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On his narrow chest he had a terrible legendary god of Nippon, and on his arms a cock and a skeleton, the latter with a fan and a lantern. On his belly was limned a nude woman.
I shall never be able to coax myself into any illusion of heroism in my adventures and I shall set down my most abject terrors in equal and impartial degree with the few occasions in which the instinct of self-preservation enabled me to rise to the need and bluff magnificently. The case of the submarine commander of Nippon was different.
"Poor child," mocked the artist, whose quick ears had caught the whisper. "Poor Nippon, rather, and poor old Kano, who has no better heir than this frail girl. Oh, Ando, I have clamored to the gods! I have made pilgrimages and given gifts, but there is no one to inherit my name and the traditions of my race. Nowhere can I find a Dragon Painter!"
All find themselves deceptively allured; some rush toward illusion, others do not wish to admit the positive chances for success, and both lacking moderation, they start from a basis of false premises from which they draw deplorable conclusions, thus defeating future success. The spirit of penetration, according to the old Nippon philosopher, is not always a natural gift.
Yet truth compels us to say that social morals in Dai Nippon, even with telegraphs and railways, are still more like those of ancient days than readers of rhapsodies by summer tourists might suppose.
In old Nippon the flower of kindness reaches full perfection when friend or foe suffers defeat. Justice could wait while mercy served. Pity urged willing messengers to bring restoratives, to summon doctors who pronounced the sick man in the clutches of fever.
Through its aged dim characters I read an edict issued in the days of long ago, banishing from the land of fair Nippon all Christians and Christianity. It threatened with relentless torture any attempt to promulgate the faith, and contained an order for all citizens to appear in the public place on a certain day for adherents of the new religion to recant, by stamping on the Cross.
At the moment when Admiral Perry's ships emerged out of the rain, Admiral Togo opened the battle by sending the following signal from the Satsuma: "To-day must avenge Kanagawa. As Commodore Perry then knocked with his sword at the gate of Nippon, so will we to-day burst open San Francisco's Golden Gate." The signal was greeted with enthusiasm and loud cries of "Banzai!" on board all the ships.
Despite Japanese independence and even arrogance in certain other lines, the thought of the demolition of cherished notions of vast antiquity is very painful. Critical study of ancient traditions is still dangerous, even in parliamentary Nippon.
But for the moment the English-speaking nations have a veto upon them, in virtue of possession, and the embargo put by the United States government upon the export of steel during the war caused a profound emotion in Nippon.
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