7 These extracts from a translation in the Japan Daily Mail, November 19, 20, 1890, of Viscount Torio's famous conservative essay do not give a fair idea of the force and logic of the whole. The essay is too long to quote entire; and any extracts from the Mail's admirable translation suffer by their isolation from the singular chains of ethical, religious, and philosophical reasoning which bind the Various parts of the composition together. The essay was furthermore remarkable as the production of a native scholar totally uninfluenced by Western thought. He correctly predicted those social and political disturbances which have occurred in Japan since the opening of the new parliament. Viscount Torio is also well known as a master of Buddhist philosophy. He holds a high rank in the Japanese army.
8 In expressing my earnest admiration of this wonderful book, I must, however, declare that several of its conclusions, and especially the final ones, represent the extreme reverse of my own beliefs on the subject. I do not think the Japanese without individuality; but their individuality is less superficially apparent, and reveals itself much less quickly, than that of Western people. I am also convinced that much of what we call 'personality' and 'force of character' in the West represents only the survival and recognition of primitive aggressive tendencies, more or less disguised by culture. What Mr. Spencer calls the highest individuation surely does not include extraordinary development of powers adapted to merely aggressive ends; and yet it is rather through these than through any others that Western individuality most commonly and readily manifests itself. Now there is, as yet, a remarkable scarcity in Japan, of domineering, brutal, aggressive, or morbid individuality. What does impress one as an apparent weakness in Japanese intellectual circles is the comparative absence of spontaneity, creative thought, original perceptivity of the highest order. Perhaps this seeming deficiency is racial: the peoples of the Far East seem to have been throughout their history receptive rather than creative. At all events I cannot believe Buddhism—originally the faith of an Aryan race—can be proven responsible. The total exclusion of Buddhist influence from public education would not seem to have been stimulating; for the masters of the old Buddhist philosophy still show a far higher capacity for thinking in relations than that of the average graduate of the Imperial University. Indeed, I am inclined to believe that an intellectual revival of Buddhism—a harmonising of its loftier truths with the best and broadest teachings of modern science—would have the most important results for Japan.
9 Herbert Spencer. A native scholar, Mr. Inouye Enryo, has actually founded at Tokyo with this noble object in view, a college of philosophy which seems likely, at the present writing, to become an influential institution.
End of Project Gutenberg's Glimpses of an Unfamilar Japan, by Lafcadio Hearn