"Say about two hundred years?" I suggested.
My friend smiled.
"One hundred and fifty years might do," he said, "if you made every minute count."
Then, perhaps because he read in my face the signs of my discouragement, he reminded me of an old fable:
Seven blind men went to "see" an elephant. One of them, bumping into the great beast's side, said, "Here is a creature resembling a wall." Another, feeling the trunk, likened the elephant to a serpent; another, touching a tusk, announced that the animal resembled a spear; and still another, grasping an ear, compared the elephant to a large leaf. The one who got hold of the tail likened it to a rope, while he who embraced a leg thought of a tree, and he who crawled over the back declared that an elephant resembled a hill.
There in a paragraph you have Japan and her interpreters.
PART II