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people. Or perhaps one should say that this combination of natural and artificial isolation enabled
30
them more than most other peoples to develop on their own and in their own way. Certainly the Japanese
throughout history have been culturally a very distinctive people, diverging sharply even from the patterns
in nearby China and Korea, from which much of their higher civilization originally came. Even today,
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Japan occupies a unique spot in the world as the one major industrialized and fully modernized nation that
has a non-Western cultural background.
(3)
Isolation has had a number of important by-products. It has made other people, even the nearby
40
Koreans and Chinese, look on the Japanese as being somehow different and has produced in the Japanese a
strong sense of self-identity. Such things are hard to measure, but the Japanese do seem to view the rest of
the world, including even their close cultural and racial relatives in Korea and China, with an especially
45
strong «we» and «they» dichotomy. Throughout history they have displayed almost a mania for
distinguishing between «foreign» borrowings and elements regarded as natively «Japanese.»
(4)
Isolation thus has ironically caused the Japanese to be acutely aware of anything that comes from
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outside and to draw special attention to its foreign provenance. The civilization of any country is much
more the product of external influences than of native invention. If one subtracted everything from English
culture that had foreign roots or antecedents, there would be little left. But borrowing from abroad has
55
usually been a slow and unconscious process or at least went unrecorded. The Japanese, on the other hand,
were always sharply conscious of the distinction between «foreign» and «native» and made the fact of
cultural borrowing a major theme of their history. Thus they have given themseves and others the
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impression that they are somehow uniquely cultural borrowers. A myth has grown up that, unlike other
peoples, the Japanese are mere mimics, incapable of invention themselves and unable to understand the
inner essence of what they have borrowed. In actuality, their isolation has probably forced them to invent a
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greater part of their culture and develop a more distinctive set of characteristics than almost any
comparable unit of people in the world. What distinguishes them is not their imitativeness but rather their
distinctiveness and their skill at learning and adapting while not losing their own cultural identity. Others
have tried to do the same but with less success.
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(6) Another by-product of isolation may be Japan's unusual degree of cultural homogeneity, which has
already been remarked upon. Of course, isolation and homogeneity do not necessarily go together, as
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be can seen in the case of the British Isles. But prolonged separation from the outside world perhaps aided
in the spread of uniform cultural patterns throughout the Japanese islands, despite their internal barriers of
terrain.
*****
(7) The theme of homogeneousness will reappear frequently in our story, but let me illustrate it here by
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the racial composition of the Japanese people, which might be regarded as part of the natural setting for
Japanese civilization. The Japanese, like all other peoples are the product of long and largely unrecorded
mixtures. In fact, the diversity of facial types in Japan suggests considerable mixing in the past. But the im
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portant point is that, whatever their origins, the Japanese today are the most thoroughly unified and
culturally homogeneous large bloc of people in the whole world, with the possible exception of the North
Chinese. There are few important physical variations throughout the islands, and, while there are
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differences in folkways and accents, not unlike those among the English, French, Germans, and Italians,
there are none of the sharp divisions as between Gaelic and English speakers and Protestants and Catholics
in the British Isles, between speakers of French, Breton, German, and Basque in France, or the profound
95
differences of all sorts between north and south Italians.
(8) Actually the Japanese islands from a sort of cul-de-sac into which various peoples drifted over time
and, finding no exit, were forced to mix with later comers. Among these were the Ainu, who may represent
100 an early type of man dating from a period before the modern races became clearly differentiated. In any
case, they combine some characteristics of the white race, notably their hairiness efface and body, with
characteristics associated with other races. Thus the Ainu may account for the somewhat greater hairiness
105 of some Japanese as compared to most other members of the Mongoloid race. At one time the Ainu, or
people who at least were in part their ancestors, occupied either all or most of the Japanese islands, and
until the eighth century they still controlled the northern third of the island of Honshu. But bit by bit they
110 were conquered and absorbed by the main body of Japanese, until today fewer than 20,000 Ainu survive as
a culturally identifiable group in the northern island of Hokkaido, and even these are on the brink of
absorbtion.
115 (9) Basically the Japanese are a Mongoloid people, much like their neighbors on the nearby Asian