Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/25

Rh dread and dislike the invading trader, while imitating his methods, so far as they can grasp them, with the intention of ousting him as much as possible from their markets. Even the intellectual classes, quick to appreciate the value of Western science, arms, and government, are none the nearer spiritually through their acquisition. Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, whose passionate devotion to his adopted country has inspired many pæans of tender praise, yet writes: "Between the most elevated class of thoroughly modernised Japanese and the Western thinker anything akin to intellectual sympathy is non-existent: it is replaced on the native side by a cold and faultless politeness. Finally, a Tōkyō critic, whose language is as vigorous as his disillusion is genuine, complains thus bitterly in The Orient (April 1899) of "The Rest of the World":

"From first to last our foreign records have shown almost insatiable greed on the part of our treaty-allies. We have, it is true, asked for no favours; and it is equally certain that we have not received any. There never has been any real feeling of fraternal amity between us and our allies; and this not because we were not willing, indeed eager, to take the initiative, but because our treaty-allies have held superciliously aloof and grudged us an entrance into the comity of nations. All things considered, we do not find the debt of gratitude we owe to foreign lands beyond power of bearing. Civilisation? We had that before ever Commodore Perry came to Uraga and Mississippi Bay. Schools? Well, text-books are to be bought in the open market, and our students have always paid their way at Western universities. Railways? Yes, but look at the absurd price we had to pay for