Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/114

 the former point, it will probably be nearer the truth to say that, essentially as the Japanese character differs from the usually defined Oriental type, it certainly includes an element of resignation which has no affinity with the stubborn resistance offered in the Occident even to ills that are recognised as inevitable. The Japanese long ago perceived that the natural force of certain appetites far exceeds the requirements of human well-being or happiness, and instead of setting themselves to redress this hopelessly disturbed equilibrium, they preferred to accept the fact and to subject its consequences to official control. It is unnecessary to seek more recondite causes for the growth and licensing of the social evil in Japan, or to discuss the great question whether to endue virtue with vicarious respect by the uncompromising and inefficient stigmatisation of vice, atones adequately for a consequent failure to check the ravages of the most terrible physical scourge that afflicts mankind. That is a problem inviting world-wide solution. The Japanese view of it is the view of continental Europe: they license prostitution. They proceed, also, a step farther than continental Europe, for they banish all the priestesses and paraphernalia of the vice to remote quarters of their cities, and enforce this ostracism with such successful rigour that the remaining quarters are absolutely free from any evidence of the evil. It has often been urged by the advocates of the non-licensing