Comparison is often made between Japan and India.  In both countries enormous social changes are taking place; in both, Eastern and Western civilizations are in contact and in conflict.  The differences, however, are even more striking than the likenesses.  Most conspicuous is the fact that whereas, in India, the changes in civilization are due almost wholly to the force and rule of the conquering race, in Japan these changes are spontaneous, attributable entirely to the desire and initiative of the native rulers.  This difference is fundamental and vital.  The evolution of society in India is to a large degree compulsory; in a true sense it is an artificial evolution.  In Japan, on the other hand, evolution is natural.  There has not been the slightest physical compulsion laid on her from without.  With two rare exceptions, Japan has never heard the boom of foreign cannon carrying destruction to her people.  During these years of change, there have been none but Japanese rulers, and such has been the case throughout the entire period of Japanese history.  Their native rulers have introduced changes such as foreign rulers would hardly have ventured upon.  The adoption of the Chinese language, literature, and religions from ten to twelve centuries ago, was not occasioned by a military occupancy of Japanese soil by invaders from China.  It was due absolutely to the free choice of their versatile people, as free and voluntary as was the adoption by Rome of Greek literature and standards of learning.  The modern choice of Western material civilization no doubt had elements of fear as motive power.  But impulsion through a knowledge of conditions differs radically from compulsion exercised by a foreign military occupancy.  India illustrates the latter; Japan, the former.

Japan and her people manifest amazing contrasts.  Never, on the one hand, has a nation been so free from foreign military occupancy throughout a history covering more than fifteen centuries, and at the same time, been so influenced by and even subject to foreign psychical environment.  What was the fact in ancient times is the fact to-day.  The dominance of China and India has been largely displaced by that of Europe.  Western literature, language, and science, and even customs, are being welcomed by Japan, and are working their inevitable effects.  But it is all perfectly natural, perfectly spontaneous.  The present choice by Japan of modern science and education and methods and principles of government and nineteenth-century literature and law,—­in a word, of Occidental civilization,—­is not due to any artificial pressure or military occupancy.  But the choice and the consequent evolution are wholly due to the free act of the people.  In this, as in several other respects, Japan reminds us of ancient Greece.  Dr. Menzies, in his “History of Religion,” says:  “Greece was not conquered from the East, but stirred to new life by the communication of new ideas.”  Free choice has made Japan reject Chinese astronomy, surgery, medicine, and jurisprudence.  The early choice to admit foreigners to Japan to trade may have been made entirely through fear, but is now accepted and justified by reason and choice.