natural speed please.
American English please.
No European, surely, can ever feel that he is qualified to write an entirely adequate history of an Eastern country. Certainly for a Western historian Japan presents peculiar difficulties. For although the social and political changes in Japan during the past hundred years have been both drastic and widespread, nevertheless the Japanese nation has been spared, so far, the radical change of a violent revolution. Thus in spite of everything a certain basic continuity with past traditions, some of them very ancient, has been preserved. In Japan, as in Great Britain, old and new exist together, are indeed intermingled: but so are East and West. In fact it is becoming increasingly less easy to separate the specifically Eastern and Western elements of Japanese life and thought.
Anybody who travels to Japan by way of Asia must feel on arrival that he has entered a semiWestern environment. Yet the longer he remains in the country, the more clearly he will perceive that Western ideas and techniques, now generally accepted and applied, sometimes undergo a subtle but definite change when transplanted to Japan.
This was much more true, of course, in the first quarter of 20th century, and earlier, than it is today.
It could be claimed, indeed, that the younger generation – those who were in their infancy during or just after the Pacific War – greatly resemble their contemporaries in Europe and America.
In course of time the similarities between Japan and the West may weigh more than the differences.
The factor, then, that lends great interest to the history of Modern Japan, and makes the writing of it a peculiarly challenging task, is the Japanese response to intrusion by the Western World.
