Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/311

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NOUMENA.
289

hypnotized subject can be induced to adopt are at large on its streets, worn in the two cases from the same motive, unreasoned response to stimulus from without; whence the irrationality of the result. Nor do the other subjects see anything ludicrous in it all.

The action may be said to begin, but by no means to stop, with costume. Customs, from top to toe, are undergoing the same foreign-motived transmogrification. The imitation pot-hat and accompanying aura of billycockism sit no less comically upon a kimono and cloven socks than does a modern Tōkyō court of justice upon an old-fashioned Japanese case.

Hypnotoidal imitation is no new trait of these people. They showed the same proclivity in just the same way more than a millennium ago. China was the operator then, as the western world is the operator now. Susceptibility to suggestion lies at the root of the race.