Leading men of Japan, with an historical summary of the empire;

Preface

I ■'HIS volume is the direct outgrowth of my work entitled The Japanese in America, which was published ten years ago, and widely circulated in the United States and England. It is divided into two parts, the first of which contains brief biographical sketches of the leading men who in recent times have been honorably identified with the marvellous career of the Island Empire of the Pacific. A goodly number of names have necessarily been omitted, for the reason that I could not obtain the needed data to do them justice ; and, I regret, for the same reason, that several of the notices in the volume are far more brief than they deserve to be. I may say, however, that so far as I have been able to go, my statements will be found entirely authentic — the great bulk of my information, including the translations, having been obtained from Japanese scholars and various well informed friends residing in Japan. With the exception of the first two sketches — of the Emperor and his father — I have arranged them in alphabetical order, intending thereby to avoid even the appearance of favoritism. This is the first time that sketches of so many men from the Onent have been brought together in a single volume for

PREFACE.

the edification of the Western world, and I cannot but hope that these records will do something towards making the people of America and Europe better acquainted than ever before with the gifted, elevated, and progressive character of the Japanese people and Government.

In the second part of this work I have introduced a bird’s-eye view of the History of Japan, which I contributed to Johnson’s Universal Cyclopaedia, together with several chapters bearing on the outlying possessions of the Empire, or directly connected with its history.

C. L.

Washington, Jan., i882>