ABSTRACT
While the Japanese nation was being entangled in social unrest and political instability, the World War broke out in Europe. Japan had experienced two wars fairly recently, which stimulated national self-consciousness and brought on many new problems; but the disasters and miseries of war were not brought home to the people at large, since the battlefields were far away from the homeland. The frequency and extension of labour strikes brought in their train the rise of labour organizations. No period before had witnessed in Japan so many publications on the labour movements, Marxism, syndicalism, social reconstruction, and so on, as the ten years following the Great War. One outstanding feature of the spiritual and social ferment is the general discredit of all the existing religions, including Christianity, and the appearance of new movements ranging between impetuous revivalism to calm self-renunciation.
