bs are to this day among the most frequented shrines in the
capital of the land, and one of the most popular dramas presented in
the theaters is based on this same heroic tragedy.

The prominence of the emotional element may be seen in the popular
description of national heroes. The picture of an ideal Japanese hero
is to our eyes a caricature. His face is distorted by a fierce 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 between the
pictures of Japanese heroes and the living Japanese I see. This
difference is manifestly due to the idealizing process; for they love
to see their heroes in their passionate moods and tenses.

The craving for heroes, even on the part of those who are familiar
with Western thought and customs, is a feature of great interest. Well
do I remember the enthusiasm with 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 was in America
and only his books were known, he was a hero. But when he appeared in
person, carrying himself like any courteous gentleman, he lost his
exalted position.

Townsend Harris showed his insight into Oriental thought never more
clearly than by maintaining his dignity according to Japanese
standards and methods. On his first entry into Tokyo he states, in his
journal, that although he would have 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
bearers), he too would do the same; to have ridden into the limits of
the city on horseback would have been construed by the Japanese as an
admission that he held a far lower official rank than that of a
plenipotentiary of a great nation.

It is not difficult to understand how these ideals of heroes arose.
They are the same in every land where militarism, and especially
feudalism, is the foundation on which the social order rests.

Some of the difficulties met by foreign missionaries in trying to do
their work arise from the fact that they are not easily regarded as
heroes by their followers. The people are accustomed to commit their
guidance to officials or to teachers or advisers whom they ca