“From this short sketch the reader can clearly see that philosophical considerations began in our country with the study of Shushi and Oyomei.  But many of our thinkers did not long remain faithful to that tradition; they soon formed for themselves new conceptions of life and of the world, which, as a rule, are not only more practical, but also more advanced than those of the Chinese.”

An important reason for our Western thought, that the Japanese have had no independence in philosophy, is our ignorance of the larger part of Japanese and Chinese literature.  Oriental speculation was moving in a direction so diverse from that of the West that we are impressed more with the general similarity that prevails throughout it than with the evidences of individual differences.  Greater knowledge would reveal these differences.  In our generalized knowledge, we see the uniformity so strongly that we fail to discover the originality.

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.