ABSTRACT
IN the development of Western civilization a distinction has been recognized between the duties that a man owes to the State and those that his own conscience enjoins. Socrates is honoured because he placed his devotion to justice and truth above the gods of the tribe and the city. Christianity has kept before us the gulf that separates the things that are Caesar’s and the things that are God’s. The rise of totalitarian States in Germany, Russia, and Italy is seen by those who are faithful to the noblest traditions of European civilization as a return to primitive barbarism. Now modern Japan does not recognize this fundamental distinction; and the ordinary Japanese can scarcely conceive of a good man who at the same time sets himself against the purposes of the State. Some writers have even boasted that in the Japanese State these two claims are reconciled or are harmoniously combined into a single loyalty and devotion. They speak of the Japanese nation as consisting of a great family with the Emperor at its head. The Emperor cannot be tyrannical or arbitrary, for he acts towards his subjects as a father towards his children; while the people feel towards the Emperor the veneration and honour that children have for their father, and in his service they realize their own best ideals. The Emperor is thus not merely a convenient constitutional instrument, whose power is to be defined by law and precedent. His relationship to his people is an emotional, not a legal, relationship; Japanese society cannot be conceived of without it. Moreover, the Emperor is divine, a descendant of the Sun-goddess. Just as the head of an ordinary Japanese family is the repository of the traditions of that family in his lifetime and attracts to himself from the other members a devotion owed to the whole line, so the Emperor embodies the historical experience of the race and is revered accordingly. He thus draws to himself not merely the emotion associated with the State and the family, but also that which is usually paid to a Church or the founder of a religion.
