Art. VIII. The Standing Committee of the Society shall submit to the members once a year an annual report of the revenue and expenditures, accomplishments, and condition of the Society.
Members of the Yamato Society:
Takuma Dan,
Baron Toranosuke Furukawa,
Shigenobu Hirayama, Member of the House of Peers.
Shigezo Imamura,
Junnosuke Inouye,
Yeikichi Kamada,
Baron Hisaya Iwasaki, Partner of the Mitsubishi Goshi Kaisha, Tokyo.
Baron Koyata Iwasaki. Partner of the Mitsubishi Goshi Kaisha, Tokyo.
Chozo Koike, Director of Mr. Kuhara's Head Office, Tokyo.
Fusanosuke Kuhara, President of the Kuhara Mining Co., Tokyo.
Baron Nobuaki Makino, Member of the House of Peers.
Shigemichi Miyoshi, Member of the Mitsubishi Goshi Kaisha, Tokyo.
Baron Kumakichi Nakashima,
Saizaburo Nishiwaki,
Jokichi Takamine, President of the Takamine Laboratory, New York.
Sanae Takata, Member of the House of Peers.
Seiichi Taki, Professor of Art History, Imperial University, Tokyo.
Marquis Yorimichi Tokugawa, Member of the House of Peers.
Yuzo Tsubouchi, former Professor of the Waseda University, Tokyo.
Kazutoshi Uyeda, Dean of Literary College, Imperial University, Tokyo.
Baron Kenjiro Yamakawa, President of Imperial University, Tokyo.
Members of the Standing Committee:
Shigenobu Hirayama.
Chozo Koike.
Shigemichi Miyoshi.
Sanae Takata.
Seiichi Taki.
Kazutoshi Uyeda.
PREFACE
The principal aim of this work, written at the request of the Yamato Society as the first of its projected series of publications, is to furnish a synopsis, or perhaps rather to give a general sketch, of the history of Japan. The public to which it is tendered is not those professional historians and students of history now abounding in our country, who are already perplexedly encumbered with, and engrossed by, a superfluity of overdetailed materials and a plethora of contradictory conjectures and hypotheses. In short, the book is, strictly speaking, intended for those Europeans and Americans who would like to dip into the past, as well as peer into the future, of Japan,—Japan, not as a land of quaint curios and picturesque paradoxes only worthy to be preserved intact for a show, but as a land inhabited by a nation striving hard to improve itself, and to take a share, however humble, in the common progress of the civilisation of the world.
Having such an aim on the one hand, it becomes on the other a matter of urgent necessity for the author to exercise great caution against extolling bombastically our national merits or falling into a coarse and futile jingoism. To be ostentatious proves, after all, some lack of sincerity and impartiality, and is the very vice which should be avoided by historians worthy of the name. In order to guard against such a blunder, however, and attain as far as possible the aim I have set before me, I thought it wisest to approximate the standpoint from which the book was to be written as nearly as possible to that of a foreigner, free from our national prejudices and at the same time intensely sympathetic with our country. Of course, it can hardly be disputed that to place oneself unerringly on the standpoint of another, different widely in thought as well as in nationality, is an affair very easy to talk of, but exceedingly difficult to put into practice. I dare not presume that I have been at all equal to the task. Still it may be of some use for the reader to learn beforehand whither my earnest efforts are directed.