About the middle of the 16th century Western civilization began to
exert an influence on the Japanese, stimulating them to greater efforts.
These activities culminated in the invasion of Korea and the sending
of a number of missions of investigation, as we should call them today,
as far away as Europe. The decline of the Ming dynasty in China,
and the intense rivalries among European nations coincided with the
nationalism of the Tokugawa era in Japan when foreign intercourse
was shut off for over two hundred years. This seclusion was broken
down from the East, where the descendants of the Europeans had con-
quered the American continent and set sail from the eastern shores of
the Pacific to find the Far East once more.
  The nineteenth century was a period of great intellectual, political
and industrial activity in Europe and America. It is noteworthy
that it coincided with great developments in Japan, who welcomed
intercourse with the West, and set herself to learn from Europe and
America, instead, as she had previously done, from China and to a
lesser extent from Korea.
  The World War and its aftermath-intense national hatreds, bank-
ruptcy and political instability in the West-together with great
industrial development in Japan, have combined to lead many
elements in the country to think that perhaps they have learned all
that the West has to teach them, and that it may be better to reduce
foreign contacts to a minimum and develop a Japanese milieu more
suited to their needs.
  This point of view coincides with the world craze for what is
termed self-sufficiency, and has made the task of the intense national-
ists much easier. They point to efforts made in many quarters to
keep out Japanese imports as evidence of the superiority of Japanese
products and assure their fellow countrymen that Japan has made
such progress that Western civilization has nothing further to offer
and Japan has no longer any need for foreign teaching. This na-
tionalist urge manifests itself in many ways. It is largely the basis
of the Japanese demand for naval parity; it runs through the Japa-
nese insistence upon Japan's superior or special position in China:
China was once Japan's teacher and must be made to realize that Japan
has thrown off all leading strings and is equal to any one, East or West.
The East, with Japan as leader, will set up a balanced economy to
offset Western aggression.
  As would be expected, the nationalist or exclusivist tendency is more
noticeable in Army and Navy circles than elsewhere, although it would
be a mistake to assume that the armed services are exclusively na-
tionalist or that the civilian population is free from the tendency.
The Army and the Navy however are pretty thoroughly imbued with
it. Their influence in this direction is manifested in many ways,



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