"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 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 of the text all those names of places and persons which give such a forbidding air to a traveller's page. I have pleasure in acknowledging here the particular obligations I am under to Kunio Yanaghita, formerly Secretary of the Japanese House of Peers and a distinguished and disinterested student of rural conditions, Dr. Nitobe, assistant secretary of the League of Nations, and his wife, Professor Nasu, Imperial University, Mr. Yamasaki, Mr. M. Yanagi, Mr. Kanzō Uchimura, Mr. Bernard Leach, Mr. M. Tajima, Mr. Ono and two young officials in Hokkaido, who each in turn found time to join me on my journeys and showed me innumerable kindnesses. It was a piece of good fortune that while these pages were in preparation Mr. Yanaghita, Professor Nasu and other fellow-travellers were in Europe and available for consultation. Professor Nasu unweariedly furnished painstaking answers to many questions, and was kind enough to read all of the book in proof; but he has no responsibility, of course, for the views which I express. I am also specially indebted to Dr. Kozai, President of the Imperial University, to Mr. Ito and other officials of the Ministry of Agriculture, to Mr. Tsurimi, one of the most understanding of travelled Japanese, to Mr. Iwanaga, formerly of the Imperial Railway Board, to Dr. Sato, President of Hokkaido University, and his obliging colleagues, to the Imperial Agricultural Society, to Professors Yahagi and Yokoi, and to Viscount Kano, Dr. Kuwada, Mr. I. Yoshida, Mr. K. Ohta, Mr. H. Saito, Mr. S. Hoshijima, and many provincial agricultural and sociological experts.
Portions of drafts for this book have appeared in the Daily Telegraph, World's Work, Manchester Guardian, New East, Asia, Japan Chronicle and Christian World. I am indebted to the World's Work and Asia for some additional illustrations from blocks made from my photographs, and to the New East for some sketches by Miss Elizabeth Keith.