THE WESTERN WORLD AND JAPAN

The director of the East Asian Institute, Columbia University, here provides an encyclopedic study of the impact of western culture on Asiatic peoples, Japan in particular. From the days of the Jesuits to the coming of Russian, English, Americans, he carries his examination to 1894 and covers exhaustively not only the political, literary, military, scientific, legal, educational and religious influences but also minutely details the shape and character of traditional Japanese institutions. He shows too how Japanese society decayed, was renewed without changing essence, how feudalism was destroyed, how events led to its entry into international society in 1854, and how, through it all, the fusion of two cultures was backgrounded by clash and conflict. A history that well might be definitive in its monumental examination of the interaction of differing cultures.