Excerpt from Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation

A Thousand books have been written about Japan; but among these, - setting aside artistic publications and works of a purely special character, - the really precious volumes will be found to number scarcely a score. This fact is due to the immense difficulty of perceiving and comprehending what underlies the surface of Japanese life. No work fully interpreting that life, - no work picturing Japan within and without, historically and socially, psychologically and ethically, - can be written for at least another fifty years. So vast and intricate the subject that the united labour of a generation of scholars could not exhaust it, and so difficult that the number of scholars willing to devote their time to it must always be small. Even among the Japanese themselves, no scientific knowledge of their own history is yet possible; because the means of obtaining that knowledge have not yet been prepared, - though mountains of material have been collected. The want of any good history upon a modern plan is but one of many discouraging wants.

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