ronment and the exiguity of land and resources for a large and growing population for which family values precluded abortion and small families, the Japanese have had to develop a keen spirit of perseverance and competitiveness. The survival mechanisms could only be designed, applied, and maintained if implacable discipline were enforced. This strength through unity could, in turn, only be achieved and maintained through adherence to tradition. "Tradition! Tradition!" sings the Jewish Fiddler-on-the-Roof, because history has taught him that it is the surest weapon against energy dissipation and group enfeeblement.
Physical insularity, scarcity of natural resources, overpopulation, and ethnic homogeneity logically led to an insular mentality. It, in turn, created a fear of foreign intrusion, and the defensive construction of a racial, national, and cultural identity. Even today, there are countless examples of racism, sanctioned by the State. There is in every Japanese an ambivalent attitude towards "foreigners": one needs to copy them because they have achieved more than we (feeling of inferiority), but one also needs to keep them apart lest their mores corrupt the purity of ours (feeling of superiority). Insularity, unfortunately, leads to egocentricity and, eventually, to self-destruction: one cannot feed on oneself eternally. A closed system evolves toward a state of maximum entropy--inevitable social decline and degeneration. There comes a time when the isolated insular needs to break the self-imposed barriers. That time is when the initial fear of contact with outside devils, such as the visiting Portuguese merchants and Spanish Jesuits (XVIth century) and the American might and conquerors (XXth century), has been not overcome but overlaid with a thirst for acquiring the knowledge and wealth of the outsiders, and for
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