Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/52



VERY family has rules and methods of its own which it follows with regularity directly proportionate to their age. The members of a household newly franked with the stamp of gentility, look abroad for models of fashion and deportment, but the members of a household that has enjoyed pride of place through immemorial generations, enact their own canons, and obey them with scrupulosity that grows with obedience. For two thousand years, more or less, the Japanese nation lived the life of an independent and virtually secluded family, borrowing largely, indeed, from the conventions and precedents of its over-sea neighbours, but impressing upon everything foreign the mark of home genius, so that, though the metal remained alien, the coins struck from it bore domestic images and superscriptions. Little by little, the doings of the day, the etiquette of the season, the observances of the month, and the celebrations of the year were coded by custom and promulgated by practice, until the people