In studying Japanese æsthetic characteristics, we noted how unbalanced was the development of their æsthetic sense. This proposition of unbalanced development applies with equal force to the imaginative faculty as a whole. Conspicuously lacking in certain directions, it is as conspicuously prominent in others. Rules of etiquette are the products of the æsthetic imagination, and in what land has etiquette been more developed than in feudal Japan? Japanese imagination has been particularly active in the political world. The passionate loyalty of retainers to their lord, of samurai to their daimyo, of all to their "kuni," or clan, in ancient times, and now, of the people to their Emperor, are the results of a vivid political idealizing imagination. Imperial apotheosis is a combination of the political and religious imagination. And in what land has the apotheosizing imagination been more active than in Japan? Ambition and self-conceit are likewise dependent on an active imaginative faculty. There can be no doubt the writers quoted above have drawn attention to some salient features of Japanese art. In the literature of the past, the people have not manifested that high literary imagination that we discover in the best literature of many other nations. This fact, however, will not justify the sweeping generalizations based upon it. Judging from the pre-Elizabethan literature, who would have expected the brilliancy of the Elizabethan period? Similarly in regard to the Victorian period of English literature. Because the Japanese have failed in the past to produce literature equal to the best of Western lands, we are not justified in asserting that she never will and that she is inherently deficient in literary imagination. In regard to certain forms of light fancy, all admit that Japanese poems are unsurpassed by those of other lands. Japanese amative poetry is noted for its delicate fancies and plays on words exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, of translation, or even of expression, to one unacquainted with the language. The deficiencies of Japanese literature, therefore, are not such as to warrant the conclusion that they both mark and make a fundamental difference in the race mind. For such differences as exist are capable of a sociological explanation. The prosaic matter-of-factness of the Japanese mind has been so widely emphasized that we need not dwell upon it here. There is, however, serious danger of over-emphasis, a danger into which all writers fall who make it the ground for sweeping condemnatory criticism. They are right in ascribing to the average Japanese a large amount of unimaginative matter-of-factness, but they are equally wrong in unqualified dogmatic generalizations. They base their inductions on insufficient facts, a habit to which foreigners are peculiarly liable, through ignorance of the language and also of the inner thoughts and life of the people.