Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1905 — JAPANESE PATRIOTISM. [ARTICLE]

JAPANESE PATRIOTISM.

Loyalty to the itmperor Is Its Great Concomitant. • The love of ones’s fatherland is ’common to the natives of a,, countries, but in Japanese there aia certain’ things peculiar to itself. f . When we consoler - Japanese pairiot- ‘ ism we must neiver lose sight of its great concomitant, loyalty to the em-r-peror, two passions are so closely united in the breast of an ordinary Japanese that he can hardly conceive of one without the other. When a Jaiaflese says: “I love my country,” a great jar; -bven the greater part, of his idea of his “country” it taken up by the ‘.emperor and the imperial family. 'His duty to hip country., as conceived by,him, frst of all, duty to his emperoi-. ’Moreover, to* a group of islands with 5u millions of people living on them His forefathers and descenda-.Jgjare also taken in- account! To him Cne present and future generafon* aie commingled into one, so that if weanalyze the idea of his kuni, country,, as understood by him. we find it composed of the following elements; 1. The imperial ancestors. 2. The reigning emperor. 3. The imperial family. 4. The imperial descendants. 5. His own ancesto s. 6. His own family and relations. 7. His descendants. 8. Hiis fellow-countrymen, their families and re’ations. 9. Their ancest rs. 10. Their descendants. 11. The extent of land or lands occupied by his race. The Japanese knows that Me own’ ancestors served those of the emperor.. Nay, lie knows that., if his own genealogy he traced to bygone ages it will be found more or less connected! with that of the imperial household. In short, the Japanese are members of one vast family with the emperor at the head and representative or i*„s main stock. The emperor is by birth the head of the nation. Neither he* nor any of his ancestors came to the* "throne by ruse of violence. Snnnc-ce Abraham had founded an empire im Palestine —that his heirs in an unbroken line ruled over the twel etribes, themselves descendants of Abraham, and that the empire continued’powerful to this da.v; suppose th s,. and you have an idea somewhat si.iiliar to that of the empire of Ja’ an.— Nobushige Amenomori in the Atlantic Monthly.