geographic isolation has made them very conscious of borrowings from abroad, it has also led them to develop one of the most distinctive cultures to be found in any civilized area of comparable size.
Take, for example, things as basic as domestic architecture and the manner in which the Japanese live at home. The thick straw floor mats, the sliding paper panels in place of interior walls, the open, airy structure of the whole house, the recess for art objects, the charcoal heating braziers, the peculiar wooden and iron bathtubs, and the place of bathing in daily life as a means of relaxation at the end of a day’s work and, in winter, as a way of restoring a sense of warmth and well-being—all these and many other simple but fundamental features of home and daily life are unique to Japan and attest to an extremely distinctive culture rather than one of simple imitation.
Isolation has also made of the Japanese a highly self-conscious people, unaccustomed to dealing with foreigners individually or as a nation. The Japanese are always strongly conscious that they are Japanese and that all other peoples are foreigners. Isolation has made them painfully aware of their differences from other peoples and has filled them with an entirely irrational sense of superiority, which they are anxious to prove to themselves and to others. Isolation has made it difficult for them to understand the attitudes and actions of other peoples. In short, the factor of geographic isolation during the past two thousand years has helped fashion national traits which eventually, and almost inevitably, led Japan to political isolation and to crushing defeat in war.
