It is clearly untenable, however, to argue that the Japanese agitation in California is wholly due to imaginary fear and aversion created in the minds of people by politicians and propagandists. The Japanese themselves are responsible for conditions which often justify some of the accusations, and which prompt exaggeration and misrepresentation. In the first place, the Japanese are a wholly different race, with different customs, manners, sentiment, language, traditions, and--not of least importance--of different physical appearance. Were these differences merely in kind, they would not be very repugnant, but when such differences involve qualitative difference they are particularly repulsive. It is, of course, impossible to pass judgment upon the relative superiority in all respects of things Occidental and Oriental; but western civilization naturally seems incomparably superior to American eyes. Mere difference of race alone gives no unpleasant feeling. When it is also a difference of quality, at least in appearance--and in this all must agree--it arouses our æsthetic repulsion. Even if a man be of different race and as ugly as a Veddah from Ceylon, if he remains a solitary example, or one of a very limited number of his kind, he would not only not arouse our antipathy but would even stimulate our curiosity, and many of us would spend money to see his quaint customs and manners. But when his followers increase in number and establish themselves in our midst, and carry on the struggle for existence until they are in the way of fairly matching ourselves, we begin to be alarmed and unconsciously learn to hate them. This is an exaggerated illustration, but it is precisely the process which has been taking place in California relative to the Japanese. The fact that the Japanese are looked upon rather favorably in the East is because there they are comparatively few in number and are not competitors of the Americans in the struggle for existence. Japanese Nationality. To a certain extent, the anti-Japanese sentiment in California as well as elsewhere is accentuated by the national principles of the Japanese Empire. It has a system of government which for various good reasons is unique. It embraces many points that are considered, from the standpoint of the Anglo-Saxon, undemocratic. The smooth operation of democracy has been hindered by some inherent defect in the national system, by lack of experience in representative government, and by the influence exerted through an unconstitutional power represented by the elder statesmen. To make the situation worse, by means of unscrupulous journalism, the American mind is duly impressed with the assumed bellicose and Prussian character of the Japanese Empire, the hatred of which becomes anti-Japanese sentiment in general.