Commerce and industry--Old methods of communication--Roads and ships--How they have been improved--Railways, post, telegraphs, and telephones--Progress of the financial system--The Satsuma war--The Bank of Japan--The National banks--The monetary system one of the causes of Japan's success--Further remarks on the military reforms--Evolution of the mode of fighting--All reforms at much cost of blood and money--The cause of the Satsuma war--Saigo the Elder--Social condition of Japan to-day--Evolution of legislation--Chinese jurisprudence--The Japanese are not good correspondents--My future--An operatic singer--Japanese stages--Danjiuro and Irving--The old school and the new one--Kawakami and Sada Yakko--The opera _Maritana_--The end of the dream APPENDICES I. Political Organism of Japan II. Japanese Education III. Anglo-French Diplomacy in Japan Forty Years ago IV. Sketches of some chief Figures of Actual Japan (Ito, Yamagata, Inouyé, Matsukata, Katsura, Okuma, Saionji) V. An old Speech by Marquis Ito VI. The Commercial Morality of the Japanese VII. Japan and Foreign Capital VIII. The Languages of China and Japan IX. Once more on Japan and France X. Japan and Europe XI. The Indo-China Question XII. The Australian Question XIII. The Anglo-Japanese Alliance and America Notes to Dialogues V. and VIII., and to the Paper on 'Commercial Morality' A FANTASY OF FAR JAPAN: SUMMER DREAM DIALOGUES I The issue of the war--Some Forecasts--English and French papers --Political situation in the summer of 1905--Beaconsfield--Japanese fictions and their plots--Some similarities between the customs of Greece, Rome, and Japan--Love stories--A Japanese love tale--Custom of adoption--_Jane Eyre_ and Japan--Japanese art--Japanese gardening--Full description of marriage ceremonies--Preliminary inquiries--Description of the rooms, and decorations--Butterflies --The banquet--Wedding presents--Position of the women in Japan --Japanese mothers and wives--A Samurai mother illustrated by a drama--Lays of Ancient Rome and Commandant Hirosé--Japanese notions of pardon and forgiving--Trip to Japan