The popular religious ideas--especially the ideas derived from Buddhism
-and the curious superstitions touched upon in these sketches are
little shared by the educated classes of New Japan. Except as regards
his characteristic indifference toward abstract ideas in general and
metaphysical speculation in particular, the Occidentalised Japanese of
to-day stands almost on the intellectual plane of the cultivated
Parisian or Bostonian. But he is inclined to treat with undue contempt
all conceptions of the supernatural; and toward the great religious
questions of the hour his attitude is one of perfect apathy. Rarely does
his university training in modern philosophy impel him to attempt any
independent study of relations, either sociological or psychological.
For him, superstitions are simply superstitions; their relation to the
emotional nature of the people interests him not at all. [1] And this
not only because he thoroughly understands that people, but because the
class to which he belongs is still unreasoningly, though quite
naturally, ashamed of its older beliefs. Most of us who now call
ourselves agnostics can recollect the feelings with which, in the period
of our fresh emancipation from a faith far more irrational than
Buddhism, we looked back upon the gloomy theology of our fathers.
Intellectual Japan has become agnostic within only a few decades; and
the suddenness of this mental revolution sufficiently explains the
principal, though not perhaps all the causes of the present attitude of
the superior class toward Buddhism. For the time being it certainly
borders upon intolerance; and while such is the feeling even to religion
as distinguished from superstition, the feeling toward superstition as
distinguished from religion must be something stronger still.

But the rare charm of Japanese life, so different from that of all other
lands, is not to be found in its Europeanised circles. It is to be found