ychological textbooks of the Anglo-Saxon are adopted
and perfectly understood by competent psychological students among the
Japanese. I once asked a professor of psychology in the Matsuyama
Normal School if he had no difficulty in teaching his classes the
psychological system of Anglo-Saxon thinkers, if there were not
peculiarities of the Anglo-Saxon mind which a Japanese could not
understand, and if there were not psychological phenomena of the
Japanese mind which were ignored in Anglo-Saxon psychological
text-books. The very questions surprised him; to each he gave a
negative reply. The mental differences that characterize races so
dissimilar as the Japanese and the Anglo-Saxon, I venture to repeat,
are insignificant as compared with their resemblances.

Our discussions shall have reference, not to those general
psychological characteristics which all races have in common, but only
to those which may seem to stamp the Japanese people as peculiar. We
wish to understand the distinguishing features of the Japanese mind.
We wish to know whether they are due to brain structure, to inherent
race nature, or whether they are simply the result of education, of
social heredity. This is our ever-recurring question.

First, in regard to Japanese brain development. Travelers have often
been impressed with the unusual size of the Japanese head. It has
sometimes been thought, however, that the size is more apparent than
real, and the appearance has been attributed to the relatively short
limbs of the people and to the unusual proportion of round heads which
one sees everywhere. It may also be due to the shape of the head. But,
after all has been said, it remains true that the Japanese head, as
related to his body, is unexpectedly large.

Prof. Marsh of Yale University is reported to have said that, on the
basis of brain size, the Japanese is the race best fitted to survive
in the struggle for existence, or at least in the struggle for
pre-eminence.

Statements have been widely circulated to the effect that not only
relatively to the body, but even absolutely, the Japanese possess
larger brains than the European, but craniological statistics do not
verify the assertion. The matter has been somewhat discussed in
Japanese magazines of late, to which, through the assistance of a
Japanese friend, I am indebted for the following figures. They are
given in Japanese measurements, but are, on this account, however,
none the less satisfa