The Foundations of Japan: Notes made during Journeys of 6000 Miles in the Rural Districts as a Basis for a Sounder Knowledge of the Japanese People

Abstract

THIS is an eminently readable book, giving not only the familiar glimpses into superficial Japanese life, but also treating of the economic life of the nation in a really profound manner. The author spent four and a half years travelling through the country, studying the habits and thoughts of the men and women of the countryside, who were trained under rural schoolmasters and village elders and are living their life under the potent sway of long-established tradition. The modern industrial developments of factory life are also depicted with a sure hand, and where there is much to praise there is also much to condemn. For example, the conditions under which silk-factory girls work are little short of slavery, and would be impossible in English-speaking countries. On these and other deeper aspects of Japanese life the author evidently speaks with knowledge. With real sympathy and honesty he describes the present-day sociological conditions which rule among the great majority of Japanese. As he himself says, he went to Japan to see the countrymen.

The Foundations of Japan: Notes made during Journeys of 6000 Miles in the Rural Districts as a Basis for a Sounder Knowledge of the Japanese People.

By J. W. Robertson Scott. Pp. xxv + 446 + plates. (London: J. Murray, 1922.) 24s. net.