The Foundations of Japan | Page 4

and forgetful at
times of the warning that "to spend too much Time in Studies is Sloth."

What I had transcribed before leaving Japan I have now been able in
the course of a leisured year in England to overhaul and to supplement
by up-to-date statistics in an extensive Appendix. In the changed
circumstances in which the book is completed I have also ruthlessly
transferred to this Appendix all the technical matter in the text, so that
nothing shall obstruct the way of the general reader. At some future
date there may be by another hand a book about Japan in terms of soils,
manures and crops. That is the book the War saved me from writing. In
the present work I have the opportunity which so few authors have
enjoyed of jettisoning all technics into an Appendix.
[Illustration: Shin Koron "BYGONE DAYS IN JAPAN" IS THE
TITLE OF THIS CARTOON]
"It is necessary," says a wise modern author, "to meditate over one's
impressions at leisure, to start afresh again and again with a clearer
vision of the essential facts." And a Japanese companion of my
journeys writes, "Never can you be sorry that this book is coming late.
This time of delay has been the best time; we have had enough of first
impressions." The justification for this volume is that, in spite of the
difficulties attending the composition of it, it may be held to offer a
picture of some aspects of modern Japan to be found nowhere else.
Politics is not for these pages, nor, because there are so many charming
books on æsthetic and scenic Japan, do I write on Art or about Fuji,
Kyoto, Nara, Miyanoshita and Nikko. I went to Japan to see the
countryman. The Japanese whom most of the world knows are
townified, sometimes Americanised or Europeanised, and, as often as
not, elaborately educated. They are frequently remarkable men. They
stand for a great deal in modern Japan. But their untownified
fellow-countrymen, with the training of tradition and experience, of
rural schoolmasters and village elders, and, as frequently, of the
carefully shielded army, are more than half of the nation.
What is their health of mind and body? By what social and moral
principles and prejudices are they swayed? To what extent are they
adequate to the demand that is made and is likely to be made upon
them? In what respects are they the masters of their lives or are
mastered? In what ways are they still open to Western influences? And
in what directions are they now inclined to trust to "themselves alone"?
If the masters of the rural journal were sometimes mistaken in the

observations they made from horseback, I cannot have escaped
blundering in passing through more dimly lit scenes than they visited.
"If there appears here and there any uncorrectness, I do not hold myself
obliged to answer for what I could not perfectly govern."[8] But I have
laboriously taken all the precautions I could and I have obeyed as far as
possible a recent request that "visitors to the Far East should confine
themselves to what they have seen with their own eyes." As Huxley
wrote, "all that I have proposed to myself is to say, This and this have I
learned."
I take pleasure in recalling that some years ago I was approached with a
view to undertaking for the United States Government a
socio-agricultural investigation in a foreign country. Reared as I have
been in the whole faith of a citizen of the English-speaking world, I am
glad to think that the present volume may be of some service to
American readers. The United States is within ten days--Canada is
within nine--of Japan against Great Britain's month by the
Atlantic-C.P.R.-Pacific route and eight weeks by Suez. There are more
American visitors than British to Japan. It was America that first
opened Japan to the West, and the debt of Japan to American training
and stimulus is immense. But British services to Japan have also been
substantial. Great Britain was the first to welcome her within the circle
of the Great Powers, and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance did more for
Japan than some Japanese have been willing to admit. The problem of
Japan is the problem of the whole English-speaking world. Rightly
conceived, the interests of the British Empire and the United States in
the Far East are one and indivisible.
The Japanese version of the title of this book (kindly suggested by Mr.
Seichi Narusé) is _Nihon no Shinzui_, literally, "The Marrow" or "The
Core of Japan." His Excellency the Japanese Ambassador, the beauty of
whose calligraphy is well known, was so very kind as to allow me to
requisition his clever brush for the script for the engraver; but it must
be understood that Baron Hayashi