Townsend Harris, in his journal, remarks on the way in which the Japanese government has interfered with the originality of the people.  “The genius of their government seems to forbid any exercise of ingenuity in producing articles for the gratification of wealth and luxury.  Sumptuary laws rigidly enforce the forms, colors, material, and time of changing the dress of all.  As to luxury of furniture, the thing is unknown in Japan....  It would be an endless task to attempt to put down all the acts of a Japanese that are regulated by authority.”

The Tokugawa rule forbade the building of large ships; so that, by the middle of the nineteenth century, the art of ship-building was far behind what it had been two centuries earlier.  Government authority exterminated Christianity in the early part of the seventeenth century and freedom of religious belief was forbidden.  The same power that put the ban on Christianity forbade the spread of certain condemned systems of Confucianism.  Even in the study of Chinese literature and philosophy, therefore, such originality as the classic models stimulated was discouraged by the all-powerful Tokugawa government.  The avowed aim and end of the ruling powers of Japan was to keep the nation in its status quo.  Originality was heresy and treason; progress was impiety.  The teaching of Confucius likewise lent its support to this policy.  To do exactly as the fathers did is to honor them; to do, or even to think, otherwise is to dishonor them.  There have not been wanting men of originality and independence in both China and Japan; but they were not great enough to break over, or break down, the incrusted system in which they lived—­the system of blind devotion to the past.  This system, that deliberately opposed all invention and originality, has been the great incubus to national progress, in that it has rejected and repressed every tendency to variation.  What results might not the country have secured, had Christianity been allowed to do its work in stimulating individual development and in creating the sense of personal responsibility towards God and man!

A curious anomaly still remains in Japan on the subject of liberty in study and belief.  Though perfect liberty is the rule, one topic is even yet under official embargo.  No one may express public dissent from the authorized version of primitive Japanese history.  A few years ago a professor in the Imperial University made an attempt to interpret ancient Japanese myths.  His constructions were supposed to threaten the divine descent of the Imperial line, and he was summarily dismissed.

Dr. E. Inouye, Professor of Buddhist Philosophy in the Imperial University, addressing a Teachers’ Association of Sendai, delivered a conservative, indirectly anti-foreign speech.  He insisted, as reported by a local English correspondent, that the Japanese people “were descended from the gods.  In all other countries the sovereign or Emperor was derived from the people, but here the people had the honor of being derived from the Emperor.  Other countries had filial piety and loyalty, but no such filial piety and loyalty as exist in Japan.  The moral attainments of the people were altogether unique.  He informed his audience that though they might adopt foreign ways of doing things, their minds needed no renovating; they were good enough as they were."[AG]