s 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 Naruse) 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. Yamasa