power and influence by Oda, without ever having renounced his hereditary rights. Nobunaga's dominion reached from the Sea of Japan to the Pacific shore, when he met at the height of his career of conquest a premature death by the hand of a traitor. It is not, however, on account of the magnitude of the territories which he annexed, that Nobunaga figures in the history of Japan, for the land conquered by dint of his arms did not cover more than one-third of the island of Honto. His real historical importance lies not there, but in that he destroyed the old Japan and made himself the harbinger of the new age, though the honour of being creator of modern Japan must be assigned rather to Hideyoshi, his successor. Since the beginning of our history, the Japanese have always been very reluctant, in the cultural respect, to give up what they have possessed from the first, while they have been very eager and keen to take in the new exotic elements which seemed agreeable or useful to them. In other words, the Japanese have been simultaneously conservative and progressive, and immoderately so in both ways. The result of such a conservation and assimilation operating at the same time was that the country has gradually become a depository of a huge mass of things Japanese and Chinese, no matter whether they were desirable or not. If any exotic matter or custom once found its way into this country, it was preserved with tender care and never-relaxing tenacity, as if it were some treasure found or made at home and would prove a credit to our country. In this way we could save from destruction and demolition a great many historical remains, material as well as spiritual, not only of Japanese but also of Chinese origins. There may still be found in our country many things, the histories of which show that they had once their beginnings in China indeed, but the traces of their origins have long been entirely lost there. Needless to say that the religious rites and other traditions of our forefathers in remotest antiquity have been carefully handed down to us. This assiduity for preserving on the part of the Japanese can best be realised by the existence to this day of very old wooden buildings, some of which, in their dates of erection, go back to more than twelve hundred years ago. Besides this conservative propensity of the nation, the history of our country has also been very favourable to the effort of preserving. We have had no chronic change of dynasties as in China, nor have we experienced any violent revolution, shaking the whole structure of the country, as the French people had. Though our history has not lacked in civil wars and political convulsions, their destructive force has been comparatively feeble, and one Imperial house has continued to reign here from the mythic Age of the Gods! With this permanent sovereign family as the _point d'appui_, it has been easier in Japan than in any other country to preserve things historic.