taste of the public. Japan was the land of artists and quaint peoples; the public at home did not want to learn that Japan was a nation like unto themselves—with improvements. But years have brought changes, and now the world can no longer ignore the serious side of Japan.
It was with a knowledge of this need, and the impossibility of any foreigner to supply it, that I conceived the idea of inducing the Japanese to do it themselves. I went to Japan for this purpose, and suggested to several of their leading men that they should undertake the production of an authoritative account of their country for the information of the outside world. The idea was taken up with enthusiasm, and at a gathering in Tokyo I was honoured by being requested to undertake the collecting, editing, and arranging of the work. I mention this because I feel that I owe the readers of this book some explanation as to why the name of a non-Japanese appears in a book, which, as its very title makes clear, is written by the Japanese. The difficulties of collecting the materials for such a book were not small, and much time had to be spent in the work. The war and the necessary preparations for the war prevented some of the contributions arriving, and changes were made necessary in others. At best the book must be considered as a trial essay, to be improved and enlarged later. Nobody can be more aware of its omissions, its faults, than myself, to whom, indeed, to a certain extent many of them are due. But, as it stands, I venture to claim that it is a unique work of great interest. To have secured the record of a country’s progress written by the men who are now guiding her destinies is no small thing, and in no other great country would it have been possible. Some of the statesmen who responded to my appeal for special contributions have selected their most important public utterances for inclusion in the book. This they have done because they felt that in these deliverances they had expressed their views on vital national questions so thoroughly that to write on them again would only entail repetition.
The confidence which has been placed by the leading men of Japan in what I have thus tried to do for their country has received its crown by the gracious permission accorded to me by His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Japan to dedicate the book to him. Just how much Japan owes to the guiding rule
