personalized and so less communalized nation.

XXX

ARE THE JAPANESE IMPERSONAL?

Few phases of the Japanese character have proved so fascinating to the
philosophical writer on Japan as that of the personality of this Far
Eastern people. From the writings of Sir Rutherford Alcock, the first
resident English minister in Japan, down to the last publication that
has come under my eye, all have something to say on this topic. One
writer, Mr. Percival Lowell, has devoted an entire volume to it under
the title of "The Soul of the Far East," in which he endeavors to
establish the position that the entire civilization of the Orient, in
its institutions, such as the family and the state, in the structure
of its language, in its conceptions of nature, in its art, in its
religion, and finally in its inherent mental nature, is essentially
_impersonal_. One of the prominent and long resident missionaries in
Japan once delivered a course of lectures on the influence of
pantheism in the Orient, in which he contended, among other things,
that the lack of personal pronouns and other phenomena of Japanese
life and religion are due to the presence and power in this land of
pantheistic philosophy preventing the development of personality.

The more I have examined these writings and their fundamental
assumptions, the more manifest have ambiguities and contradictions in
the use of terms become. I have become also increasingly impressed
with the failure of advocates of Japanese "impersonality" to
appreciate the real nature of the phenomena they seek to explain. They
have not comprehended the nature or the course of social evolution,
nor have they discovered the mutual relation existing between the
social order and personality. The arguments advanced for the
"impersonal" view are more or less plausible, and this method of
interpreting the Orient appeals for authority to respectable
philosophical writers. No less a philosopher than Hegel is committed
to this interpretation. The importance of this subject, not only for a
correct understanding of Japan, but also of the relation existing
between individual, social, and religious evolution, requires us to
give it careful attention. We shall make our way most easily into this
difficult discussion by considering some prevalent misconceptions and
defective arguments. I may here express my indebtedness to the author
of "The Soul of the Far East" for the stimulus received from his
brillian