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80 is the summum bonum of life, but they succeed in being happy without much exertion. They believe that men "by perpetual toil, bustle, and worry render themselves unfit to enjoy the pleasures which nature places within their reach"; and that the Occidental, and especially the American, life of high pressure, with too much work and too little play, is actually making Jack a dull boy. It is certainly to be hoped, but perhaps in vain, that the increasing complexity of modern life in Japan will not entirely obliterate the simplicity and vivacity of the Japanese; for they seem to "have verily solved the great problem—how to be happy though poor."

The Japanese are, however, extremely stoical in belief and behavior, and can refrain as rigidly from manifestations of joy or sorrow as could a Spartan or a Roman. Many a Japanese Leonidas, Brutus, or Cato stands forth as a typical hero in their annals. Without the least sign of suffering they can experience the severest torture, such as disembowelling themselves; and without a word of complaint they receive adversity or affliction. Shikata ga nai ("There is no help") is the stereotyped phrase of consolation from the least to the greatest loss, injury, or affliction. For a broken dish, a bruise, a broken limb, a business failure, a death, weeping is silly, sympathy is useless; alike for all, shikata ga nai.