Many writers have dwelt with delight on the cheerful disposition that seems so common in Japan.  Lightness of heart, freedom from all anxiety for the future, living chiefly in the present, these and kindred features are pictured in glowing terms.  And, on the whole, these pictures are true to life.  The many flower festivals are made occasions for family picnics when all care seems thrown to the wind.  There is a simplicity and a freshness and a freedom from worry that is delightful to see.  But it is also remarked that a change in this regard is beginning to be observed.  The coming in of Western machinery, methods of government, of trade and of education, is introducing customs and cares, ambitions and activities, that militate against the older ways.  Doubtless, this too is true.  If so, it but serves to establish the general proposition of these pages that the more outstanding national characteristics are largely the result of special social conditions, rather than of inherent national character.

The cheerful disposition, so often seen and admired by the Westerner, is the cheerfulness of children.  In many respects the Japanese are relatively undeveloped.  This is due to the nature of their social order during the past.  The government has been largely paternal in form and fully so in theory.  Little has been left to individual initiative or responsibility.  Wherever such a system has been dominant and the perfectly accepted order, the inevitable result is just such a state of simple, childish cheerfulness as we find in Japan.  It constitutes that golden age sung by the poets of every land.  But being the cheerfulness of children, the happiness of immaturity, it is bound to change with growth, to be lost with coming maturity.

Yet the Japanese are by no means given up to a cheerful view of life.  Many an individual is morose and dejected in the extreme.  This disposition is ever stimulated by the religious teachings of Buddhism.  Its great message has been the evanescent character of the present life.  Life is not worth living, it urges; though life may have some pleasures, the total result is disappointment and sorrow.  Buddhism has found a warm welcome in the hearts of many Japanese.  For more than a thousand years it has been exercising a potent influence on their thoughts and lives.  Yet how is this consistent with the cheerful disposition which seems so characteristic of Japan?  The answer is not far to seek.  Pessimism is by its very nature separative, isolating, silent.  Those oppressed by it do not enter into public joys.  They hide themselves in monasteries, or in the home.  The result is that by its very nature the actual pessimism of Japan is not a conspicuous feature of national character.  The judgment that all Japanese are cheerful rests on shallow grounds.  Because, forsooth, millions on holidays bear that appearance, and because on ordinary occasions the average man and woman seem cheerful and happy, the conclusion is reached that all are so.  No effort is made to learn of those whose lives are spent in sadness and isolation.  I am convinced that the Japan of old, for all its apparent cheer, had likewise its side of deep tragedy.  Conditions of life that struck down countless individuals, and mental conditions which made Buddhism so popular, both point to this conclusion.