only more practical, but also more advanced than those of the
Chinese."

An important reason for our Western thought, that the Japanese have
had no independence in philosophy, is our ignorance of the larger part
of Japanese and Chinese literature. Oriental speculation was moving in
a direction so diverse from that of the West that we are impressed
more with the general similarity that prevails throughout it than with
the evidences of individual differences. Greater knowledge would
reveal these differences. In our generalized knowledge, we see the
uniformity so strongly that we fail to discover the originality.

As a traveler from the West, on reaching some Eastern land, finds it
difficult at first to distinguish between the faces of different
individuals, his mind being focused on the likeness pervading them
all, so the Occidental student of Oriental thought is impressed with
the remarkable similarity that pervades the entire Oriental
civilization, modes of thought, and philosophy, finding it difficult
to discover the differences which distinguish the various Oriental
races. In like manner, a beginner in the study of Japanese philosophy
hardly gives the Japanese credit for the modifications of Chinese
philosophy which they have originated.

In this connection it is well to remember that, more than any
Westerner can realize, the Japanese people have been dependent on
governmental initiative from time immemorial. They have never had any
thought but that of implicit obedience, and this characteristic of the
social order has produced its necessary consequences in the present
characteristics of the people. Individual initiative and independence
have been frowned upon, if not always forcibly repressed, and thus the
habit of imitation has been stimulated. The people have been
deliberately trained to imitation by their social system. The
foreigner is amazed at the sudden transformations that have swept the
nation. When the early contact with China opened the eyes of the
ruling classes to the fact that China had a system of government that
was in many respects better than their own, it was an easy thing to
adopt it and make it the basis for their own government. This
constituted the epoch-making period in Japanese history known as the
Taikwa Reform. It occurred in the seventh century, and consisted of a
centralizing policy; under which, probably for the first time in
Japanese history, the country was really unified. Cr