ABSTRACT
A nation should be judged not only by its standard of morality but by the degree in which it lives up to or falls short of that standard. This chapter remarked that Japanese morality was a thorny subject. The subject of the morality of the Japanese is one that has been much discussed for many years past. Morality, strictly speaking, is the practice of moral duties apart from religion or doctrine; it treats of actions as being right or wrong, is ethics. The old morality play especially concerned with the relations of the sexes; it was a drama in which allegorical representations of all the virtues and vices were introduced as dramatis persona. The whole subject of morality between the sexes is one upon which a portly volume might be written. The chapter concludes by reiterating the expression of the people belief that the Japanese are, when rightly considered, a moral people.
