on as anything more
than pleasing fancy. Both have given rein to the poetic fancy and
thus have, from a purely literary point of view, scored a success
granted to few.... But as exponents of Japanese life and thought
they are unreliable.... They have given form and beauty to much
that never existed except in vague outline or in undeveloped germs
in the Japanese mind. In doing this they have unavoidably been
guilty of misrepresentation.... The Japanese nation of Arnold and
Hearn is not the nation we have known for a quarter of a century,
but a purely ideal one manufactured out of the author's brains. It
is high time that this was pointed out. For while such works please
a certain section of the English public, they do a great deal of
harm among a section of the Japanese public, as could be easily
shown in detail, did space allow."--_Japan Mail, May 7, 1898_.

But even more harmful to the reading public of England and America are
the hastily formed yet, nevertheless, widely published opinions of
tourists and newspaper correspondents. Could such writers realize the
inevitable limitations under which they see and try to generalize, the
world would be spared many crudities and exaggerations, not to say
positive errors. The impression so common to-day that Japan's recent
developments are anomalous, even contrary to the laws of national
growth, is chiefly due to the superficial writings of hasty observers.
Few of those who have dilated ecstatically on her recent growth have
understood either the history or the genius of her people.

"To mention but one among many examples," says Prof. Chamberlain,
"the ingenious Traveling Commissioner of the _Pall Mall Gazette_,
Mr. Henry Norman, in his lively letters on Japan published nine or
ten years ago, tells the story of Japanese education under the
fetching title of 'A Nation at School'; but the impression left is
that they have been their own schoolmasters. In another letter on
'Japan in Arms,' he discourses concerning 'The Japanese Military
Re-organizers,' 'The Yokosuka dockyard,' and other matters, but
omits to mention that the reorganizers were Frenchmen, and that the
Yokosuka dockyard was also a French creation. Similarly, when
treating of the development of the Japanese newspaper, he ignores
the fact that it owed its origin to an Englishman, which surely, t