Hori was determined that our last day should be worthy and memorable. Through friends he arranged that we should meet Count Okuma, the Premier of the Empire. We had made most of our visits about the city on foot, and on one of the hottest days we had walked the round trip of a dozen miles to have afternoon tea with a former Japanese diplomat to America and his family, trusting that his sense of humour would forgive our perspiration, but one does not arrive thus at a palace door. Great was the excitement at the inn when ’ricksha men were called and our destination was given out. We dashed away and careened around the corners at tremendous speed. It was at least the second hottest day of the year, but the coolies realized that they were part of a ceremony and that their duty was to arrive streaming, panting, and exhausted.
Count Okuma, on his son’s arm, entered the small reception room into which we were shown. (The bullet of a fanatic shattered the bone of his leg when he was a young man.) Count Okuma is almost the last survivor of that group who directed the miracle of transforming the Japan of feudalism into the modern nation.
We drank tea and asked formal questions. Following some turn of the conversation—Count Okuma was speaking of loyalty—we inquired, as we had of the ancient schoolmaster of Kama-Suwa: “Can virtue be taught?”
The expression in the eyes of the Premier’s great, handsome head had been passive as he had acquiesced in what had been said up to that time. Now his expression became positive. He spoke slowly as if he were summing up the belief and experience of a lifetime.
“When Japan, after her centuries of hermitage, had suddenly either to face the West and to compete successfully with you, or to sink into being a tributary and exploited people, our greatest necessity in patriotism was to recognize instantly that in the physical and material world we had to learn everything from you. Our social, commercial, and governmental methods were suited only to the organization of society which we then had. We discovered that your world is a world of commerce and competition; that the achieving of wealth from the profits of trade demands training, efficiency, ingenuity, and initiative. Our civilization had not developed these qualities in us. We could only hope that we had latent ability. Furthermore, observation of you taught us to realize the value of physical power. We saw that mere superior cleverness and ability in the competition to live is not sufficient until backed by a preparedness of force. America was our great teacher and we shall never cease to be grateful. In the physical world we had everything to learn from you, and to-day we must constantly remember that we have only begun to learn.
“It was our overwhelming task to begin at the beginning, and we should have had no success if it had not been for the moral qualities of the Japanese people. These virtues cannot be taught—merely as they are required. They are the spiritual and moral inheritage from the past. In the avalanche of Western ideas which came upon us, it was our great work to pick, to choose, and to adapt. These ideas were the ideas of the commercial world. There are those who say that Japan in taking over these standards of materialism relinquished the priceless inheritance of its own spiritual life. No! We have had everything to learn from you in methods, but that should not be confused with spiritual values. I do not mean mere creeds and dogma, but to the essence, the great fundamentals of all true religion.
“It is possible that sometime in the future the outside world may discover that it will have need to come to us for the values that are ours through our great moral inheritance of loyalty. In a material way we can never pay back to you our obligation for having been taught your material lessons. But it may be that Western nations have put too great faith in materialism and that they will arrive at the bitter knowledge that the fruit of life is death unless the faith of men reaches out for something beyond the material. Then, if we of Japan have humbly guarded our spiritual wealth, the world may come to ask the secret of our spiritual values as we went to you to ask the inner secret of your material values.”