certain others, who have resided in this land for a number of years,
continue to live in their own dreamland. These two classes of writers
have been the chief contributors of material for the omnivorous
readers of the West.

It appears to not a few who have lived many years in this Far Eastern
land, that the public has been fed with the dreams of poets or the
snap-judgments of tourists instead of with the facts of actual
experience. A recent editorial article in the _Japan Mail_, than whose
editor few men have had a wider acquaintance with the Japanese people
or language, contains the following paragraph:

"In the case of such writers as Sir Edwin Arnold and Mr. Lafcadio
Hearn it is quite apparent that the logical faculty is in
abeyance. Imagination reigns supreme. As poetic nights or
outbursts, the works of these authors on Japan are delightful
reading. But no one who has studied the Japanese in a deeper
manner, by more intimate daily intercourse with all classes of the
people than either of these writers pretends to have had, can
possibly regard a large part of their description as anything more
than pleasing fancy. Both have given rein to the poetic fancy and
thus have, from a purely literary point of view, scored a success
granted to few.... But as exponents of Japanese life and thought
they are unreliable.... They have given form and beauty to much
that never existed except in vague outline or in undeveloped germs
in the Japanese mind. In doing this they have unavoidably been
guilty of misrepresentation.... The Japanese nation of Arnold and
Hearn is not the nation we have known for a quarter of a century,
but a purely ideal one manufactured out of the author's brains. It
is high time that this was pointed out. For while such works please