Mr. Yamaguchi, professor of history in the Peeresses’ School and lecturer in the Imperial Military College, thus writes in the Far East:  “The sovereign power of the State cannot be dissociated from the Imperial Throne.  It lasts forever along with the Imperial line of succession, unbroken for ages eternal.  If the Imperial House cease to exist, the Empire falls.”  “According to our ideas the monarch reigns over and governs the country in his own right....  Our Emperor possesses real sovereignty and also exercises it.  He is quite different from other rulers, who possess but a partial sovereignty.”  This is to-day the universally accepted belief in Japan.  It shows clearly that national unity and sovereignty are not conceived in Japan apart from personality.

One more point demands our attention before bringing this chapter to a close.  If “impersonality” were an inherent characteristic of Japanese race nature, would it be possible for strong personalities to arise?

Mr. Lowell has described in telling way a very common experience.  “About certain people,” he says, “there exists a subtle something which leaves its impress indelibly upon the consciousness of all who come in contact with them.  This something is a power, but a power of so indefinable a description that we beg definition by calling it simply the personality of the man....  On the other hand, there are people who have no effect upon us whatever.  They come and they go with a like indifference....  And we say that the difference is due to the personality or the want of personality of the man."[CV] The first thing to which I would call attention is the fact that “personality” is here used in its true sense.  It has no exclusive reference to consciousness of self, nor does it signify the effect of self-consciousness on the consciousness of another.  It here has reference to those inherent qualities of thinking and feeling and willing which we have seen to be the essence of personality.  These qualities, possessed in a marked way or degree, make strong personalities.  Their relative lack constitutes weak personality.  Bare consciousness of self is a minor evidence of personality and may be developed to a morbid degree in a person who has a weak personality.

In the second place this distinction between weak and strong personalities is as true of the Japanese as of the Occidental.  There have been many commanding persons in Japanese history; they have been the heroes of the land.  There are such to-day.  The most commanding personality of recent times was, I suppose, Takamori Saigo, whose very name is an inspiration to tens of thousands of the choicest youth of the nation.  Joseph Neesima was such a personality.  The transparency of his purpose, the simplicity of his personal aim, his unflinching courage, fixedness of belief, lofty plans, and far-reaching ambitions for his people, impressed all who came into contact with him.  No one mingles much with the Japanese,