for a season. This, I think,
is one of the factors of no little power at work among the Christian
churches in Japan. It is one, too, that the Japanese themselves little
perceive; so far as I have observed, foreigners likewise fail to
realize its force.

Closely connected with this sensitiveness to environment are other
qualities which make it effective. They are: great flexibility,
adjustability, agility (both mental and physical), and the powers of
keen attention to details and of exact imitation.

As opposed to all this is the Chinese lack of flexibility. Contrast a
Chinaman and a Japanese after each has been in America a year. The one
to all appearances is an American; his hat, his clothing, his manner,
seem so like those of an American that were it not for his small size,
Mongolian type of face, and defective English, he could easily be
mistaken for one. How different is it with the Chinaman! He retains
his curious cue with a tenacity that is as intense as it is
characteristic. His hat is the conventional one adopted by all Chinese
immigrants. His clothing likewise, though far from Chinese, is
nevertheless entirely un-American. He makes no effort to conform to
his surroundings. He seems to glory in his separateness.

The Japanese desire to conform to the customs and appearances of those
about him is due to what I have called sensitiveness; his success is
due to the flexibility of his mental constitution.

But this characteristic is seen in multitudes of little ways. The new
fashion of wearing the hair according to the Western styles; of
wearing Western hats, and Western clothing, now universal in the army,
among policemen, and common among officials and educated men; the use
of chairs and tables, lamps, windows, and other Western things is due
in no small measure to that flexibility of mind which readily adopts
new ideas and new ways; is ready to try new things and new words, and
after trial, if it finds them convenient or useful or even amusing, to
retain them permanently, and this flexibility is, in part, the reason
why the Japanese are accounted a fickle people. They accept new ways
so easily that those who do not have this faculty have no explanation
for it but that of fickleness. A frequent surprise to a missionary in
Japan is that of meeting a fine-looking, accomplished gentleman whom
he knew a few years before as a crude, ungainly youth. I am convinced
that it is the possession of this set of characteris