A Handbook of Colloquial Japanese. By Basil Hall Chamberlain. (Trubner,
London ; The Hakubunsha, Tokyo.)—This is much the best work that has appeared on modern Japanese, one of those deceptive tongues of which the difficulties increase rather than diminish with the student's progress. It is not only written with abundant knowledge, as might be expected from a scholar who, though an Englishman, enjoys the singular honour of filling the chair of Japanese and Philology in the Imperial University of Japan, but with a lucidity, and even with a certain charm by no means common in Books dealing with Oriental subjects, and least of all with Oriental languages. Any one going steadily through this volume, which he will find not exactly easy, but interesting, for it will teach him a great deal about the Japanese and their habits of thought, as well as about their language, will require nothing more than that extension of vocabulary and phraseology which practice—and long practice, too—in reading, speaking, and listening to Japanese can alone give, to be capable of the fullest personal interchange of thought with by far the most attractive of Oriental peoples.
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