There are signs, however, that the stage of imitation is past and that adaptation has begun. Here and there in Tōkyō may be seen buildings in which the solidity of foreign architecture has been grafted upon the Japanese type. Ten years ago, Japanese men who adopted foreign dress went about in misfitting garments, soiled linen, untidy shoes, and hats that had been discarded by the civilization for which they were made many seasons before they reached Japan. They wore Turkish towels about their necks and red blankets over their shoulders at the desire of unscrupulous importers, who persuaded them that towels for neck-cloths and blankets for overcoats were the latest styles of London and Paris. To-day one sees no such eccentricities of costume in the purely Japanese city of Tōkyō. Men who wear foreign dress wear it made correctly in every particular by Japanese tailors, shoemakers, and hatters. The standard has been attained, for men at least, and in foreign dress as well as in Japanese, the natural good taste of the people has begun to assert itself. So it will be in time with other new things adopted. As no single element of the Chinese civilization secured a permanent footing in Japan except such as could be adapted, not only to the national life, but to the national taste as well, so it will be with European things. All things that are adopted will be adapted, and whatever is adapted is likely in time to be improved and made more beautiful by the national instinct for beauty. During the transition, enormities are omitted and monstrosities are constructed, but when the standard is at last attained, we may expect that the genius of the race will triumph over the difficulties that it is now encountering. Individual Japanese who have lived long in Europe or America show the same nice discrimination in regard to foreign things that they do in their Japanese surroundings, and are rarely at fault in their taste. What is true of the individual now will be true of the nation when European standards have become common property. _Page 242._