Japan: An Attempt At an Interpretation

"A THOUSAND books have been written about Japan; but among these, — setting aside artistic publications and works of a purely special character, — the really precious volumes will be found to number scarcely a score. This fact is due to the immense difficulty of perceiving and comprehending what underlies the surface of Japanese life. No work fully interpreting that life, — no work picturing Japan within and without, historically and socially, psychologically and ethically, — can be written for at least another fifty years. So vast and intricate the subject that the united labour of a generation of scholars could not exhaust it, and so difficult that the number of scholars willing to devote their time to it must always be small...."