almost defies acquisition. Suppose this difficult vernacular
mastered; the would-be student discovers that literary works,
even newspapers and ordinary correspondence, are not composed
in it, but in another dialect, partly antiquated, partly
artificial, differing as widely from the colloquial speech as
Latin does from Italian. Make a second hazardous supposition.
Assume that the grammar and vocabulary of this second
indispensable Japanese language have been learnt, in addition
to the first. You are still but at the threshold of your
task, Japanese thought having barricaded itself behind the
fortress walls of an extraordinarily complicated system of
writing, compared with which Egyptian hieroglyphics are
child's play. Yet next to nothing can be found out by a
foreigner unless he have this, too, at his fingers' ends.
As a matter of fact, scarcely anyone acquires it--only a
missionary here and there, or a consular official with a
life appointment.

The result of all this is that, whereas the Japanese know
everything that it imports them to know about us, Europeans
cannot know much about them, such information as they receive
being always belated, necessarily meagre, and mostly
adulterated to serve Japanese interests. International
relations placed--and, we repeat it, inevitably placed--on
this footing resemble a boxing match in which one of the
contestants should have his hands tied. But the metaphor
fails in an essential point, as metaphors are apt to do--the
hand-tied man does not realise the disadvantage under which
he labours. He thinks himself as free as his opponent.