During the past three decades Japanese students have devoted much intelligent labour to collecting and collating the somewhat disjointed fragments of their country's history. The task would have been practically impossible for foreign historiographers alone, but now that the materials have been brought to light there is no insuperable difficulty in making them available for purposes of joint interpretation. That is all I have attempted to do in these pages, and I beg to solicit pardon for any defect they may be found to contain.

F. BRINKLEY.

TOKYO, 1912.