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his country. Loyalty is the highest virtue; and Yamato-damashii (Japan spirit) is a synonym too often of narrow and inordinate patriotism. But the vision of the Japanese is broadening, and they are learning that cosmopolitanism is not necessarily antagonistic to patriotism. They used to harp on "The Japan of the Japanese"; later they began to talk about "The Japan of Asia"; but now they wax eloquent over "The Japan of the World."
Filial piety is the second virtue in the Japanese ethics, and is often carried to a silly extreme. The old custom of inkyō made it possible for parents, even while they were still able-bodied, to retire from active work and become an incubus on the eldest son, perhaps just starting out in his life career. But now there is a law that no one can become inkyō before he is sixty years of age. And yet filial piety can easily nullify the law!
Professor George T. Ladd, who has made a special study of the Japanese from the psychological point of view, sums up their "character" as of the "sentimental temperament."[1] The following are suggestive passages:—
"This distinctive Japanese temperament is that which
Lotze has so happily called the 'sentimental temperament.'
It is the temperament characteristic of youth,
predominatingly, in all races. It is, as a temperament,
characteristic of all ages, of both sexes, and of all classes
of population, among the Japanese. But, of course, in
- ↑ See "Scribner's Monthly" for January, 1895.