Notitia librorum est dimidium studiorum et maxima eruditionis pars exactam librorum habere cognitionem.

THURMANN.

There is hardly another nation in the East which draws during the last decade or two so much the eyes of the Western world upon itself than the Japanese. Gifted with quick perceptive faculty, personal courage, hardly equalled artistic sense and affable character, these "Europeans of the East", as they have been recently named, and their fair consorts, which Admiral Roze with his innate politeness called more cęs than fifteen years ago "cettes Eves avant le péché", woke suddenly up of their oriental seclusion like "Dornroeschen" [fairy queen] in the woods.

Much has been written concerning them by a multitude of workers of all sorts and conditions, but much requires still to be done. To make an inventory of all, what has been said, is the object of this compilation, for nothing is more important to know before one begins to study a subject than to be aware of the best books on it, and before writing on any topic than to be acquainted with the whole cognate literature in order to start with a thorough knowledge and unbiased opinion. The main part of the work has been made up of the large bibliographies by Poole, Taschenberg, Orientalische Bibliographie, Truebner's Record etc., the extracts of which have been carefully checked by crossreferences with the "Catalogue of Scientific Papers" and similar works as those by Heinsius, Lorenz a. o. Other titles have been taken from bibliographies on special subjects, which Prof. B. H. Chamberlain, Mr D. MacRitchie, Rev. W. E. Griffis a. o. added to their valuable monographs. Not a few titles have further been gathered from quotations dispersed here and there in the leading works on Japan notwithstanding that I could use them only with great care, for it is not an exception to find somewhere quoted:

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Kattendijke, Journal de son séjour au Japon and es

Van Kattendijke, Dairy of his stay in Japan only to find ou afterwards that the real title of the work is: Huyssen van Kattendijke, Dagboek van gedurende zijn verblijf in Japan and neither a French nor an English translation in existence. But not a few writers revel in such "chinoiseries"; it may be that it looks to them more learned than an accurately copied title.

In many cases brief articles have been referred to as they seemed to be of value from a scientific point of view for the specialist. — Articles in newspapers however have been excluded as a rule; for Lord Macaulay would hardly have said in these days "The only true history of a nation is to be found in the newspapers", when so many articles in the "dailies" with a few honourable exceptions of some leading papers are more or less tinted, with political or religious bias, or are written for mercenary purposes as by German-Jewish pressmen.

My earlier intention to include the period up to 1859 in my Bibliography was abandoned on account of the useless additional editorial labour and printing expense, especially as it would be rather difficult for anyone to improve much the painstaking and concise "Bibliographie japonaise depuis le XVe siècle jusqu'à nos jours [i. e. 1859]" by the late Mr L. Pagès.

But as this latter work deserves better to be known than it is amongst students and scholars outside of France, I thought it best to add to my work an autographed reprint of it. Should however anybody feel anxious to plume himself with a knowledge of the earlier literature on Japan, he would only have to copy all titles given in:

Léon Pagès, Histoire de la religion chrétienne au Japon depuis 1598 jusqu'à 1651. (p. 60 of this Bibliography). Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series vols II-IV. (ibidem, p. 100).

and in several similar works in order to make up a compendious and, if he is an accurate copist, a correct list of the early literature without incurring the expense and trouble of visiting all large libraries in Europe.

Reviews of books have with very few exceptions neither been incorporated in this Bibliography; a proportion of them is undoubtedly of considerable value for the reader as they show

mortcomings of a work caused by the respective author's inadequate knowledge of the subject, his personal idiosyncrasy or any other deficiency. It should however not to be overlooked that reviews are more or less often valueless panagyrics or occasionally base attacks dictated by professional jealousy.

It was not without regret, that I excluded works in the Russian language from my bibliography, as amongst them are a number of writings full of deep erudition or historical facts on Japan and especially its past or present dependencies. But the difficulty, which I would have had to overcome in order to give an approximately accurate and complete list of them besides being so far away from from all sources was not in proportion to the advantage as the number of Japanese scholars outside the Russian empire, who are likewise acquainted with the Russian language, is too insignificant. Should however a Russian scholar be willing to undertake this task, the Japan Society here will no doubt be pleased to insert such a list in a volume of their Transactions.

To give an English translation of the titles of foreign works beside the original as it has been suggested to me would have greatly enlarged the extent of this book, obstructed its clearness and likewise increased its costprice without any adequate advantage; for a mere title is of little or rather no use whatever for those, who are unfamiliar with the respective foreign idiom. On the other hand I hope to meet the wishes of the greater majority of all interested in Japan, and of the Japanese themselves in editing this work in the English language, the lingua franca of all Oriental students.

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The spelling of the words in the titles has never been changed - printers errors or 'slips of my pen excepted -, therefore are to be found "traveling" "theater" and other Americanisms; "japanesisch" und "japanisch" in German; monumens" as written hy the Revue des Deux Mondes and monuments" as decreed by the Académie française. The same neutrality has been observed in respect to proper names, viz “Aino" and "Ainu", "Yedo" and "Yeddo" and many more Japanese or Chinese words.

Foreign letters, unknown to the English language, in outlandish authors names or catchwords in anonymous titles

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have been arranged according to the English "I-ro-ha" as for instance: ñ and 11 in Spanish words under "n" and "double 1", å and 8 in Danish and Swedish words under "ae" and "oe", ij in Dutch under "i j". I thought hereby to study the convenience of the reader, but was not by any means influenced to do so by a shortsighted desire to attempt an improvement of the foreign orthography by overriding grammatical rules of other tongues.

Beside the more or less numerous inaccuracies or omissions, which may be or rather are in my compilation, I will only point out two kinds of " apparent" errors, to which I cannot plead guilty. Many "parts" of periodical publications of scientific societies or "tirages à part" of articles therefrom bear one date, while the titlepage of the complete volume of the same publication bears a date one or several years later. For instance "Knipping, The great taifun of August 1880" in part 23 of the "Mittheilungen der deutschen Gesellschaft fuer die Natur- und Voelkerkunde Ostasiens" is dated" 1880", while the titlepage of the complete volume bears the date of 1883. The second class of contradictions occurs repeatedly in quotations of articles published in the "Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan", and others. So for instance. Mr. W. G. Aston's paper "Has Japan an affinity with Aryan languages?" is published in volume II pp. 223-231 of the original edition of this serial, while the same paper is in the litteral reprint of this volume on pp. 199-206. I should have indicated each time such seeming contradictions which are sometimes confusing, but I had neither leisure nor inclination for such a pedantic and time-wasting labour.

Orthographic errors in proper names have been corrected in the two indices, at least so far they came to my notice. A few other mistakes have been rectified in the list of errata and addenda at the end, while some misprints - few and far between as "Britisch" for " British", in English, "affairs" for "affaires" in French and "hutige" for "heutige" in German have been left uncorrected, as every one will understand their meaning, leaving it to a friendly critic to reproach me imperfect knowledge of these languages.

In respect to prices I tought best to give simply the original published price in the currency of the country in which the books were published and to leave out altogether the prices of pamphlets or articles in the periodical press.