Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/238

 sense of their country's inferiority that men who had never previously looked beyond the fortunes of the fief to which they owed allegiance, now fixed their eyes on Japan as a whole, and became haunted by a feverish longing to raise her rapidly from the lowly place she occupied. Nothing short of direct association with the Japanese samurai of that era could convey a just idea of their importunate anxiety to bring Japan "abreast of Western nations." That phrase (gaikoku to kata wo naraberu) was perpetually in their mouths. Had the feudal system survived, their energy of effort would have been exerted on behalf of each fief separately; but feudalism having disappeared, it was upon the country at large that the stigma of international deficiency fell, and it was of the country as a whole that men thought with solicitude. It is true that Japan had always been esteemed by its people a land of divine origin, and very likely that estimate helped to accentuate the chagrin of discovering her inferiority in matters of material civilisation. But if the teachings of history be of any value, the conclusion is inevitable that, so far as practical displays are concerned, Japanese patriotism is a sentiment of modern development, and that those who claim any exceptional wealth of innate patriotism for her people must be classed as emotional partisans rather than as sober annalists.

In this context another cognate point may conveniently be noticed. It is usually said of