ld.

One pleasing feature of the native press of Japan I cannot help
referring to, and that is the friendly sentiments which it almost
invariably expresses in regard to Great Britain. As I have before
remarked, it was this country which in some degree influenced at first
the Japanese press. I am pleased that of late at any rate, since the
somewhat heated agitation in reference to the revision of the treaties
has come to an end, its tone has been almost universally friendly to
this country, and its approval of the alliance between Japan and Great
Britain was not only unanimous but enthusiastic.

The English newspapers in Japan are still, as they have always been,
ably conducted journals. Captain Brinkley, the editor of one of them,
is a great authority on everything connected with Japan, and the paper
he edits is worthy of all that is best in English journalism. At the
same time it is hardly necessary to remark that the English press in
Japan exercises little or no influence outside the immediate circle it
represents. It very naturally looks at everything, or almost
everything, not from the point of view of the Japanese but from that
of the foreigner in Japan. It may be truthfully averred of the foreign
press that, considered as a whole, it has never done anything or
attempted to do anything to break down the barriers caused by racial
differences. The European press in Japan has in tone always been
distinctly anti-Japanese, and the sentiments which it has expressed
and the vigorous, not to say violent, language in which those
sentiments have been expressed has undoubtedly in the past occasioned
much bitterness of feeling among the Japanese people or that portion
of it which either read or heard of those sentiments. The
characteristics or idiosyncracies of the people of Japan were either
exaggerated or misrepresented, and there were not unnaturally
reprisals quite as vigorous in the native newspapers. During the war
with China, for example, the attitude of the European press was
exasperating to a degree--that is, exasperating to the Japanese
people. There were journals which avowedly took the part of China and
expressed a desire for China's success. The victories of Japan in the
course of the war were sneered at and at first belittled.
Subsequently, when the success of Japan was self-evident, it was
suggested by some of these newspapers that she was suffering from
swelled head and was in need of being put in her place a