The Foundations of Japan | Page 4

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 ?sthetic 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 Narus��) 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 has seen nothing of the volume but the cover.
I greatly regret that the present conditions of book production make it impossible to reproduce more than one in thirty of my photographs.
It is in no spirit of ingratitude to my hosts and many other kind people in Japan that I have taken the decision resolutely to strike out