Besides this obstacle, there are many others; for example, that of the language. Like most other nations in the East, we have been accustomed, up to this very day, to use a written language, divided within itself into several styles, which is considerably different from the vernacular. To make this state of things still more complicated, Chinese characters are profusely resorted to in the native writings, and are used not only as so many ideographs for words of Chinese origin, but also to represent native words. To make confusion worse confounded, they are not infrequently used as pure phonetic symbols without any further meaning attaching to them. So one and the same sign may be read in half a dozen different ways, according to the hints, more or less sure, given by the context. All this makes the study of Japanese immensely difficult. It is difficult even for a Japanese with the best opportunities; a hundred times more so, then, for a Western scholar who, if he cares to study the subject at first hand at all, begins this study, comparatively speaking, late in life, when his memory has well-nigh lost the capacity of bearing such an enormous burden! Still, there have been many Western scholars who, nothing daunted by the above-mentioned hindrances, have done much valuable work. English names like those of Sir E. Satow, G.W. Aston, B.H. Chamberlain, Lafcadio Hearn are to be gratefully remembered by all future students in this field of inquiry, as well as such German scholars as Dr. Baelz and Dr. Florenz. Leaving the enumeration of general works on Japan, whose name is legion, for some other time, let me mention one or two of those works of reference which a would-be English scholar of Japanese matters might find very useful. First of all Mr. B.H. Chamberlain's _Things Japanese_--a book which gave birth to Mr. J.D. Hall's equally indispensable _Things Chinese_--containing in cyclopædic form a mine of information about Japan. Dr. Wenckstern's painstaking _Japanese Bibliography_, with M. de Losny's earlier attempt as a supplement, gives you the list of all writings on Japan in European tongues that have appeared up to 1895. For those who want good books on the Japanese language, Mr. Aston's _Grammar of the Japanese Written Language_, Mr. Chamberlain's _Handbook of Colloquial Japanese_, as well as the same author's _Monzi-no-Shirubi, a Practical Introduction to the Study of the Japanese Writing_, are the best. As for books on the subject from the pen of the Japanese themselves, Dr. Nitobe's _Bushido, Explanations of the Japanese Thought_, and my brother K. Okakura's _Ideals of the East_, besides a volume by several well-known Japanese, entitled _Japan by the Japanese_, are to be specially mentioned.[1]