This self-isolated empire, Japan, has experienced more radical and startling changes within the last generation than any people or nation of which history treats. It seemed as if, once freed from the trammels which had so long confined it, the empire was determined, at one bound, to place itself abreast of other nations which had attained a high civilization and enlightenment by slow and painful steps. With a wealth of the best models before them, and the intelligence to be able to throw off their prejudices and avail themselves of those models, the feat was easier, but still remains wonderful, the more we consider it. Situated at the eastern extremity of Asia, between 31° and 49° north latitude, the empire consists of a large group of islands, many of them small and surrounded by a sea which is not very easy to navigate at all times. There are three very large islands--Niphon, or Nippon, seven hundred miles long, but so narrow that its breadth in the centre is not more than fifty miles; Kiusiu, about two hundred miles long and fifty miles wide; and Yesso, formerly sometimes called Xicoco, eighty-five or ninety miles long and fifty wide. There are many mountains, some of them volcanic, and the country is subject to earthquakes, often of a serious character. The number of inhabitants is given as about forty millions; but it is said by late observers that, dense as the population appears to be in certain regions, the country could support many more. The Japanese appear to be a mixture of the Malay and Mongolian races, like the Chinese, from whom there seems little doubt they derived their civilization, ages ago. The first knowledge of Japan which the Western world had was given by the Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, at the end of the thirteenth century. When he returned from a long sojourn in Asia he was hardly believed when he spoke of a large island off the coast of Cathay, or China, which he called Zipangu. That island is the modern Nippon. There is no doubt that Marco Polo’s written story and accompanying maps had much to do with the determination of Columbus to find the farthest east by sailing west. Although he was not able to find and open Japan, he did discover a country which has performed a part of his contemplated work--a nation which, if it did not discover Zipangu, was to become the instrument of bringing it into free and full communication with the rest of the world. It is to the Portuguese that we owe the first real knowledge of Japan. When Mendez Pinto, on a voyage to China in 1542, was driven by a storm to Japan and landed there, the event was considered so important by the authorities of that isolated country that they not only entered it in their archives, but preserved portraits of persons who seemed most strange to them in complexion, features, dress, and language.