Furthermore, Japanese Christians are still Japanese.  Their methods of social intercourse are Oriental; they bow profoundly, they repeat formal salutations, they refrain from free expression of personal opinion and preference.  The crust of polite etiquette remains.  The foreigner must learn to appreciate it before he can penetrate to the kindly, sincere, earnest heart.  This the foreigner does not easily do, much to the detriment of his work.

And on the other hand, before the Oriental can penetrate to the kindly, sincere, and earnest heart of the Occidental, he must abandon the inferential method; he must not judge the foreigner by what is left unsaid nor by slight turns of that which is said, but by the whole thought as fully expressed.  In other words, as the Occidental must learn and must trust to Oriental methods of social intercourse, so the Oriental must learn and must trust to the corresponding Occidental methods.  The difficulty is great in either case, though of an opposite nature.  Which has the greater difficulty is a question I do not attempt to solve.

Another generalization as to the essential difference marking Oriental and Occidental psychic natures is that the former is meditative and appreciative, and the latter is active.  This too is a characterization of no little truth.  The easy-going, time-forgetting, dreaming characteristics of the Orient are in marked contrast to the rush, bustle, and hurry of the Occident.  One of the first and most forcible impressions made on the Oriental visiting the West is the tremendous energy displayed even in the ordinary everyday business.  In the home there is haste; on the streets men, women, and children are “always on the run.”  It must seem to be literally so, when the walk of the Occidental is compared with the slow, crawling rate at which the Oriental moves.  Horse cars, electric cars, steam cars, run at high speed through crowded streets.  Conversation is short and hurried.  Visits are curtailed—­hardly more than glimpses.  Everyone is so nervously busy as to have no time for calm, undisturbed thought.  So does the Orient criticise and characterize the Occident.

In the Orient, on the contrary, time is nothing.  Walking is slow, business is deliberate, visiting is a fine art of bows and conventional phrases preliminary to the real purpose of the call; amusements even are long-drawn-out, theatrical performances requiring an entire day.  In the home there is no hurry, on the street there is no rush.  To the Occidental, the Oriental seems so absorbed in a dream life that the actual life is to him but a dream.