The complete history of the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch relations with the Japanese is not to be found elsewhere in English; nor in any language, in a single work; while in no other book have the English and American relations been so fully treated. Many extraordinary characters and adventures make their appearance on the scene, and the reader will have no ground to complain at least of want of variety. How little the history of Japan and of its former relations with Portugal and Holland are known—even in quarters where information on the subject might be said to constitute an official duty—is apparent in the following passage in a letter addressed from the State Department at Washington to the Secretary of the Navy, in explanation of the grounds, reasons, and objects, of our late mission to Japan, and intended as instruction to the envoy: “Since the islands of Japan were first visited by European nations, efforts have _constantly_ been made by the various maritime powers to establish commercial intercourse with a country whose large population and reputed wealth hold out great temptations to mercantile enterprise. Portugal was the first to make the attempt, and her example was followed by Holland, England, Spain, and Russia, and finally by the United States. _All these attempts, however, have thus far been unsuccessful_; the permission enjoyed for a short period by the Portuguese, and that granted to Holland _to send annually a single vessel_ to the port of Nagasaki, hardly deserving to be considered exceptions to this remark.” From Kämpfer, whose name has become so identified with Japan, but into whose folios few have the opportunity or courage to look, I have made very liberal extracts. Few travellers have equalled him in picturesque power. His descriptions have indeed the completeness, and finish, and, at the same time, the naturalness, and absence of all affectation, with much of the same quiet humor, characteristic of the best Dutch pictures. I have preferred to introduce entire the work of such an artist, rather than to run the risk of spoiling it by attempting a paraphrase; only, as I had so many other volumes on hand, the substance, or at least the spirit, of which was to be transferred to mine, and as folios are no longer in fashion, I have found it necessary in quoting him to retrench a little the superabundance of his words. It is from his work also that the ornamental title-page[1] is copied, stated by his editor to be after a style fashionable in Japan, where dragons are held in great repute. Kämpfer says, that heads of these imaginary animals are placed over the doors of houses all over the East—among the Mahometans of Arabia and Persia, as well as in China and Japan—to keep off, as the Mahometans say, the envious from disturbing the peace of families. Perhaps the Japanese authors surround their title-pages with them in hopes to frighten away the critics.