The transformation of Japan since 1867 is amazing, and people have been duly amazed by it. But what is still more amazing is that such an immense change in knowledge and in way of life should have brought so little change in religion and ethics, and that such change as it has brought in these matters should have been in a direction opposite to that which would have been naturally expected. Science is supposed to tend to rationalism; yet the spread of scientific knowledge in Japan has synchronized with a great intensification of Mikado-Worship, the most anachronistic feature in the Japanese civilization. For sociology, for social psychology, and for political theory, Japan is an extraordinarily interesting country. The synthesis of East and West which has been effected is of a most peculiar kind. There is far more of the East than appears on the surface; but there is everything of the West that tends to national efficiency. How far there is a genuine fusion of Eastern and Western elements may be doubted; the nervous excitability of the people suggests something strained and artificial in their way of life, but this may possibly be a merely temporary phenomenon. Throughout Japanese politics since the Restoration, there are two separate strands, one analogous to that of Western nations, especially pre-war Germany, the other inherited from the feudal age, which is more analogous to the politics of the Scottish Highlands down to 1745. It is no part of my purpose to give a history of modern Japan; I wish only to give an outline of the forces which control events and movements in that country, with such illustrations as are necessary. There are many good books on Japanese politics; the one that I have found most informative is McLaren's _Political History of Japan during the Meiji Era_ 1867-1912 (Allen and Unwin, 1916). For a picture of Japan as it appeared in the early years of the Meiji era, Lafcadio Hearn is of course invaluable; his book _Japan, An Interpretation_ shows his dawning realization of the grim sides of the Japanese character, after the cherry-blossom business has lost its novelty. I shall not have much to say about cherry-blossom; it was not flowering when I was in Japan.