Many people, however, find it difficult to believe in the durability and the sincerity of Japan’s transformation. Without concealing from ourselves that the prodigious work which has been accomplished in Japan has sometimes been premature, that imitation of Europe has occasionally been pushed to excess, that it has even been directed in some points where it would have been wiser to have remained faithful to national traditions, we believe—as one of the best informed Japanese we have ever met assured us—that the great wind from the West which is blowing upon this country has come to last. We find this conviction confirmed both by observation of the Japan of the present and in the lessons taught by her past. Where the changes have been carried too far, certain unassimilated and unessential scoriæ will be eliminated, but the better part of the work will remain and a new Japan be the result, in many points similar to Europe in the scientific and material sense of civilization—profoundly modified and brought nearer to the West, yet differing from us from the social and moral point of view. In short, we have confidence in the future of Japan, if she only takes the lessons she has received to heart, and if she be not over-proud of being the ‘Great Britain of the Far East,’ and is not carried away by a spirit of aggrandizement that may exhaust her resources. The prudent policy which she appears to have adopted in the face of the present crisis in China is, however, of a character well calculated to reassure her friends. The study of the Chinese problem closes this volume. The Celestial Empire, so far from being revivified like its neighbours, has resolutely made no concession to Western civilization. As long as China had only to trouble over the intermittent and not far-reaching action of Western Powers, distracted by a thousand other cares, and whose commercial activity found outlets in other directions, she had not much difficulty in maintaining her isolation.