and gorgeous
rituals.

Even in those early centuries the contact of Japan with her Oriental
neighbors revealed certain traits of her character which have been
conspicuous in recent times--great capacity for acquisition, and
readiness to adopt freely from foreign nations. Her contact with
China, at that time so far in advance of herself in every element of
civilization, was in some respects disastrous to her original growth.
Instead of working out the problems of thought and life for herself,
she took what China and Korea had to give. The result was an arrest in
the development of everything distinctively native. The native
religion was so absorbed by Buddhism that for a thousand years it lost
all self-consciousness. Indeed the modern clear demarcation between
the native and the imported religions is a matter of only a few
decades, due to the researches of native scholars during the latter
part of the last and the early part of this century. Even now,
multitudes of the common people know no difference between the various
elements of the composite religion of which they are the heirs.

Moreover, early contact with China and her enormous literature checked
the development of the native language and the growth of the native
literature. The language suffered arrest because of the rapid
introduction of Chinese terms for all the growing needs of thought and
civilization. Modern Japanese is a compound of the original tongue and
Japonicized Chinese. Native speculative thought likewise found little
encouragement or stimulus to independent activity in the presence of
the elaborate and in many respects profound philosophies brought from
India and China.

From earliest times the government of Japan was essentially feudal.
Powerful families and clans disputed and fought for leadership, and
the political history of Japan revolves around the varying fortunes of
these families. While the Imperial line is never lost to sight, it
seldom rises to real power.

When, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Japan's conquering arm
reached across the waters, to ravage the coast of China, to extend her
influence as far south as Siam, and even to invade Korea with a large
army in 1592, it looked as if she were well started on her career as a
world-power. But that was not yet to be. The hegemony of her clans
passed into the powerful and shrewd Tokugawa family, the policy of
which was peace and national self-sufficiency.

The representativ