As the
Japanese language shows, every faculty of man was subordinated to this
idea. Confucianism even conditioned the development of Japanese grammar,
as it also did that of the Koreans, by multiplying honorary prefixes and
suffixes and building up all sociable and polite speech on perpendicular
lines. Personality was next to nothing and individuality was in a
certain sense unknown. In European languages, the pronoun shows how
clearly the ideas of personality and of individuality have been
developed; but in the Japanese language there really are no pronouns, in
the sense of the word as used by the Germanic nations, at least,
although there are hundreds of impersonal and topographical substitutes
for them.[14] The mirror, of the language itself, reflects more truth
upon this point of inquiry than do patriotic assertions, or the protests
of those who in the days of this Meiji era so handsomely employ the
Japanese language as the medium of thought. Strictly speaking, the ego
disappears in ordinary conversation and action, and instead, it is the
servant speaking reverently to his master; or it is the master
condescending to the object which is "before his hand" or "to the side"
or "below" where his inferior kneels; or it is the "honorable right"
addressing the "esteemed left.
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