al loose
morality are necessary consequences.

But this moral or immoral ideal is by no means peculiar to Japan. The
peculiarity of Japan and the entire Orient is that the social order
that fostered it lasted so long, before forces arose to modify it.
But, as will be shown later,[BM] the great problem of human evolution,
after securing the advantages of "communalism," and the solidification
of the nation, is that of introducing the principle of individualism
into the social order. In the Orient the principle of communalism
gained such headway as effectually to prevent the introduction of this
new principle. There is, in my opinion, no probability that Japan,
while maintaining her isolation, would ever have succeeded in making
any radical change in her social order; her communalism was too
absolute. She needed the introduction of a new stimulus from without.
It was providential that this stimulus came from the Anglo-Saxon race,
with its pronounced principle of "individualism" wrought out so
completely in social order, in literature, and in government. Had
Russia or Turkey been the leading influences in starting Japan on her
new career, it is more than doubtful whether she would have secured
the principles needful for her healthful moral development.

Justice to the actual ideals and life of Old Japan forbids me to
leave, without further remark, what was said above regarding the
ideals of morality in the narrower significance of this word.
Injunctions that women should be absolutely chaste were frequent and
stringent. Nothing more could be asked in the line of explicit
teaching on this theme. And, furthermore, I am persuaded, after
considerable inquiry, that in Old Japan in the interior towns and
villages, away from the center of luxury and out of the beaten courses
of travel, there was purity of moral life that has hardly been
excelled anywhere. I have repeatedly been assured that if a youth of
either sex were known to have transgressed the law of chastity, he or
she would at once be ostracised; and that such transgressions were,
consequently, exceedingly rare. It is certainly a fact that in the
vast majority of the interior towns there have never, until recent
times, been licensed houses of prostitution. Of late there has been a
marked increase of dancing and singing girls, of whom it is commonly
said that they are but "secret prostitutes." These may to-day be found
in almost every town and village, wherever indeed th