The future of Japan may, I think, be considered under some half-dozen
headings: The physical improvement of the Japanese race; Its moral
advancement; Its intellectual advancement; Japan's national future;
Her political future; and finally, The influence of the Japanese
Empire on other Far Eastern races and on the world generally.
As regards the physical improvement of the race, I admit this is a
somewhat difficult subject in regard to which to make any forecast.
The stature of the Japanese is undoubtedly small, and the chest
measurement small likewise. At the same time, any one moving about
Japan must have noticed the fact that there are quite a large number
of very tall men and women in the country, and that a goodly
proportion of the inhabitants compare favourably in their physical
attributes with European people. As I have observed elsewhere in this
book, the dietary of the Japanese race has for many centuries back
been almost entirely a vegetarian one. I know very well that
vegetarianism has its advocates, and some of the arguments put forward
in support of it are plausible if not convincing. At the same time, I
think, it cannot be denied that those races which have been in the
habit of eating meat for many centuries have, as regards physique,
demonstrated that whether man was or was not intended to be a
carnivorous animal, his development into a carnivorous animal has at
any rate succeeded in enhancing and developing his physical powers. Of
late years there has been possibly as the result of intercourse with
Europeans, a large increase in the number of the inhabitants of Japan
who eat meat. This tendency on the part of the population is growing,
and I believe in the course of comparatively few years there will be a
radical change in the dietary of the people. This change, if it be
effected, must, I would suggest, have a material influence on their
physique. We all know that food is essential for the building up of
the human frame and its maintenance, and I think there are few people
who would question the fact that the condition of the human frame,
whether in individuals or the aggregates of individuals that we term
nations, must be largely affected by the food partaken of. I,
accordingly, look forward, not immediately of course, to a material
change in the general physique of the Japanese people. I am not, as I
know some persons are, of opinion that that change is likely to be
brought about by intermarriage or unions of a temporary nature between
Japanese and Europeans. There have been a few marriages, and there
have no doubt been a good many unions, but the effect on the national
breed has been small, and though it may be to some extent greater in
the future, I do not look in this direction for any alteration in the
physical characteristics of the Japanese people. That alteration will,
in my opinion, be brought about by a change in the food of the people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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