against its influences.  The spirit of the Japanese renders him quickly susceptible to every change in his surroundings.  He is ever noting details and adapting himself to his circumstances.  The spirit of the Chinaman, on the contrary, renders him quite oblivious to his environment.  His mind is closed.  Under special circumstances, when a Chinaman has been liberated from the prepossession of his social inheritance, he has shown himself as capable of Occidentalization in clothing, speech, manner, and thought as a Japanese.  Such cases, however, are rare.

But a still more effective factor in the development of the characteristics under consideration is the nature of Japanese feudalism.  Its emphasis on the complete subordination of the inferior to the superior was one of its conspicuous features.  This was a factor always and everywhere at work in Japan.  No individual was beyond its potent influence.  Attention to details, absolute obedience, constant, conscious imitation, secretiveness, suspiciousness, were all highly developed by this social system.  Each of these traits is a special form of sensitiveness to environment.  From the most ancient times the initiative of superiors was essential to the wide adoption by the people of any new idea or custom.  Christianity found ready acceptance in the sixteenth century and Buddhism in the eighth, because they had been espoused by exalted persons.  The superiority of the civilization of China in early times, and of the West in modern times, was first acknowledged and adopted by a few nobles and the Emperor.  Having gained this prestige they promptly became acceptable to the rank and file of people who vied with each other in their adoption.  A peculiarity of the Japanese is the readiness with which the ideas and aims of the rulers are accepted by the people.  This is due to the nature of Japanese feudalism.  It has made the body of the nation conspicuously subject to the ruling brain and has conferred on Japan her unique sensitiveness to environment.

Susceptibility to slight changes in the feelings of lords and masters and corresponding flexibility were important social traits, necessary products of the old social order.  Those deficient in these regards would inevitably lose in the struggle for social precedence, if not in the actual struggle for existence.  These characteristics would, accordingly, be highly developed.

Bearing in mind, therefore, the character of the factors that have ever been acting on the Japanese psychic nature, we see clearly that the characteristics under consideration are not to be attributed to her inherent race nature, but may be sufficiently accounted for by reference to the social order and social environment.

VI

WAVES OF FEELING—­ABDICATION