ctly spontaneous. The present
choice by Japan of modern science and education and methods and
principles of government and nineteenth-century literature and
law,--in a word, of Occidental civilization,--is not due to any
artificial pressure or military occupancy. But the choice and the
consequent evolution are wholly due to the free act of the people. In
this, as in several other respects, Japan reminds us of ancient
Greece. Dr. Menzies, in his "History of Religion," says: "Greece was
not conquered from the East, but stirred to new life by the
communication of new ideas." Free choice has made Japan reject Chinese
astronomy, surgery, medicine, and jurisprudence. The early choice to
admit foreigners to Japan to trade may have been made entirely through
fear, but is now accepted and justified by reason and choice.

The true explanation, therefore, of the recent and rapid rise of Japan
to power and reputation, is to be found, not in the externals of her
civilization, not in the pressure of foreign governments, but rather
in the inherited mental and temperamental characteristics, reacting on
the new and stimulating environment, and working along the lines of
true evolution. Japan has not "jumped out of her skin," but a new
vitality has given that skin a new color.

II

HISTORICAL SKETCH

How many of the stories of the Kojiki (written in 712 A.D.) and
Nihongi (720 A.D.) are to be accepted is still a matter of dispute
among scholars. Certain it is, however, that Japanese early history is
veiled in a mythology which seems to center about three prominent
points: Kyushu, in the south; Yamato, in the east central, and Izumo
in the west central region. This mythological history narrates the
circumstances of the victory of the southern descendants of the gods
over the two central regions. And it has been conjectured that these
three centers represent three waves of migration that brought the
ancestors of the present inhabitants of Japan to these shores. The
supposition is that they came quite independently and began their
conflicts only after long periods of residence and multiplication.

Though this early record is largely mythological, tradition shows us
the progenitors of the modern Japanese people as conquerors from the
west and south who drove the aborigines before them and gradually took
possession of the entire land. That these conquerors were not all of
the same stock is proved by the physical appearance of the