Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/247

 essentials of their own mode of life and never lost their individuality. A remarkable spirit of liberalism and a fine eclectic instinct were needed for the part they acted, but they did no radical violence to their own traditions, creeds, and conventions.

There was indeed a certain element of incongruity and even grotesqueness in the nation's doings. Old people cannot fit their feet to new grooves without some clumsiness. The Japanese had grown very old in their special paths, and their novel departure was occasionally disfigured by solecisms. The refined taste that guided them unerringly in all the affairs of life as they had been accustomed to live it, seemed to fail them signally when they emerged into an alien atmosphere. But it will be seen, when the results of their various efforts come to be considered in detail, that the apparently excessive rapidity of their progress did not overtax their capacities, and that there is no prospect of their newly adopted civilisation's proving unsuited to them. The often expressed fear that they would turn back and retrace their steps, is proved to be quite chimerical.

After the failure of the Satsuma rebellion had extinguished the last smouldering embers of military feudalism, the only question that disturbed Japan's domestic politics was the manner of distributing the administrative power. One of the lessons taught by Japanese history is that representative institutions are in the genius of the