Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original maps. See 61126-h.htm or 61126-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61126/61126-h/61126-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61126/61126-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/japanpacificandj00inagrich Transcriber’s note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). JAPAN AND THE PACIFIC [Illustration] [Illustration: JAPAN & THE NORTH PACIFIC.] JAPAN AND THE PACIFIC, And a Japanese View Of The Eastern Question. by MANJIRO INAGAKI, B.A. (_Cantab_) With Maps London T Fisher Unwin Paternoster Square MDCCCXC TO JOHN ROBERT SEELEY M.A. HON. LL.D. _Regius Professor of Modern History Fellow of Gonville and Caius College Cambridge_ THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS KINDNESS AND IN ADMIRATION OF HIS QUALITIES AS A HISTORIAN BY THE AUTHOR ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PREFACE. I feel that some explanation is due when a Japanese ventures to address himself to English readers; my plea is that the matters on which I write are of vital importance to England as well as to Japan. Though I feel that my knowledge of English is so imperfect that many errors of idiom and style and even of grammar must appear in my pages, yet I hope that the courtesy which I have ever experienced in this country will be extended also to my book. My aim has been twofold: on the one hand, to arouse my own countrymen to a sense of the great part Japan has to play in the coming century; on the other, to call the attention of Englishmen to the important position my country occupies with regard to British interests in the far East.