with suspicion by the feudatory princes of
Japan, as also to the cupidity and cunning of the traders. How far any
or all of these alleged causes were responsible for the change in
Japanese opinion I shall not venture to pronounce. Suffice it to
remark that, whatever the cause, there must have been some powerful,
impelling influence at work to induce the nation not only to cast out
the stranger within its gates, but to exclude him for two and a half
centuries, and veto any inhabitant of Japan leaving its shores and
thus being brought into contact with, and stand the chance of being
contaminated by, the foreigner. We may regret the destruction of
Christianity in Japan, but at the same time we may, I think, accept
the fact that the uprising of Japan against the foreigner at the close
of the sixteenth century was simply the result of the gorge which had
arisen in the nation against the foreigner's manners, methods, and
morals, his trampling underfoot of national prejudices and ideas, his
cupidity, his avarice, his cruelty, his attempt to impose on Japanese
civilisation a veneer which it did not desire and deemed it was much
better without. It must be remembered that the missionaries and the
traders had a common nationality, and that the Japan of the sixteenth
century did not find it possible to differentiate between them.

Down to the nineteenth century we have to rely for our knowledge of
Japan and the Japanese on the narratives of the few travellers who
managed to visit that country more or less by stealth, or from the
information derived from Europeans serving in the Dutch factory at
Nagasaki. Every Englishman has heard of Will Adams and his Japanese
wife, but though his career was romantic and interesting it has added
but little to our knowledge of Japan at the time of his visit thereto.
In 1727 Dr. Kaemfer's work on Japan was published. Kaemfer had been
physician to the Dutch factory at Nagasaki, and, accordingly, had some
opportunities of studying Japanese life and character. His book in the
original form is rare, but I am glad to say that a cheap edition, a
reprint of the English edition produced by the Royal Society in 1727,
has recently been published in this country. Kaemfer's work is spoiled
and its utility or reliability largely impaired by the fanciful
theories put forward by the author respecting the origin of the
Japanese. Much of his information is, of course, mere hearsay, and a
great deal of it, by the li