MAKERS OF JAPAN.
Makers of Japan. By J. Morris. (Methuen and Co. 12s. 6d.) —In the form of a series of biographies, to which there is pre- fixed a lucid and informing preface, this volume is a history of that modern Japan whose " arrival " is no longer in dispute, and which dates from the advent on the coast of Idzu Province of an American squadron under Commodore Perry in 1853. Mr. Morris has already proved himself to be an authority on Japan and her history. In 1895 in "Advance, Japan!" he predicted that that country would be "the lever to set the Chinese mass in motion." In 1898 he wrote "What will Japan Do ? " and predicted our ally's victory over Russia. In preparing the present work, the main object of which, ho says, is to "convey useful information concerning our allies and their country to the people of the Occident," he has read all the literary authorities, and has consulted living men like Viscount Hayashi and Baron Suyematau, whose knowledge of present- day Japan and her leading men is of the most intimate and thorough character. Very many of the " makers " of Japan who figure in these pages—such as the Emperor, Ito, Yamagata, Okama, Oyama, and Togo—are now, owing to the recent war with Russia, well known to the British public. Mr. Morris's biographies of them are notable mainly for their amplitude and authoritativeness, and for the skill with which he works them into a compact history of Japan. The freshest biographies are those of patriots and martyrs,—like Fajita Toko, Yoshida nein, and Sakuma Shozan, who lived in the days of the Shogunate, when old ideas, both on foreign intercourse and on internal feudalism, _prevailed, but who prepared the way for the modern revolution, the results of which are known to all the world. Of the last, who was stabbed to death by Ro-nins-ivild reactionaries, in fact-he says :-" Sakuma was in advance of his age, and shared the fate of many a reformer in other lands. He realised, at a time when it was fatal to entertain views so heretical, that the days of Japan's complete liberty to choose a course for herself had passed, and that she would be driven to consort with the othor nations of the earth, if she would avoid the fate which was seen to have over- taken some other Asiatic peoples and potentates." Than this volume no more readable or reliable book on Japan has been produced of late years.
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