The impression of stolidity made on the foreigner is, due less, however, to stupidity than to a stoical education.  For centuries the people have been taught to repress all expression of their emotions.  It has been required of the inferior to listen quietly to his superior and to obey implicitly.  The relations of superior and inferior have been drilled into the people for ages.  The code of a military camp has been taught and enforced in all the homes.  Talking in the presence of a superior, or laughter, or curious questions, or expressions of surprise, anything revealing the slightest emotion on the part of the inferior was considered a discourtesy.

Education in these matters was not confined to oral instruction; infringements were punished with great rigor.  Whenever a daimyo traveled to Yedo, the capital, he was treated almost as a god by the people.  They were required to fall on their knees and bow their faces to the ground, and the death penalty was freely awarded to those who failed to make such expressions of respect.

One source, then, of the systematic repression of emotional expression is the character of the feudal order of society that so long prevailed.  The warrior who had best control of his facial expression, who could least expose to his foe or even to his ordinary friends the real state of his feelings, other things being equal, would come off the victor.  In further explanation of this repression is the religion of Buddha.  For 1200 years it has helped to mold the middle and the lower classes of the people.  According to its doctrine, desire is the great evil; from it all other evils spring.  For this reason, the aim of the religious life is to suppress all desire, and the most natural way to accomplish this is to suppress the manifestation of desire; to maintain passive features under all circumstances.  The images of Buddha and of Buddhist saints are utterly devoid of expression.  They indicate as nearly as possible the attainment of their desire, namely, freedom from all desire.  This is the ambition of every earnest Buddhist.  Being the ideal and the actual effort of life, it does affect the faces of the people.  Lack of expression, however, does not prove absence of desire.

Every foreigner has had amusing proof of this.  A common experience is the passing of a group of Japanese who, apparently, give no heed to the stranger.  Neither by the turn of the head nor by the movement of a single facial muscle do they betray any curiosity, yet their eyes take in each detail, and involuntarily follow the receding form of the traveler.  In the interior, where foreigners are still objects of curiosity, young men have often run up from behind, gone to a distance ahead of me, then turned abruptly, as though remembering something, and walked slowly back again, giving me, apparently, not the slightest attention.  The motive was the desire to get a better look at the foreigner.  They hoped to conceal it by a ruse, for there must be no manifestation of curiosity.