INTRODUCTION
The publication of a new volume of Lafcadio Hearn\'s exquisite studies
of Japan happens, by a delicate irony, to fall in the very month when the
world is waiting with tense expectation for news of the latest exploits of
Japanese battleships. Whatever the outcome of the present struggle
between Russia and Japan, its significance lies in the fact that a nation of
the East, equipped with Western weapons and girding itself with Western
energy of will, is deliberately measuring strength against one of the great
powers of the Occident. No one is wise enough to forecast the results of
such a conflict upon the civilization of the world. The best one can do is to
estimate, as intelligently as possible, the national characteristics of the
peoples engaged, basing one\'s hopes and fears upon the psychology of the
two races rather than upon purely political and statistical studies of the
complicated questions involved in the present war. The Russian people
have had literary spokesmen who for more than a generation have
fascinated the European audience. The Japanese, on the other hand, have
possessed no such national and universally recognized figures as
Turgenieff or Tolstoy. They need an interpreter