Читать книгу A History of the Japanese People - Kikuchi Dairoku - Страница 126

A generally accepted belief is that the study of the Chinese classics exercised a marked ethical influence upon the Japanese nation. That is a conclusion which may be profitably contrasted with the views of Japan's most distinguished historians. Mr. Abe Kozo says: "Acquaintance with the Chinese classics may be supposed to have produced a considerable moral effect on the people of Japan. Nothing of the kind seems to have been the case. The practical civilization of China was accepted, but not her ethical code. For any palpable moral influence the arrival of Buddhism had to be awaited. Already the principles of loyalty and obedience, propriety, and righteousness were recognized in Japan though not embodied in any written code." Dr. Ariga writes: "Our countrymen did not acquire anything specially new in the way of moral tenets. They must have been surprised to find that in China men did not respect the occupants of the throne. A subject might murder his sovereign and succeed him without incurring the odium of the people." Rai Sanyo says: "Moral principles are like the sun and the moon; they cannot be monopolized by any one country. In every land there are parents and children, rulers and ruled, husbands and wives. Where these relations exist, there also filial piety and affection, loyalty and righteousness may naturally be found. In our country we lack the precise terminology of the classics, but it does not follow that we lack the principles expressed. What the Japanese acquired from the classics was the method of formulating the thought, not the thought itself."