Abstract
THE author of this important work ranks as one of the greatest living authorities in this country on the tangled and critical politics of the Far East. His diplomatic career included an almost continuous residence in Japan from 1862 to 1882, and culminated in his tenure of the post of British Minister in Peking during the eventful years succeeding the Boxer rising of 1900. He has thus had almost unrivalled opportunities of watching the wonderful evolution of Japan from the position of a relatively weak feudal State, distracted by the struggles between rival daimyôs, to its present status as a great World Power with a highly centralised administration. In these circumstances it is to be hoped that the present book, interesting and useful as it is, may be only the first instalment of a more ambitious work which shall give us a critical interpretation of the deeper issues underlying the transition from the old to the new Japan, and a reasoned comparison of the social forces at work in the Empire of the Mikado with those affecting the development of her great neighbour on the mainland. Such a contribution to Western knowledge of the Far East is greatly needed.
A Diplomat in Japan.
By the Right Hon. Sir Ernest Satow. Pp. 427. (London: Seeley, Service, and Co., Ltd., 1921.) 32s. net.
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ROXBY, P. A Diplomat in Japan . Nature 107, 263 (1921). https://doi.org/10.1038/107263a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/107263a0