ronment alone is impossible, for the environment
seems to be essentially the same. This difference of attitude and
action must be traced, it would seem, to differences of mental and
temperamental characteristics. Those who seek to understand the
secret of Japan's newly won power and reputation by looking simply at
her newly acquired forms of government, her reconstructed national
social structure, her recently constructed roads and railroads,
telegraphs, representative government, etc., and especially at her
army and navy organized on European models and armed with European
weapons, are not unlike those who would discover the secret of human
life by the study of anatomy.

This external view and this method of interpretation are, therefore,
fundamentally erroneous. Never, perhaps, has the progress of a nation
been so manifestly an evolution as distinguished from a revolution. No
foreign conquerors have come in with their armies, crushing down the
old and building up a new civilization. No magician's wand has been
waved over the land to make the people forget the traditions of a
thousand years and fall in with those of the new regime. No rite or
incantation has been performed to charm the marvelous tree of
civilization and cause it to take root and grow to such lofty
proportions in an unprepared soil.

In contrast to the defective views outlined above, one need not
hesitate to believe that the actual process by which Old Japan has
been transformed into New Japan is perfectly natural and necessary. It
has been a continuous growth; it is not the mere accumulation of
external additions; it does not consist alone of the acquisition of
the machinery and the institutions of the Occident. It is rather a
development from within, based upon already existing ideas and
institutions. New Japan is the consequence of her old endowment and
her new environment. Her evolution has been in progress and can be
traced for at least a millennium and a half, during which she has been
preparing for this latest step. All that was necessary for its
accomplishment was the new environment. The correctness of this view
and the reasons for it will appear as we proceed in our study of
Japanese characteristics. But we need to note at this point the
danger, into which many fall, of ascribing to Japan an attainment of
western civilization which the facts will not warrant. She has
secured much, but by no means all, that the West has to give.

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