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THE REASON 305
invincible. It is the Japanese officers who have
made Japan victorious.
Out in the Far East a people of warriors,
sailors, artists, and excellent artisans, with an old
and in many respects highly developed culture,
comes into contact with another people which has
evolved along the completely different lines of
Western civilization ;
it perceives that this other
culture is superior to its own, and that to attain
the same high standard it must relay the founda-
tions of its whole national life. Endowed with a
rare faculty of assimilation and discrimination, the
people adopt what is found good and serviceable
in the new culture, and succeed in really absorb-
ing it and making it its own, building further along
the new lines. In a wonderfully short space of
time the change is made, the newly acquired
civilization is digested and blended with their
older culture, a renaissance the like of which the
world has never seen is accomplished in less than
half a century, lifting a semi-barbaric people to
the level of the most accomplished of the Western
nations.
The European renaissance in the sixteenth
century was essentially spiritual, and was built on
the foundations of the culture of a kindred people ;
the Japanese renaissance, on the other hand, is
essentially practical, and based on the experiences
and the development of completely alien nations.
But there is one point which is common to both
of these events, the enthusiasm by which the
powerful movement is embraced by the whole
nation, the energetic, persevering desire in all
classes of the people to share in this develop-
ment, working towards a well-defined and clearly
understood goal, and the new strength, self-
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