There are signs, however, that the stage of imitation is past and that
adaptation has begun. Here and there in T[=o]ky[=o] may be seen
buildings in which the solidity of foreign architecture has been grafted
upon the Japanese type. Ten years ago, Japanese men who adopted foreign
dress went about in misfitting garments, soiled linen, untidy shoes, and
hats that had been discarded by the civilization for which they were
made many seasons before they reached Japan. They wore Turkish towels
about their necks and red blankets over their shoulders at the desire of
unscrupulous importers, who persuaded them that towels for neck-cloths
and blankets for overcoats were the latest styles of London and Paris.
To-day one sees no such eccentricities of costume in the purely Japanese
city of T[=o]ky[=o]. Men who wear foreign dress wear it made correctly
in every particular by Japanese tailors, shoemakers, and hatters. The
standard has been attained, for men at least, and in foreign dress as
well as in Japanese, the natural good taste of the people has begun to
assert itself. So it will be in time with other new things adopted. As
no single element of the Chinese civilization secured a permanent
footing in Japan except such as could be adapted, not only to the
national life, but to the national taste as well, so it will be with
European things. All things that are adopted will be adapted, and
whatever is adapted is likely in time to be improved and made more
beautiful by the national instinct for beauty. During the transition,
enormities are omitted and monstrosities are constructed, but when the
standard is at last attained, we may expect that the genius of the race
will triumph over the difficulties that it is now encountering.
Individual Japanese who have lived long in Europe or America show the
same nice discrimination in regard to foreign things that they do in
their Japanese surroundings, and are rarely at fault in their taste.
What is true of the individual now will be true of the nation when
European standards have become common property.

_Page 242._

In the remote mountain regions, where the majesty and uncertainty of the
great natural forces impress themselves constantly upon the minds of the
peasantry, one finds a simple nature worship, and a desire to propitiate
all the unseen powers, that is not so evident in the daily life of the
dwellers in more populous and progressive parts of the country. As the
mountains close