ABSTRACT
T H E Japanese Constitution is to be esteemed the boldest experiment of the Japanese Revolution and the approved success of the Constitution would have been, or will be, its greatest achievement.
Hitherto the Constitution is the great, the conspicuous failure of the Revolution. Born it has been, but still-born. If one is to presume or to prescribe a natural order or progressive category of experiments for such an enterprise as the Europeanisation of Japan, the proportionate importance of the Constitutional experiment is measurable by its proportionate success. If the degree of success be practically nil in relation to all others of the series of experiments which compose the total enterprise, it is proved that the Constitution is the highest flight of the soaring effort of this unique People. One may reason further. If Japan be typical of Asia-if at heart she is Asia, and if her Revolution shall have registered some points of success in the use of all others the great institutions of modern European statehood, the single exceptional failure of the constitutional polity in a manner proves that this institution is in a special sense foreign to the Asiatic idea, that its
uses are in particular opposition to the preconceptions and prejudices of the Asiatic state system.
