Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/163

 If the reader asks why to Chinese philosophy imported into Japan results are here attributed that did not attend its propagandism in the land of its origin, the only answer is that the same seed may produce dissimilar fruit in different soils.

That a connection existed between the religious creed of the nation and the castes into which society was divided, is apparent from the nomenclature of these castes, namely, the Shimbetsu, or "divine tribe," to which the sovereign and princes of the blood belonged, — in other words, the tribe including all direct descendants of the deities; the Kwobetsu, or "imperial tribe," composed of all remote descendants from the heavenly stock; and the Bambetsu, or "foreign tribe," consisting of the foreign elements of the population. The difference indicated by these terms is not clearly explicable. Japanese commentators are disposed to interpret Bambetsu in its literal sense, that is to say, as indicating, first, such of the aboriginal inhabitants as fell under the sway of the invaders, and secondly, aliens who, having either attached themselves to the Japanese proper during the latter's passage across the Asiatic continent to the Far-Eastern isles, or immigrated thither afterwards from Korea and China, were finally naturalised in Japan. There is also a plausible theory that inasmuch as the last and ultimately dominant body of Japanese immigrants found a part of the islands already under the sway of men who were not of the aboriginal race and whose