Like Usanians in the last half of the 20c, Japanese in the middle part of the Tokugawa Era often exhibited a smug sense of superiority vis-à-vis foreign countries

You do not love Maria; Longaville Did never sonnet for her sake compile, Nor never lay his wreathed arms athwart His loving bosom to keep down his heart.

The inquiry thus made, does his solvency prove dubious? Seizing his person affords no security. In jail, or in a spunging-house, his effects, for every purpose of removal or dissipation, are as much in his power as if he were at home. Secure the effects themselves, all removal, all dissipation is at end.

He had not been a very nice man, but his unniceness had been, of course, strictly irrelevant.