Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-10-29

A N inevitable revulsion from unreason1ng adj
II miration of the Japanese seems more than
probable. By long of literary
TRANSPORTATION, Japan has stood in the American
mind as an Oriental Paradise with all the modern
improvements. Esthetic and sem1-poetlcal writers
of prose, ignoring defects, have shed moonlight
on garbage-heaps. The victory not of an Orlen-
tai" but of a pubic-schoo1 army and navy close
to their base of supplies strictly temperate and cut
off from RIGHTEOUSNESS, against an ignorant horde
at the tail end of an attenuated empire weakened
by alcoholic and sensual indugences, has tilted the
worlds judgment. Tourists in the Tokio-Kioto
strip of land and at the open ports and some most
illogical persons of esthetc susceptibties who argue
from art to morals, have mpleted the glamour
What we have seen IS the victory of minority
of intelligent of modern mind, after forty years
of preparation and ten of definite resolve, making
full use of the science of the ages gathered from
many civilizations, rather than the normal fruit
of fifty millions of islanders, the reality OF whose
condition. morally, socially and physically, is yet
to be revealed. The Americans, who only in recent
years have emerged from their provincial limits have
not been fooled by the Japanese, but have rather
voluntarily fooled themselves; for the whole
such a process, before completion, is great fun.
Then suddenly we awake to behold the full growth
of our long ears, and discover that all along the
Japanese have actually been our intellectual equals
Then all traditional notions of inferiority are
upset and we howl
Yet there is now a real danger that the pendulum
will swing too far the other way. Indications of
such view, at the nadrs opposite of those smitten
with Japantis,' are occasionally in articles
written by demonstrating "Japanophobes, or by
quondam jewellers in Japan. For example, it has
been asserted in this publication that The victory
of Japan Russia must inevitably cry Haiti
to our progress in Asia" and again, We are being
made fools of by the widest politest most arrogant
people of modern times" These two texts were set
between pictures of two bronze mortuary beacons
representing the conventionalized FIVE elements
constituent of mans body-earth, water air, fire
and ether, which fanked the image OF Great Buddha
at Kamakura-the fitting symbol of dead city
and dying faith-set platform from which
New japan has long ago 1eaped, throwing her old
and discarded halo behind her back. Some
of the statements in that article, by my former
neighbor in Toxic and an honored physician
| cannot as a historical scholar, subscribe to-
Since the publication of the article, apan, by
the signing of the peace treaty at Portsmouth,
August 20, has achieved her greatest conquest
victory over herself. In that fact alone new
revelation of the real moral history of the nation
There have been few events of greater interest
encouragement to students of the progress of the
race than this demonstration of the humanity,
moderation and self-mastery of the Japanese. Nor
has decade of centuries furnished grander augury
for humanity's advance than the Mikados cable
gram to Komura, ordering him to sign the treaty,
which waived indemnity and yielded moiety of