evotion to the past. This system, that deliberately opposed all
invention and originality, has been the great incubus to national
progress, in that it has rejected and repressed every tendency to
variation. What results might not the country have secured, had
Christianity been allowed to do its work in stimulating individual
development and in creating the sense of personal responsibility
towards God and man!

A curious anomaly still remains in Japan on the subject of liberty in
study and belief. Though perfect liberty is the rule, one topic is
even yet under official embargo. No one may express public dissent
from the authorized version of primitive Japanese history. A few years
ago a professor in the Imperial University made an attempt to
interpret ancient Japanese myths. His constructions were supposed to
threaten the divine descent of the Imperial line, and he was summarily
dismissed.

Dr. E. Inouye, Professor of Buddhist Philosophy in the Imperial
University, addressing a Teachers' Association of Sendai, delivered a
conservative, indirectly anti-foreign speech. He insisted, as reported
by a local English correspondent, that the Japanese people "were
descended from the gods. In all other countries the sovereign or
Emperor was derived from the people, but here the people had the honor
of being derived from the Emperor. Other countries had filial piety
and loyalty, but no such filial piety and loyalty as exist in Japan.
The moral attainments of the people were altogether unique. He
informed his audience that though they might adopt foreign ways of
doing things, their minds needed no renovating; they were good enough
as they were."[AG]

As a result of this position, scholarship and credulity are curiously
combined in modern historical production. Implicit confidence seems to
be placed in the myths of the primitive era. Tales of the gods are
cited as historical events whose date, even, can be fixed with some
degree of accuracy. Although writing was unknown in Japan until early
in the Christian era, the chronology of the previous six or eight
hundred years is accepted on the authority of a single statement in
the Kojiki, written 712 years A.D. This statement was reproduced from
the memory of a single man, who remembered miraculously the contents
of a book written shortly before, but accidentally destroyed by fire.
In the authoritative history of Japan, prepared and translated into
English at the command of the govern