obligation to books, writings, and artistic and scholastic influences, I
hasten first to thank the people of Japan, whether servants, superior
officers, neighbors or friends. He who seeks to learn what religion is
from books only, will learn but half.

Gladly thanking those, who, directly or indirectly, have helped me with
light from the written or printed page, I must first of all gratefully
express my especial obligations to those native scholars who have read
to me, read for me, or read with me their native literature.

The first foreign students of Japanese religions were the Dutch, and the
German physicians who lived with them, at Déshima. Kaempfer makes
frequent references, with test and picture, in his Beschryving van
Japan. Von Siebold, who was an indefatigable collector rather than a
critical student, in Vol. V. of his invaluable _Archiv_ (Pantheon von
Nippon), devoted over forty pages to the religions of Japan. Dr. J.J.
Hoffman translated into Dutch, with notes and explanations, the
Butsu-z[=o]-dzu-i, which, besides its 163 figures of Buddhist holy men,
gives a bibliography of the works mentioned by the native author. In
visiting the Japanese museum on the Rapenburg, Leyden, one of the
oldest, best and most intelligently arranged in Europe, I have been
interested with the great work done by the Dutchmen, during two
centuries, in leavening the old lump for that transformation which in
our day as New Japan, surprises the world. It requires the shock of
battle to awaken the western nations to that appreciation of the racial
and other differences between the Japanese and Chinese, which the
student has already learned.

The first praises, however, are to be awarded to the English scholars,
Messrs. Satow, Aston, Chamberlain, and others, whose profound researches