Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/288

 pret some of its habits. A number distinguishes each member. It is painted in white on a wooden indicator, the latter being fastened by a hinge to the face of the member's desk. When present, he sets the indicator standing upright, and lowers it when leaving the House. Permission to speak is not obtained by catching the President's eye, but by calling out the aspirant's number, and as members often emphasise their calls by hammering their desks with the indicators, there are moments of clatter and din. But, for the rest, orderliness and decorum habitually prevail. Speeches have to be made from a rostrum, which rule tends palpably to deter useless declamation. The Japanese formulates his views with remarkable facility. He is absolutely free from gaucherie or self-consciousness when speaking in public. He can think on his feet. But his mind has never busied itself much with abstract ideas and subtleties of philosophical or religious thought. Flights of fancy, impassioned bursts of sentiment, appeals to the heart rather than to the reason of an audience, are devices strange to his mental habit. He can be rhetorical, but he very seldom climbs to any height of eloquence. Among all the speeches hitherto delivered in the Japanese Diet, it would be difficult to find a passage deserving the latter epithet. Another notable point is that oratory has gradually gone out of fashion. Members no longer care to talk as they did when the Assembly was