100 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME, AND ASIA 



This state of things, notwithstanding the attempts vainly made 

 by Great Britain and Russia during the first years of the nineteenth 

 century, was to last until the arrival of the American Commodore 

 Matthew Calbraith Perry, who in July, 1853, anchored at Uraga 

 at the entrance of the Bay of Yedo, and who signed on March 31, 

 1854, at Kanagawa, the first treaty concluded between Japan and 

 a foreign power. 



Was the revolution of 1868 for Japan but one of the numerous 

 crises which troubled its already long and not too serene existence? 

 Was it a mere accident for that country, progressing by jumps 

 and bounds and not by evolution? or was it the starting-point of 

 a civilization copied from that of Europe? Has she covered only the 

 old culture of Yamato with a superficial varnish? Has she completely 

 destroyed it to replace it by a new one? I greatly doubt it, or rather 

 I do not believe it, as it cannot be that in some fifty years a radical 

 transformation can reach the deeper layers of the population. The 

 Japanese obey two motives in their warlike undertakings; one is 

 dictated by a tradition of war, by an unsurpassed bravery of which 

 they have given undeniable proofs for centuries; the other by reasons 

 of a purely economic order. Japan is at heart a warlike nation; in 

 every man of Nippon, the soul of a samurai is asleep. No, a people 

 cannot be modified in a few years. 



Japan has behind her a past of struggles, heroism, and art, with 

 very little original literature. Endowed with the genius of application 

 more than with that of invention, with no great commercial aptitude, 

 a hero or a pirate according to circumstances, full of imprtvu, as his 

 tradition borrowed from strangers does not trace to him a firm line 

 of conduct, the Japanese lives on reminiscences and is, above all, an 

 imitator; he is not gifted with imagination; an artist and a warrior, 

 he is not a philosopher. Does he give us now more than the appear- 

 ance of a Western civilization? I hope so for the sake of Japan herself, 

 as, if it were otherwise, we should have but a fragile edifice erected 

 by a superficial as well as a versatile people. What an interesting and 

 curious sight it offers to the gaze of the observer! 



In the midst of the peoples which from the West and the East 

 rush to the assault of the Middle Kingdom, Japan stands as a young 

 and vigorous power which, in 1868, by a revolution without a parallel 

 in the history of mankind, transformed herself from a nation most 

 hostile to foreign intrusion to one of the most progressive of the 

 globe. We may seek in great part the solution of the Asiatic pro- 

 blem in the future of Japan, which acts a part in no way inferior to 

 that of the Westerners, and which finds itself to be the stumbling- 

 block to the ambitious designs of the foreign powers. Will Japan 

 be at the head of the invaders come from near and far, as at Pe- 

 king in 1900? Will she be, on the contrary, having galvanized the 



