INTRODUCTION. 



For three decades, Japan, more than any other Asiatic country, has 

 been attracting, to an ever-increasing extent, the attention and the 

 most widely varied interest of the Western world. Numberless 

 newspaper articles, treatises, and books, as different in contents 

 and value, as in the preparation, fitness, and inclination of their 

 authors, bear witness to this fact. Merchants, artists, and scholars 

 feel attracted in the highest degree by the fair Island-kingdom 

 Nippon, the " Land of the Rising Sun," in the eastern part of the Old 

 World, and by the civilization of its inhabitants and their many 

 interesting productions, both natural and artificial. But even 

 more effective in winning and keeping such sympathies, since the 

 notable occurrences to which the Perry expedition, in 1854, gave 

 the first impulse, has been and is the relation of the government 

 and people of Japan to the advances of Christian civilization. 

 In order to become acquainted with the results of this civilization, 

 and to turn them to account, the Japanese Government invited into 

 the country, from the greatest and foremost lands of Christian cul- 

 ture, educated men as teachers and organizers ; while, on the other 

 hand, it sent forth ambitious and talented young men into the 

 West, to complete their education for the good of their fatherland. 



Ofiftcials in high positions, moreover, have repeatedly appeared 

 among us, with the same intent, and have made it their business 

 to master our principal systems of administration, popular edu- 

 cation, and industrial activity. And we have further proofs of the 

 talent and zeal of this surprisingly progressive nation, when we 

 read how here a Japanese won with honour a university degree, 

 and how there another succeeded in chaining the attention of our 

 German savants by a scientific discourse; how Japan has distin- 

 guished herself by noteworthy contributions to the different 

 national exhibitions of modern times, while opening at home her 

 first railway, in the planning and building of which no foreign 

 engineer participated. But Government and people have won a 

 still greater victory in matters of religion. They have at last 

 exchanged their old prejudices and hatreds, and the severe ban 

 against Christianity, for full religious liberty, which cannot fail 

 to exert a favourable influence upon the spread of Christian 

 teaching. 



With the restoration of the Mikado to power in 1868, the whole 

 feudal system went to pieces. The Daimios, partly of their own 

 accord, and partly because compelled by the new Government, 



II. ^ B 



