Excerpt from Echoes From Japan Of distant lands in their worst aspects. Your residence Of nine years in Japan gives you a very fair insight into the feeling and thought Of the people, and throughout your papers I distinctly perceive your true sympathy with my own Country. I Observe almost every day in London that, although there is SO much talk about Japan and Japanese art, yet most people, I Should say, even educated people, have only some inadequate, and Often many mistaken ideas Of Japan. This is just what most Japanese feel much dis appointed to find. Therefore, I am very glad to find such descriptions and comments as you have given about Japan in these papers, because they are true and honest. We Japanese have no desire to have our merits exaggerated as a nation very Old in her history, and now trying very hard to effect a complete regeneration to become one Of the respectable modern states. But we are, at the same time, very anxious to dispel those unfairly hostile, and even monstrous, criticisms which frequently appear in books Of travel. If you are going to publish these papers, which I have had the pleasure of reading all through, I sincerely hope that they may find a good many readers and I am very happy to supply you with some statistical facts about my country, taken from the latest returns. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.