ABSTRACT
HISTORY, says Carlyle, is like one of those noble reliefs carved by Greek sculptors which show a section of the everlasting procession that has neither beginning nor end; yet, to understand the fragment seen, it is needful to know something of the past, however imperfectly, and of the future we may speculate as we choose. The speculations will often be as near the truth as the records; for the facets of life are so infinite in their variety that the most painstaking recorder can only observe a few; and while historians in the West disagree strongly as to what is Important in the annals of their own countries, they are likely to be at a greater loss to determine the significance of such aspects of Japanese life as are accessible to them. So profound a scholar as the late James Murdoch, for instance, presented a reading of Japanese history almost entirely according to Western standards of value. A Japanese philosopher would probably assign to such matters as the Zen philosophy and the Tea Ceremony a degree of historic importance that would seem ridiculous to a European but less ridiculous in the eyes of any of his countrymen than an attempt to consider Japanese history without reference to such influences.1 Japanese history written by an Occidental, therefore, can hardly be satisfactory unless the writer is one of unusual erudition.
