THE CAUSE OF THE JAPANESE VICTORIES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9059, 7 April 1908, Page 3

THE CAUSE OF THE JAPANESE VICTORIES.

In a French magazine Loo-Py writes on the Chinese and the Japanese, and seeks to correct the general and errone9us idea in Europe that these two nations are of the same race. The Chinese belong to the Mongolian race and the Japanese to the Malayan race, and it is this difference in origin which has determined their distinctive characters. The Japanese, free politically and religiously, voluntarily come into contact with Europeans, and boi-row their ideas, manners, and modern inventions. The Chinese, proud of their ancient civilisation, conscious of their strength, and distrusting the Westerns who have entered the Asiatic continent to commit all sorts of misdeeds, only accept the teaching!) of Europe after much hesitation ana under the pressure of events. The Japanese have transformed themselves into Europeans with the spirit of juveniles, as they formerly tried to become Chinese, even in thenvices. In Chinese society the family is much more solidly constituted than it ia in Japan. The writer concludes with some interesting remarks on the true causes of the spirit of heroism of the Japanese army. The spirit of heroism, he says, is to be found in the firm belief of the Japanese in the doctrine uf metempsychosis, spread by Buddhism. The Japanese are more fervent than the Chinese, and according to the most recent census the seven chief sects of Japanese Buddhism possessed no fewer that 88,000 temples. According to their system of metempsychosis there are six kinds of transmigration of the soul after the death of the humun body. In the first, the soul of a man who has lived honestly in his first, moral life passes into the body of princes, nobles, superior officers, and ministers. In the second, bad subjects are punished by being reincarnated in the bodies of widowers, orphans, blind persons, and cripples. Jn the third, the wicked become horses and beasts of burden in expiation of their crimes. The fourth converts them into animals of lower degree; the fifth changes them into fishes and other aquatic creatures, and the sixth condemn them to become insects oy more hideous creatures. These beliefs animate the Japanese soldier with admirable courage and contempt for death.