As a traveler from the West, on reaching some Eastern land, finds it difficult at first to distinguish between the faces of different individuals, his mind being focused on the likeness pervading them all, so the Occidental student of Oriental thought is impressed with the remarkable similarity that pervades the entire Oriental civilization, modes of thought, and philosophy, finding it difficult to discover the differences which distinguish the various Oriental races. In like manner, a beginner in the study of Japanese philosophy hardly gives the Japanese credit for the modifications of Chinese philosophy which they have originated.
In this connection it is well to remember that, more than any Westerner can realize, the Japanese people have been dependent on governmental initiative from time immemorial. They have never had any thought but that of implicit obedience, and this characteristic of the social order has produced its necessary consequences in the present characteristics of the people. Individual initiative and independence have been frowned upon, if not always forcibly repressed, and thus the habit of imitation has been stimulated. The people have been deliberately trained to imitation by their social system. The foreigner is amazed at the sudden transformations that have swept the nation. When the early contact with China opened the eyes of the ruling classes to the fact that China had a system of government that was in many respects better than their own, it was an easy thing to adopt it and make it the basis for their own government. This constituted the epoch-making period in Japanese history known as the Taikwa Reform. It occurred in the seventh century, and consisted of a centralizing policy; under which, probably for the first time in Japanese history, the country was really unified. Critics ascribe it to an imitation of the Chinese system. Imitation it doubtless was; but its significant feature was its imposition by the few rulers on the people; hence its wide prevalence and general acceptance.
Similarly, in our own times, the Occidentalized order now dominant in Japan was adopted, not by the people, but by the rulers, and imposed by them on the people; these had no idea of resisting the new order, but accepted it loyally as the decision of their Emperor, and this spirit of unquestioning obedience to the powers that be is, I am persuaded, one of the causes of the prevalent opinion respecting Japanese imitativeness as well as of the fact itself.
The reputation for imitativeness, together with the quality itself, is due in no small degree, therefore, to the long-continued dominance of the feudal order of society. In a land where the dependence of the inferior on the superior is absolute, the wife on the husband, the children on the parents, the followers on their lord, the will of the superior being ever supreme, individual initiative must be rare, and the quality of imitation must be powerfully stimulated.
XVII
ORIGINALITY—INVENTIVENESS
Originality is the obverse side of imitation. In combating the notion that Japan is a nation of unreflective imitators, I have given numerous examples of originality. Further extensive illustration of this characteristic is, accordingly, unnecessary. One other may be cited, however.
The excellence of Japanese art is admitted by all. Japanese temples and palaces are adorned with mural paintings and pieces of sculpture that command the admiration of Occidental experts. The only question is as to their authors. Are these, properly speaking, Japanese works of art—or Korean or Chinese? That Japan received her artistic stimulus, and much of her artistic ideas and technique, from China is beyond dispute. But did she develop nothing new and independent? This is a question of fact. Japanese art, though Oriental, has a distinctive quality. A magnificent work entitled "Solicited Relics of Japanese Art" is issuing from the press, in which there is a large number of chromo-xylographic and collotype reproductions of the best specimens of ancient Japanese art. Reviewing this work, the Japan Mail remarks:
"But why should the only great sculptors that China or Korea ever produced have come to Japan and bequeathed to this country the unique results of their genius? That is the question we have to answer before we accept the doctrine that the noblest masterpieces of ancient Japan were from foreign lands. When anything comparable is found in China or Korea, there will be less difficulty in applying this doctrine of over-sea-influence to the genius that enriched the temples of antique Japan."[[AF]]