d the impossibility--of becoming genuinely and
intimately acquainted with the Japanese. Said a professor of Harvard
University to the writer some years ago: "Do you in Japan find it
difficult to become truly acquainted with the Japanese? We see many
students here, but we are unable to gain more than a superficial
acquaintance. They seem to be incrusted in a shell that we are unable
to pierce." The editor of the _Japan Mail_, speaking of the difficulty
of securing "genuinely intimate intercourse with the Japanese people,"
says: "The language also is needed. Yet even when the language is
added, something still remains to be achieved, and what that something
is we have never been able to discover, though we have been
considering the subject for thirty-three years. No foreigner has ever
yet succeeded in being admitted into the inner circle of Japanese
intercourse."

Is this a fact? If not, why is it so widespread a belief? If it is a
fact, what is the interpretation? Like most generalizations it
expresses both a truth and an error. As the statement of a general
experience, I believe it to be true. As an assertion of universal
application I believe it to be false. As a truth, how is it to be
explained? Is it due to difference of race soul, and thus to racial
antipathy, as some maintain? If so, it must be a universal fact. This,
however, is an error, as we shall see. The explanation is not so hard
to find as at first appears.

The difficulty under consideration is due to two classes of facts. The
first is that the people have long been taught that Occidentals desire
to seize and possess their land. Although the more enlightened have
long since abandoned this fear and suspicion, the people still suspect
the stranger; they do not propose to admit foreigners to any leading
position in the political life of the land. They do not implicitly
trust the foreigners, even when taken into their employ. That
foreigners should not be admitted to the inner circle of Japanese
political life, therefore, is not strange. Nor is it unique to Japan.
It is not done in any land except the United States. Secondly, the
diverse methods of social intercourse characterizing the East and the
West make a deep chasm between individuals of these civilizations on
coming into social relations. The Oriental bows low, utters
conventional "aisatsu" salutations, listens respectfully, withholds
his own opinion, agrees with his vis-a-vis, weighs every word utter