Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/46

26 Open ports, huge fleets of steamers, thousands of miles of rails, telephone and telegraph wires, a navy ranking at least seventh in the world's list, a consolidated postal system, flourishing banks, and all else of like nature, are nothing more than signs of material progress. Like our allies, we have grown worldly wise, and have come to view the almighty dollar with a feeling akin to veneration. People point, and with justice, to the tremendous social revolution of the Restoration days; but where we have got rid of daimyō and shōmyō of hatamoto and samurai, have we not plutocrats and bureaucrats as potent and unconscionable as the most tyrannical of the one-time feudal barons? The outcast pariahs—the eta—no longer exist in law or name; but they exist in fact. The operatives of the Ōsaka mills, the wretched human shambles of the prostitute quarters, the sick and suffering poor—are these not social pariahs and even worse? We miss the sternly martial virtue of the days of yore; the unbending dignity of the true, the real Yamato-damashii (the spirit of Japanese chivalry). . . . Never were bribery and corruption more rife: the whole machinery of the State is suffering from this dry-rot; and even those who are called upon to set the country an example have their price. Nepotism is taking the place of clannish interdependence. One's fortunes are easily made if one happens to be a 'forty-second cousin ' of a favourite courtesan, a popular geisha, or a spoiled mistress."

"Irresponsible rhetoric," the reader may think, and indulged in the more freely because the writer chose to employ the English tongue, which is yet unknown to the majority of his countrymen. But these considerations do not apply to the official utterances of an