Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/114

 are practically inoperative in Japan. People uncomplainingly endure many things besides journalistic abuses. They endure vexatious slowness in the transaction of administrative affairs; they have no effective perception that public servants, being paid by the public, should really be servants of the public ; they utter not a word of protest against abuses which in Europe or America would arouse a storm of indignant denunciation. Never was there a nation whose customs illustrate more forcibly the old saying that what is everybody's business is nobody's business. It would seem at first sight that this habit of mind may be the result of traditional submissiveness to authority. But that explanation is not sufficient. Men who in local assemblies, in the Diet, in the columns of the press and on the platform, show little respect for officialdom, would not be likely to adopt an entirely subservient mien on other occasions. Besides, displays of long-suffering are not confined to the people's attitude towards those in power. The mood may be observed in all the affairs of daily life. Nuisances of every description, obtrusive, noisy, or noisome, are endured without open protest. The fact is that courtesy and philosophy combine to dictate a show of indifference. A Japanese finds it abhorrently rude to take querulous notice of a neighbour's habits or idiosyncrasies, whatever discomfort or inconvenience they may cause himself, and no character seems to him less respectable than that of a fussy, sensi-