Passing now from the character of trustful confidence, we take up its opposite, suspiciousness.  The development of this quality is a natural result of a military feudalism such as ruled Japan for hundreds of years.  Intrigue was in constant use when actual war was not being waged.  In an age when conflicts were always hand to hand, and the man who could best deceive his enemy as to his next blow was the one to carry off his head, the development of suspicion, strategy, and deceit was inevitable.  The most suspicious men, other things being equal, would be the victors; they, with their families, would survive and thus determine the nature of the social order.  The more than two hundred and fifty clans and “kuni,” “clan territory,” into which the land was divided, kept up perpetual training in the arts of intrigue and subtlety which are inevitably accompanied by suspicion.

Modern manifestations of this characteristic are frequent.  Not a cabinet is formed, but the question of its make-up is discussed from the clannish standpoint.  Even though it is now thirty years since the centralizing policy was entered upon and clan distinctions were effectually broken down, yet clan suspicion and jealousy is not dead.

The foreigner is impressed by the constant need of care in conversation, lest he be thought to mean something more or other than he says.  When we have occasion to criticise anything in the Japanese, we have found by experience that much more is inferred than is said.  Shortly after my arrival in Japan I was advised by one who had been in the land many years to be careful in correcting a domestic or any other person sustaining any relation to myself, to say not more than one-tenth of what I meant, for the other nine-tenths would be inferred.  Direct and perfectly frank criticism and suggestion, such as prevail among Anglo-Americans at least, seem to be rare among the Japanese.

In closing, it is in order to note once again that the emotional characteristics considered in this chapter, although customarily thought to be deep-seated traits of race nature, are, nevertheless, shown to be dependent on the character of the social order.  Change the order, and in due season corresponding changes occur in the national character, a fact which would be impossible were that character inherent and essential, passed on from generation to generation by the single fact of biological heredity.

XI

JEALOUSY—­REVENGE—­HUMANE FEELINGS

According to the teachings of Confucius, jealousy is one of the seven just grounds on which a woman may be divorced.  In the “Greater Learning for Women,"[M] occur the following words:  “Let her never even dream of jealousy.  If her husband be dissolute, she must expostulate with him, but never either render her countenance frightful or her accents repulsive, which can only result in completely alienating her husband from her, and making her intolerable in