fference is not one in
customs and modes of life; that goes without saying. It concerns the
ideas, beliefs and alleged information current about one and the same
fact: the status of Japan in the international world and especially
its attitude toward China. One finds everywhere in Japan a feeling of
uncertainty, hesitation, even of weakness. There is a subtle nervous
tension in the atmosphere as of a country on the verge of change but
not knowing where the change will take it. Liberalism is in the air,
but genuine liberals are encompassed with all sorts of difficulties
especially in combining their liberalism with the devotion to
theocratic robes which the imperialist militarists who rule Japan have
so skilfully thrown about the Throne and the Government. But what one
senses in China from the first moment is the feeling of the
all-pervading power of Japan which is working as surely as fate to its
unhesitating conclusion--the domination of Chinese politics and
industry by Japan with a view to its final absorption. It is not my
object to analyze the realities of the situation or to inquire whether
the universal feeling in China is a collective hallucination or is
grounded in fact. The phenomenon is worthy of record on its own
account. Even if it be merely psychological, it is a fact which must
be reckoned with in both its Chinese and its Japanese aspects. In the
first place, as to the differences in psychological atmosphere.
Everybody who knows anything about Japan knows that it is the land of
reserves and reticences. The half-informed American will tell you that
this is put on for the misleading of foreigners. The informed know
that it is an attitude shown to foreigners only because it is deeply
engrained in the moral and social tradition of Japan; and that, if
anything, the Japanese are more likely to be communicative--about many
things at least--to a sympathetic foreigner, than to one another. The
habit of reserve is so deeply embedded in all the etiquette,
convention and daily ceremony of living, as well as in the ideals of
strength of character, that only the Japanese who have subjected
themselves to foreign influences escape it--and many of them revert.
To put it mildly, the Japanese are not a loquacious people; they have
the gift of doing rather than of gab.

When accordingly a Japanese statesman or visiting diplomatist engages
in unusually prolonged and frank discourse setting forth the aims and
procedures of Japa