The true explanation, therefore, of the recent and rapid rise of Japan to power and reputation, is to be found, not in the externals of her civilization, not in the pressure of foreign governments, but rather in the inherited mental and temperamental characteristics, reacting on the new and stimulating environment, and working along the lines of true evolution.  Japan has not “jumped out of her skin,” but a new vitality has given that skin a new color.

II

HISTORICAL SKETCH

How many of the stories of the Kojiki (written in 712 A.D.) and Nihongi (720 A.D.) are to be accepted is still a matter of dispute among scholars.  Certain it is, however, that Japanese early history is veiled in a mythology which seems to center about three prominent points:  Kyushu, in the south; Yamato, in the east central, and Izumo in the west central region.  This mythological history narrates the circumstances of the victory of the southern descendants of the gods over the two central regions.  And it has been conjectured that these three centers represent three waves of migration that brought the ancestors of the present inhabitants of Japan to these shores.  The supposition is that they came quite independently and began their conflicts only after long periods of residence and multiplication.

Though this early record is largely mythological, tradition shows us the progenitors of the modern Japanese people as conquerors from the west and south who drove the aborigines before them and gradually took possession of the entire land.  That these conquerors were not all of the same stock is proved by the physical appearance of the Japanese to-day, and by their language.  Through these the student traces an early mixture of races—­the Malay, the Mongolian, and the Ural-Altaic.  Whether the early crossing of these races bears vital relation to the plasticity of the Japanese is a question which tempts the scholar.

Primitive, inter-tribal conflicts of which we have no reliable records resulted in increasing intercourse.  Victory was followed by federation.  And through the development of a common language, of common customs and common ideas, the tribes were unified socially and psychically.  Consciousness of this unity was emphasized by the age-long struggle against the Ainu, who were not completely conquered until the eighteenth century.

With the dawn of authentic history (500-600 A.D.) we find amalgamation of the conquering tribes, with, however, constantly recurring inter-clan and inter-family wars.  Many of these continued for scores and even hundreds of years—­proving that, in the modern sense, of the word, the Japanese were not yet a nation, though, through inter-marriage, through the adoption of important elements of civilization brought from China and India via Korea, through the nominal acceptance of the Emperor as the divinely appointed ruler of the land, they were, in race and in civilization, a fairly homogeneous people.