As to the seasonal changes, they occur somewhat frequently in Japan, and impart a highly stimulative quality to her climate. According to the interesting investigation made by an American climatologist, for a climate to be stimulative it is necessary that there should be not only marked seasonal changes, but also frequent variations within each of the seasons themselves, and it is nothing but the storms which induce such important daily climatic changes. If we may accept his conclusion, then Japan may rank fairly high among the countries with the best kind of climate. For not to speak of the seasonal changes so clearly definable, in Japan, the cyclonic storms, the main cause of the daily climatic changes, occur very frequently. It can be said that no one desires to have them occur more often on this account. After all, the climate of Japan would have been almost an ideal one, if there had been less rain in the early summer, the long rainy season being evidently the chief cause of the enervating dampness. By the way, it should be remarked that the dampness which is the weakest point of the climate of Japan, not only in the summer, but throughout the whole year, is in excess more in the regions bordering on the Sea of Japan than in those facing the Pacific Ocean and the Inland Sea. This fact explains the historical phenomenon that the most momentous events in Japanese history have taken place not in the former but in the latter regions. If we look into the history of Europe, the Inland Sea of Japan has its counterpart in the Mediterranean, the Pacific, in the Atlantic, and the Sea of Japan in the Baltic Sea. Perhaps the attentive traveller will notice that the same greyish hue of the sea-surface can be perceived in the Sea of Japan as in the Baltic Sea, and that very sombre colour imparts the same gloomy tone to the atmosphere of the regions bordering on those two seas. It is true that many mythical legends of our country have their scenes in the coastal regions along the Sea of Japan, the so-called "Back of Japan," and, moreover, in standard of civilisation, these regions, compared with the other parts of the Empire, decidedly do not rank low. That is due, however, not to the influence of the fair climate prevailing in those parts of Japan, but to the proximity of the Asiatic continent. For, as the result of that proximity, there must have been very intimate relations between those regions of Japan and the continental tribes on the opposite shore, some of whom are sometimes supposed to have had the same origin as the Japanese. At present the influence of the climatic drawback in those districts is very evident, and it will be in the distant future that the time will arrive when the "Back of Japan" will become more thriving and enlightened than the other side of Japan facing the Pacific, unless there should be a sudden upheaval in the progress of the civilisation, and in the growth of prosperity, on the opposite continental shore.