before witnessed, it is highly important for us to know its probable consequences.  For this we need to gain a clear idea of the nature both of the individual man and of society, of the relation of the social order to individual and to race character, and of the law regulating and the forces producing social evolution.  Only thus can we forecast the probable course and consequences of the free social intercourse of widely divergent races.

It is the belief of the writer that few countries afford so clear an illustration of the principles involved in social evolution as Japan.  Her development has been so rapid and so recent that some principles have become manifest that otherwise might easily have escaped notice.  The importance of understanding Japan, because of the light her recent transformations throw on the subject of social evolution and of national character and also because of the conspicuous role to which she is destined as the natural leader of the Oriental races in their adoption of Occidental modes of life and thought, justifies a careful study of Japanese character.  He who really understands Japan, has gained the magic key for unlocking the social mysteries of China and the entire East.  But the Japanese people, with their institutions and their various characteristics, merit careful study also for their own sakes.  For the Japanese constitute an exceedingly interesting and even a unique branch of the human race.  Japan is neither a purgatory, as some would have it, nor a paradise, as others maintain, but a land full of individuals in an interesting stage of social evolution.

Current opinions concerning Japan, however, are as curious as they are contradictory.  Sir Edwin Arnold says that the Japanese “Have the nature rather of birds or butterflies than of ordinary human beings.”  Says Mr. A.M.  Knapp:  “Japan is the one country in the world which does not disappoint ...  It is unquestionably the unique nation of the globe, the land of dream and enchantment, the land which could hardly differ more from our own, were it located in another planet, its people not of this world.”  An “old resident,” however, calls it “the land of disappointments.”  Few phenomena are more curious than the readiness with which a tourist or professional journalist, after a few days or weeks of sight-seeing and interviewing, makes up his mind in regard to the character of the people, unless it be the way in which certain others, who have resided in this land for a number of years, continue to live in their own dreamland.  These two classes of writers have been the chief contributors of material for the omnivorous readers of the West.

It appears to not a few who have lived many years in this Far Eastern land, that the public has been fed with the dreams of poets or the snap-judgments of tourists instead of with the facts of actual experience.  A recent editorial article in the Japan Mail, than whose editor few men have had a wider acquaintance with the Japanese people or language, contains the following paragraph: