helped forward by my following the leadings of truth among them when
the troubles of War were increasing and when travelling was more
difficult than usual. I looked upon it as a more favourable
opportunity to season my mind and to bring me into a nearer sympathy
with them.--_Journal of John Woolman_, 1762.

I determined to commence my researches at some distance from the
capital, being well aware of the erroneous ideas I must form should I
judge from what I heard in a city so much subjected to foreign
intercourse.--BORROW.

INTRODUCTION

The hope with which these pages are written is that their readers may
be enabled to see a little deeper into that problem of the relation of
the West with Asia which the historian of the future will
unquestionably regard as the greatest of our time.

I lived for four and a half years in Japan. This book is a record of
many of the things I saw and experienced and some of the things I was
told chiefly during rural journeys--more than half the population is
rural--extending to twice the distance across the United States or
nearly eight times the distance between the English Channel and John
o' Groats.

These pages deal with a field of investigation in Japan which no other
volume has explored. Because they fall short of what was planned, and
in happier conditions might have been accomplished, a word or two may
be pardoned on the beginnings of the book--one of the many literary
victims of the War.

The first book I ever bought was about the Far East. The first leading
article of my journalistic apprenticeship in London was about Korea.
When I left daily journalism, at the time of the siege of the Peking
Legations, the first thing I published was a book pleading for a
better understanding of the Chinese.

After that, as a cottager in Essex, I wrote--above a _nom de guerre_
which is better known than I am--a dozen volumes on rural subjects.
During a visit to the late David Lubin in Rome I noticed in the big
library of his International Institute of Agriculture that there was
no took in English dealing with the agriculture of Japan.[1] Just
before the War the thoughts of forward-looking students of our home
affairs ran strongly on the relation of intelligently managed small
holdings to skilled capitalist farming.[2] During the early "business
as usual" period of the War, when no tasks had been found for men over
military age--Mr. Wells's protest will be remembered--it occurred