RELIGION AND RITES
about the impression that such differentiation must ultimately produce upon the mind of the nation. In point of fact Christians do not stand aloof. They bow their heads and burn incense before the shrines in company with the disciples of Shaka and of Shintō. How much violence they do to their own religious convictions in thus acting, how much homage they pay to the god of expediency, need not be inquired. "Men can be strangled with a strand of soft silk," says a Japanese proverb. The impalpable essence of Japanese patriotism takes the place of the soft strand in this instance. The divine origin of the Emperor, the unbroken line of his descent from the immortals, the guardianship that his deified ancestors extended to the realm and its people, — these are essential bases of Japanese patriotism. It is a passionate patriotism, a fierce patriotism, overlaid from time to time in the past by ashes of disloyal ambition or domestic dissension, but now fanned into strong flame by the wind of Western masterfulness and intolerance. Whether any Japanese subject could openly dissociate himself from the tenets of this national cult — for patriotism in modern Japan is nothing less than a national cult — and could yet lead a pleasant, peaceful existence, is at least problematical. At any rate, there has been no evident tendency towards dissociation. Some compromise seems to have been effected between conscience and convention. It must be added, also, that worship
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