A HISTORY OF JAPANESE MATHEMATICS.
A History of Japanese Mathematics. By David Eugene Smith and Yoshio Mikami. (Open Court Publishing Co. I2e. net.)—In her long centuries of seclusion, Japan developed a science which was wholly her own. The lordly spirit of the old Samurai is shown in the words which Japanese mathema- ticians—mostly drawn from the sword-bearing class—used of the Western science when it first came to their knowledge. One of them, quoted in this learned treatise, said in 1840: "The minuteness of our mathematical work far surpasses that to be found in the West, because our power is a divine inheritance, fostered by the noble and daring spirit of a nation that is exalted over the other nations of the world." But the mason has now been displaced by Western mathematics, which the brilliant Japanese physicists find to be a more handy instrument
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