possible, be consulted by every serious student.[1] Black's Young Japan records the impressions of a well-informed resident during the years 1858-1879 with the vividness peculiar to memoirs jotted down from day to day, as the events they describe are unfolding themselves. Miss Scidmore's Jinrikisha Days in Japan will be found a genial companion, as also will Brownell's Heart of Japan. Notes in Japan, by Alfred Parsons, may be recommended. Knapp's Feudal and Modern Japan is bright and sympathetic. Dening's Life of Hideyoshi and Japan in Days of Yore give us refreshing peeps into a state of society less prosaic than our own. Inoue's Sketches of Tōkyō Life brim over with interest, while the various illustrated booklets printed on crape paper at Hasegawa's press form pretty souvenirs. Then, too, come the books in foreign languages,—such, for instance, as Humbert's Le Japon et les Japonais, Bousquet's Le Japon de nos Jours, Bellessort's La Société Japonaise, and Dumolard's Le Japon Politique, Economique et Social. Father Papinot's Dictionnaire de l'Histoire et de la Géographie du Japon is a useful compilation, to which no analogue exists in English. For Pierre Loti's books the resident community has less respect than the public at home:—his inaccuracy and superficiality go against the grain. Nevertheless, the illustrations to his Madame Chrysanthème are very pretty, and the letter-press is worth skimming through, though the volume can in nowise be recommended either to misses or to missionaries. What has struck us as the liveliest and best of all popular books on Japan is in German. We mean Netto's Papierschmelterlinge aus Japan, with its delightful illustrations and its epigrammatic text. Nippold's descriptions and Junker von Landegg's stories are much read. With more serious works, too, the Germans are naturally to the front. The Mittheilungen of the German Asiatic Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens) are a mine of information on matters scientific, legal, etc., etc.
- ↑ We refer here to the authorised English translation, which was based on a careful revision of the original German text. This original, too, is now out of print; but a new edition of it is expected to appear shortly.
