The Awakening of Japan. By Okakura-Kakuzo. (John Murray. 6s. net.)—This
book, which may be regarded as the historical sequel to "Ideals of the East," has very many things to recom- mend it, especially as a work for the present time. It is neat and compact, and runs to less than two hundred and thirty pages of largish typo. The author writes with that behind-the- scenes and scholarly, knowledge which is not possessed by the superficial and often flippant observer who has been so much in evidence since the war between Russia and Japan began. He is often eloquent, but never extravagant, unless, indeed, all Oriental rhetoric be regarded as extravagant. He is intensely patriotic, but he is the reverse of a Jingo. His skill as an expositor within small compass is very great, and is admirably illustrated by the account which he gives of the political and religious influences— the latter Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shintoism—that caused Japan to leap (apparently only) at a bound into the position of a first-class progressive world-Power. It would be difficult to get a better rendering of the old story of the Mikado, the Shogun, the Daimios, and the Samurai, or of the three schools of thought which moulded the regeneration of Japan. "The first taught Japan to inquire ; the second to act; the third [the Historical School] for what to act." Okakura-Kakuzo, who belongs to the last, is especially worth listening to, more particularly in Russia and Germany, when he seeks to demolish the "yellow peril" as a bogey. No more fascinating book on Japan, or one bearing more distinctly the character of a muitum in pare°, has been produced than this.
TROUBLED TIMES IN IRISH POLITICS.
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