Many a Christian pastor and evangelist, although not sharing the ambition of Prof.  Inouye, nevertheless glows with the confident expectation that Japonicized Christianity will be its most perfect type.  “No one need wonder if Japan should be destined to present to the world the best type of Christianity that has yet appeared in history,” writes an exponent of this view, at one time a Christian pastor.  In this connection the reader may recall what was said in chapter xiv. on Japanese Ambition and Conceit, qualities depending on the power of seeing visions.  We note, in passing, the optimistic spirit of New Japan.  This is in part due, no doubt, to ignorance of the problems that lie athwart their future progress, but it is also due to the vivid imaginative faculty which pictures for them the glories of the coming decades when they shall lead not only the Orient, but also the Occident, in every line of civilization, material and spiritual, moral and religious.  A dull, unimaginative, prosaic nature cannot be exuberantly optimistic.  It is evident that writers who proclaim the unimaginative matter-of-factness of the Japanese as universal and absolute, have failed to see a large side of Japanese inner life.

Mr. Percival Lowell states that the root of all the peculiarities of Oriental peoples is their marked lack of imagination.  This is the faculty that “may in a certain sense be said to be the creator of the world.”  The lack of this faculty, according to Mr. Lowell, is the root of the Japanese lack of originality and invention; it gives the whole Oriental civilization its characteristic features.  He cites a few words to prove the essentially prosaic character of the Japanese mind, such as “up-down” for “pass” (which word, by the way, is his own invention, and reveals his ignorance of the language), “the being (so) is difficult,” in place of “thank you.”  “A lack of any fanciful ideas,” he says, “is one of the most salient traits of all Far Eastern peoples, if indeed a sad dearth can properly be called salient.  Indirectly, their want of imagination betrays itself in their everyday sayings and doings, and more directly in every branch of thought.”  I note, in passing, that Mr. Lowell does not distinguish between fancy and imagination.  Though allied faculties, they are distinct.  Mr. Lowell’s extreme estimate of the prosaic nature of the Japanese mind I cannot share.  Many letters received from Japanese friends refute this view by their fanciful expressions.  The Japanese language, too, has many fanciful terms.  Why “pass” is any more imaginative than “up-down,” to accept Mr. Lowell’s etymology, or “the being (so) is difficult” than “thank you,” I do not see.  To me the reverse proposition would seem the truer.  And are not “breaking-horns” for “on purpose,” and “breaking-bones” for “with great difficulty,” distinctly imaginative terms, more imaginative than the English?  In the place of our English term “sun,” the Japanese have several alternative terms in common