twenty-five mile avenue of giant
cryptomerias, is the Mecca of all tourists, has expressed in two
memorable sayings the Japanese conception of the essential immorality
of waste, of the regard that is due every product of human labor as
being itself in some sense human or at least a throb with the blood of
the toiler who has wrought it and moist with the sweat of his brow.
When virtual dictator of Japan, Iyeyasu was seen smoothing out an old
silk kakama. "I am doing this," he said, "not because of the worth of
the garment in itself, but because of what it needed to produce it. It
is the result of the toil of some poor woman, and that is why I value
it. If we do not think while {266} using these things, of the toil and
effort required to produce them, then our want of consideration puts
us on a level with the beasts." Again, when opposing unnecessary
purchases of costly royal garments, he declared. "When I think of the
multitudes around me, and the generations to come after me, I feel it
my duty to be very sparing, for their sake, of the goods in my
possession."

No wonder Hearn declares of this "cosmic emotion of humanity" which we
lack that "we shall certainly be obliged to acquire it at a later date
simply to save ourselves from extermination."

The importance of saving the wealth of nations from the wastes of war
and the wastes of excessive military expenditures is another lesson
that one brings home from a study of conditions abroad. While our
American jingoes are using Japan as a more or less effective bogy to
work their purposes, peace advocates might perhaps even more
legitimately hold it up as a "horrible example" to point their moral
as to how war drains the national revenues and exhausts the national
wealth. In the Mikado's empire the average citizen to-day must pay 30
per cent, of his total income in taxes, the great proportion of this
enormous national expenditure growing out of past wars and
preparations for future wars. No wonder venerable Count Okuma, once
Premier of the Empire, said to me: "I look for international
arbitration to come not as a matter of sentiment but as a matter of
cold financial necessity. Nations have labored for centuries to build
up the civilization of to-day: it is unthinkable that its advantages
must be largely sacrificed for the support of enormous non-productive
armies and navies. That would be simply the Suicide of Civilization."

For the lesson of all this I may quote the wor