apan and wants to
know nothing. And he would be much astonished, not to say indignant,
were he told that the civilisation of Japan is higher than that of
America. Yet there can, I think, be no doubt that this is the case, if
real values be taken as a standard. America, and the "new" countries
generally, have contributed, so far, nothing to the world except
material prosperity. I do not under-estimate this. It is a great thing
to have subdued a continent. And it may be argued that those who are
engaged in this task have no energy to spare for other activities. But
the Japanese subdued their island centuries, even millenniums, ago. And,
having reduced it to as high a state of culture as they required, they
began to live--a thing the new countries have not yet attempted.

To live, in the sense in which I am using the term, implies that you
reflect life in the forms of art, literature, philosophy, and religion.
To all these things the Japanese have made notable contributions; less
notable, indeed, than those of China, from whom they derived their
inspiration, but still native, genuine, and precious. To take first bare
externals, the physical life of the Japanese is beautiful. I read with
amazement the other day a quotation from a leading Californian newspaper
to the effect that "there is an instinctive sense of physical repugnance
on the part of the Western or European races towards the Japanese race"!
Had the writer, I wonder, ever been in Japan? Perhaps it would have made
no difference to him if he had, for he is evidently one of those who
cannot or will not see. But to me the first and chief impression of
Japan is the physical attractiveness of the people. The Japanese are
perfectly proportioned; their joints, their hands, their feet, their
hips are elegant and fine; and they display to the best advantage these
natural graces by a costume which is as beautiful as it is simple. To
see these perfect figures walking, running, mounting stairs, bathing,
even pulling rickshaws, is to receive a constant stream of shocks of
surprise and delight. In so much that, after some weeks in the country,
I begin to feel "a sense of physical repugnance" to Americans and
Europeans--a sense which, if I were as uneducated and inexperienced as
the writer in the _Argonaut_, I should call "instinctive," and make the
basis of a campaign of race-hatred. The misfortune is that the Japanese
abandon their own dress when they go abroad. And in European