Woe to the native professor who strays from the path of
orthodoxy. His wife and children (and in Japan every man,
however young, has a wife and children) will starve. From
the late Prince Ito's grossly misleading "Commentary on the
Japanese Constitution" down to school compendiums, the absurd
dates are everywhere insisted upon. This despite the fact
that the mythology and the so-called early history are
recorded in the same works, and are characterised by like
miraculous impossibilities; that the chronology is palpably
fraudulent; that the speeches put into the mouths of ancient
Mikados are centos culled from the Chinese classics; that
their names are in some cases derived from Chinese sources;
and that the earliest Japanese historical narratives, the
earliest known social usages, and even the centralised
Imperial form of Government itself, are all stained through
and through with a Chinese dye, so much so that it is no
longer possible to determine what percentage of old native
thought may still linger on in fragments here and there. In
the face of all this, moral ideals, which were of common
knowledge derived from the teaching of the Chinese sages, are
now arbitrarily referred to the "Imperial Ancestors." Such,
in particular, are loyalty and filial piety--the two virtues
on which, in the Far-Eastern world, all the others rest. It
is, furthermore, officially taught that, from the earliest
ages, perfect concord has always subsisted in Japan between
beneficent sovereigns on the one hand, and a gratefully loyal
people on the other. Never, it is alleged, has Japan been
soiled by the disobedient and rebellious acts common in other
countries; while at the same time the Japanese nation, sharing
to some extent in the supernatural virtues of its rulers, has