to allow one's understanding the freer play of indoor life, one begins, not by taking off his hat, but by removing his boots, he gets at the very threshold a hint that humanity is to be approached the wrong end to. When, after thus entering a house, he tries next to gain admittance to the mind of its occupant, the suspicion becomes a certainty. He discovers that this people talk, so to speak, backwards; that before he can hope to comprehend them, or make himself understood in return, he must learn to present his thoughts arranged in inverse order from the one in which they naturally suggest themselves to his mind. His sentences must all be turned inside out. He finds himself lost in a labyrinth of language. The same seems to be true of the thoughts it embodies.
The further he goes the more obscure the whole process becomes, until, after long groping about for some means of orienting himself, he lights at last upon the clue. This clue consists in "the survival of the unfittest."
In the civilization of Japan we have presented to us a most interesting case of partially arrested development; or, to speak esoterically, we find ourselves placed face to face with a singular example of a completed race-life. For though from our standpoint the evolution of these people seems suddenly to have come to an end in mid-career, looked at more intimately it shows all the signs of having fully run its course. Development ceased, not because of outward obstruction, but from purely intrinsic inability to go on.
The intellectual machine was not shattered; it simply ran down.
To this fact the phenomenon owes its peculiar interest. For we behold here in the case of man the same spectacle that we see cosmically in the case of the moon, the spectacle of a world that has died of old age. No weak spot in their social organism destroyed them from within; no epidemic, in the shape of foreign hordes, fell upon them from without. For in spite of the fact that China offers the unique example of a country that has simply lived to be conquered, mentally her masters have invariably become her pupils. Having ousted her from her throne as ruler, they proceeded to sit at her feet as disciples. Thus they have rather helped than hindered her civilization.
Whatever portion of the Far East we examine we find its mental history to be the same story with variations. However unlike China, Korea, and Japan are in some respects, through the careers of all three we can trace the same life-spirit. It is the career of the river Jordan rising like any other stream from the springs among the mountains only to fall after a brief existence into the Dead Sea.
For their vital force had spent itself more than a millennium ago.
Already, then, their civilization had in its deeper developments attained its stature, and has simply been perfecting itself since.
We may liken it to some stunted tree, that, finding itself prevented from growth, bastes the more luxuriantly to put forth flowers and fruit. For not the final but the medial processes were skipped.
