Although the author talks about Japan specifically, can be said of any culture really. Something about literature that has stood the tests of time, or customs and other human knowledge honored by time.
"The tendency among the natives of this country to neglect to study and hence to fail to appreciate the numberous interesting phases of the lives of their ancestors, immediate and remote, however unavoidable, has the effect of keeping locked away in storehouses, access to which few foreigners enjoy, numerous treasures, literary, scientific, philosophical, and ethical, which, were they exposed to view, would be highly appreciatded by the woprld at large, and would go far to make the national chaacter of the Japanese better understood than it now is. It is in the calm waters of ancient Japanese life that the traits of the national character are the most clearly reflected. There is too much motion and change in the life of modern days to allow of anything being portrayed but a representation at once broken and ill-defined, that is more of a caricature than a picture."
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