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Lafcadio Hearn - Kokoro
result. Here was desperate remorse, praying only for pardon before death. And here was a populace -
perhaps the most dangerous in the Empire when angered - comprehending all, touched by all, satisfied
with the contrition and the shame, and filled, not with wrath, but only with the great sorrow of the sin, -
through simple deep experience of the difficulties of life and the weaknesses of human nature.
But the most significant, because the most Oriental, fact of the episode was that the appeal to remorse
had been made through the criminal's sense of fatherhood, - that potential love of children which is so
large a part of the soul of every Japanese.
There is a story that the most famous of all Japanese robbers, Ishikawa Goemon, once by night entering a
house to kill and steal, was charmed by the smile of a baby which reached out hands to him, and that he
remained playing with the little creature until all chance of carrying out his purpose was lost.
It is not hard to believe this story. Every year the police records tell of compassion shown to children by
professional criminals. Some months ago a terrible murder case was reported in the local papers, - the
slaughter of a household by robbers. Seven persons had been literally hewn to pieces while asleep; but
the police discovered a little boy quite unharmed, crying alone in a pool of blood; and they found
evidence unmistakable that the men who slew must have taken great care not to hurt the child.
II. THE GENIUS OF JAPANESE CIVILIZATION
I
Without losing a single ship or a single battle, Japan has broken down the power of China, made a new
Korea, enlarged her own territory, and changed the whole political face of the East. Astonishing as this
has seemed politically, it is much more astonishing psychologically; for it represents the result of a vast
play of capacities with which the race had never been credited abroad, - capacities of a very high order.
The psychologist knows that the so-called "adoption of Western civilization" within a time of thirty years
cannot mean the addition to the Japanese brain of any organs or powers previously absent from it. He
knows that it cannot mean any sudden change in the mental or moral character of the race. Such changes
are not made in a generation. Transmitted civilization works much more slowly, requiring even hundreds
of years to produce certain permanent psychological results.
It is in this light that Japan appears the most extraordinary country in the world; and the most wonderful
thing in the whole episode of her "Occidentalization" is that the race brain could bear so heavy a shock.
Nevertheless, though the fact be unique in human history, what does it really mean? Nothing more than
rearrangement of a part of the pre-existing machinery of thought. Even that, for thousands of brave
young minds, was death. The adoption of Western civilization was not nearly such an easy matter as
un-thinking persons imagined. And it is quite evident that the mental readjustments, effected at a cost
which remains to be told, have given good results only along directions in which the race had always
shown capacities of special kinds. Thus, the appliances of Western industrial invention have worked
admirably in Japanese hands, - have produced excellent results in those crafts at which the nation had
been skillful, in other and quainter ways, for ages. There has been no transformation,
- nothing more than the turning of old abilities into new and larger channels. The scientific professions
tell the same story. For certain forms of science, such as medicine, surgery (there are no better surgeons
in the world than the Japanese), chemistry, microscopy, the Japanese genius is naturally adapted; and in
all these it has done work already heard of round the world. In war and statecraft it has shown wonderful
power; but throughout their history the Japanese have been characterized by great military and political
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