Page:The Awakening of Japan, by Okakura Kakuzō; 1905.djvu/120

 has become a synonym for the degenerate, and the word "native" an epithet for slaves.

In Japan the race of those fiery patriots who fifty years ago shouted, "Away with the Western barbarians!" with all the lusty enthusiasm of the Chinese Boxers, is entirely gone. The tremendous change which has since come over our political life, and the material advantages we have gained by foreign contact, have so completely revolutionized national sentiment in regard to the West that it has become almost impossible for us to conceive what it was that so aroused the antagonism of our grandfathers. On the contrary, we have become so eager to identify ourselves with European civilization instead of Asiatic that our continental neighbors regard us as renegades—nay,