his was no case of servile
imitation. His early followers had also to endure opposition and
severe persecution.

Glancing at the philosophical ideas brought from China, we find here
too a suggestion of the same tendency toward originality. It is true
that Dr. Geo. Wm. Knox, in his valuable monograph on "A Japanese
Philosopher," makes the statement that, "In acceptance and rejection
alike no native originality emerges, nothing beyond a vigorous power
of adoption and assimilation. No improvements of the new philosophy
were even attempted. Wherein it was defective and indistinct,
defective and indistinct it remained. The system was not thought out
to its end and independently adopted. Polemics, ontology, ethics,
theology, marvels, heroes--all were enthusiastically adopted on faith.
It is to be added that the new system was superior to the old, and so
much of discrimination was shown."[AD] And somewhat earlier he
likewise asserts that "There is not an original and valuable
commentary by a Japanese writer. They have been content to brood over
the imported works and to accept unquestioningly politics, ethics, and
metaphysics." After some examination of these native philosophers, I
feel that, although not without some truth, these assertions cannot be
strictly maintained. It is doubtless true that no powerful thinker and
writer has appeared in Japan that may be compared to the two great
philosophers of China, Shushi and Oyomei. The works and the system of
the former dominated Japan, for the simple reason that governmental
authority forbade the public teaching or advocacy of the other.
Nevertheless, not a few Japanese thinkers rejected the teachings and
philosophy of Shushi, regardless of consequences. Notable among those
rejecters was Kaibara Yekken, whose book "The Great Doubt" was not
published until after his death. In it he rejects in emphatic terms
the philosophical and metaphysical ideas of Shushi. An article[AE] by
Dr. Tetsujiro Inouye, Professor of Philosophy in the Imperial
University in Tokyo, on the "Development of Philosophical Ideas in
Japan," concludes with these words:

"From this short sketch the reader can clearly see that
philosophical considerations began in our country with the study of
Shushi and Oyomei. But many of our thinkers did not long remain
faithful to that tradition; they soon formed for themselves new
conceptions of life and of the world, which, as a rule, are not