magata. Kobe, office of the _Japan Chronicle_,
1903. I shall allude to these volumes as Murdoch I and Murdoch II
respectively.]

[Footnote 41: Murdoch I. pp. 113 ff.]

[Footnote 42: Ibid., II. pp. 375 ff.]

[Footnote 43: Murdoch I. p. 147.]

[Footnote 44: Murdoch, II, p. 288.]

[Footnote 45: Murdoch II, p. 667.]

CHAPTER VI

MODERN JAPAN

The modern Japanese nation is unique, not only in this age, but in the
history of the world. It combines elements which most Europeans would
have supposed totally incompatible, and it has realized an original plan
to a degree hardly known in human affairs. The Japan which now exists is
almost exactly that which was intended by the leaders of the Restoration
in 1867. Many unforeseen events have happened in the world: American has
risen and Russia has fallen, China has become a Republic and the Great
War has shattered Europe. But throughout all these changes the leading
statesmen of Japan have gone along the road traced out for them at the
beginning of the Meiji era, and the nation has followed them with
ever-increasing faithfulness. One single purpose has animated leaders
and followers alike: the strengthening and extension of the Empire. To
realize this purpose a new kind of policy has been created, combining
the sources of strength in modern America with those in Rome at the time
of the Punic Wars, uniting the material organization and scientific
knowledge of pre-war Germany with the outlook on life of the Hebrews in
the Book of Joshua.

The transformation of Japan since 1867 is amazing, and people have been
duly amazed by it. But what is still more amazing is that such an
immense change in knowledge and in way of life should have brought so
little change in religion and ethics, and that such change as it has
brought in these matters should have been in a direction opposite to
that which would have been naturally expected. Science is supposed to
tend to rationalism; yet the spread of scientific knowledge in Japan has
synchronized with a great intensification of Mikado-Worship, the most
anachronistic feature in the Japanese civilization. For sociology, for
social psychology, and for political theory, Japan is an extraordinarily
interesting country. The synthesis of East and West which has been
effected is of a most peculiar kind. There is far more of the East than
appears on the surface; but there is everything of the West that tends
to national efficiency. How far