n social conditions."[85]
"Demeanor was [in ancient times] most elaborately and mercilessly
regulated, not merely as to obeisances, of which there were countless
grades, varying according to sex as well as class, but even in regard to
facial expression, the manner of smiling, the conduct of the breath, the
way of sitting, standing, walking, rising."[86] "With the same merciless
exactitude which prescribed rules for dress, diet, and manner of life,
all utterance was regulated both positively and negatively, but
positively much more than negatively.... Education cultivated a system
of verbal etiquette so multiform that only the training of years could
enable any one to master it. The astonishment evoked by Japanese
sumptuary laws, particularly as inflicted upon the peasantry, is
justified, less by their general character than by their implacable
minuteness,--their ferocity of detail." "That a man's house is his
castle cannot be asserted in Japan, except in the case of some high
potentate. No ordinary person can shut his door to lock out the rest of
the world. Everybody's house must be open to visitors; to close its
gates by day would be regarded as an insult to the community, sickness
affording no excuse. Only persons in very great authority have the right
of making themselves inaccessible.... By a single serious mistake a man
may find himself suddenly placed in solitary opposition to the common
will,--isolated, and most effectively ostracized." "The events of the
[modern] reconstruction strangely illustrate the action of such
instinct [of adaptation] in the face of peril,--the readjustment of
internal relations to sudden changes of environment. The nation had
found its old political system powerless before the new conditions, and
it transformed that system. It had found its military organization
incapable of defending it, and it reconstructed that organization. It
had found its educational system useless in the presence of unforeseen
necessities, and it had replaced that system, simultaneously crippling
the power of Buddhism, which might otherwise have offered serious
opposition to the new developments required."[87] To this it must be
added that people who have had commercial and financial dealings with
Japanese report that they are untruthful and tricky in transactions of
that kind. If they cannot "reform" these traits there will be important
consequences of them in the developments of the near future.

+77. Chinese et