Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/447

Rh The Dotards Society, on the contrary, is a clique of antiquated wits and passées beauties who have prudently determined to make the best even of old age, and to have a good time up to the very end. The Pock-mark Society, we believe, still exists, though vaccination has sadly thinned its ranks. The Society for the Abolition of Present-giving has (thank Heaven!) come to grief. In no country of the world do les petits cadeaux qui entretiennent l'amitié play a more charming part than in Japan. Japan is becoming prosaic fast enough in all conscience. Why ruthlessly pull up by the roots the few graces that remain?

 Society in Japan is almost purely official. There is nothing here corresponding to the English "county families," whose members may or may not accept office, but who, if they do so, add a lustre to it, far from its adding any to them. Neither is there any class superior by birth or by intellect, as in France or in America, which stands scornfully aloof and would deem it derogatory to take any part in the vulgar scramble for office. The Court is in Japan the sole and actual fountain of honour; fallen causes have in this land no partisans. Even money is comparatively little esteemed. There are few millionaires, and it so happens that the half-dozen men who have amassed large fortunes in business during the last twenty or thirty years are, for the most part, either indifferent to society or little qualified to shine in it. The Court (or whoever it is that acts in the name of the Court) has raised up a new bureaucracy on the ruins of the old feudalism,—a bureaucracy composed partly of men of good birth, partly of men of good brains sharpened by the best attainable training, that is, in the proper and original sense of the word, an aristocracy which is the state, which is society, and precludes the existence of any rival. Even the outward aspect of the country bears testimony to these peculiar social conditions. "Where are the country houses?" we have