The charge that the Japanese are a nation of imitators has been repeated so often as to become trite, and the words are usually spoken with disdain.  Yet, if the truth were fully told, it would be found that, from many points of view, this quality gives reason rather for congratulation.  Surely that nation which can best discriminate and imitate has advantage over nations that are so fixed in their self-sufficiency as to be able neither to see that which is advantageous nor to imitate it.  In referring to the imitative powers of the Japanese, then, I do not speak in terms of reproach, but rather in those of commendation.  “Monkeyism” is not the sort of imitation that has transformed primitive Japan into the Japan of the early or later feudal ages, nor into the Japan of the twentieth century.  Bare imitation, without thought, has been relatively slight in Japan.  If it has been known at times, those times have been of short duration.

In his introduction to “The Classic Poetry of the Japanese” Professor Chamberlain has so stated the case for the imitative quality of the people that I quote the following: 

“The current impression that the Japanese are a nation of imitators is in the main correct.  As they copy us to-day, so did they copy the Chinese and Koreans a millennium and a half ago.  Religion, philosophy, laws, administration, written characters, all arts but the very simplest, all science, or at least what then went by that name, everything was imported from the neighboring continent; so much so that of all that we are accustomed to term ‘Old Japan’ scarce one trait in a hundred is really and properly Japanese.  Not only are their silk and lacquer not theirs by right of invention, nor their painting (albeit so often praised by European critics for its originality), nor their porcelain, nor their music, but even the larger part of their language consists of mispronounced Chinese; and from the Chinese they have drawn new names for already existing places, and new titles for their ancient Gods.”

While the above cannot be disputed in its direct statements, yet I can but feel that it makes, on the whole, a false impression.  Were these same tests applied to any European people, what would be the result?  Of what European nation may it be said that its art, or method of writing, or architecture, or science, or language even, is “its own by right of invention”?  And when we stop to examine the details of the ancient Japanese civilization which is supposed to have been so, slavishly copied from China and India, we shall find that, though the beginnings were indeed imitated, there were also later developments of purely Japanese creation.  In some instances the changes were vital.

In examining the practical arts, while we acknowledge that the beginnings of nearly all came from Korea or China, we must also acknowledge that in many important respects.  Japan has developed along her own lines.  The art of sword-making, for instance, was undoubtedly imported; but who does not know of the superior quality and beauty of Japanese swords, the Damascus blades of the East?  So distinct is this Japanese production that it cannot be mistaken for that of any other nation.  It has received the impress of the Japanese social order.  Its very shape is due to the habit of carrying the sheath in the “obi” or belt.