Influence on the Japanese Character.


In regard to the influence of Buddhism upon the morals and character of
the Japanese, there is much to be said in praise, and much also in
criticism. It has aided powerfully to educate the people in habits of
gentleness and courtesy, but instead of aspiration and expectancy of
improvement, it has given to them that spirit of hopeless resignation
which is so characteristic of the Japanese masses. Buddhism has so
dominated common popular literature, daily life and speech, that all
their mental procedure and their utterance is cast in the moulds of
Buddhist doctrine. The fatalism of the Moslem world expressed in the
idea of Kismet, has its analogue in the Japanese Ingwa, or "cause and
effect,"--the notion of an evolution which is atheistic, but viewed from
the ethical side. This idea of Ingwa is the key to most Japanese novels
as well as dramas of real life.[60] While Buddhism continually preaches
this doctrine of Karma or Ingwa,[61] the law of cause and effect, as
being sufficient to explain all things, it shows its insufficiency and
emptiness by leaving out the great First Cause of all. In a word,
Buddhism is law, but not gospel. It deals much with man, but not with
man's relations with his Creator, whom it utterly ignores. Christianity
comes not to destroy its ethics, beautiful as they are, nor to ignore
its metaphysics; but to fulfil, to give a higher truth, and to reveal a
larger Universe and One who fills it all--not only law, but a Law-giver.