AWAKENING OF THE EAST	415
human history. Such all round transformation as we find
in modern Japan has, no doubt, been accomplished by many
another country, but only after a long process of natural
evolution as in England, or by violent revolution as in
Soviet Russia. In the ancient world, Greece displayed a
sudden and surprising gush of energy, after the overthrow
of Persia, and created a wonderful culture ; but Greece could
never be united. The feeble imperialism of Athens proved
abortive in the face of the irrepressible centrifugalism of the
Greeks. The Napoleon of Greece (Alexander) was a foreign-
er, and his work was even less effective than that of the
Little Corsican. But we have in modern Japan, the rare com-
bination of the creative energy of the ancient Greeks, the
revolutionary fervour of the modern Russian, and the in-
dustrial and technical efficiency of the English. And all
these characteristics have come to the forefront within less
than a century. Indeed, the menace of Japan to-day far
from blinding us in respect of these qualities, only sets
them off in a lurid light. In the Awakening of the East,
the rise of Japan, though chronologically the last, has been
the most significant and portentous. Since the seeds of
the present are imbedded in the past, we must trace the
history of Japan from where we left it in an earlier chapter.
A recent writer has -divided Japanese history into three
periods : (i) classical Buddhist Japan (1522-1603) 'sudden-
ly civilized by China and Korea, refined and softened by
religion, and creating the historic masterpieces of Japanese
literature and art;' (ii) feudal Japan of the Tokugawa
Shogunate (1603-1868), 'peaceful ...., isolated and self-
contained, seeking no alien territory and no external trade,
content with agriculture and wedded to art and philosophy ;'
(iii) modern Japan (since 1853 or 1868), 'seeking foreign
materials and markets, fighting wars of irrepressible expan-