For the first time in 600 years Japan was threatened by foreign aggression. One among many differences between the 19th century American threat and the 13th-century Mongol invasions is this: 13th-century Japan was fiercely militarist, 19th-century Japan was impotently militarist.
What to do? There were two schools of thought. One favored resuscitating the indomitable ¡°Japanese spirit¡± (yamatodamashii) that had put the Mongol invaders to flight. The other, seeing that as hopeless, proposed Plan B: bunmei kaika ¡ª ¡°civilization.¡±
Meaning what? Different things to different people. A thousand years earlier, Japan had been ¡°civilized¡± by China. Chinese literature, Chinese government, Chinese religion, art, morals, dress, architecture, were absorbed wholesale, indiscriminately. Backward, backwater Japan became a sort of apprentice China. A critical sense, maturing over time, sifted, reshaped, ¡°Japanized¡± the whole vast inheritance into what the world knows and admires today as ¡°Japanese culture.¡±
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