Imperial Japan 1926-1938

Many are the books on Japan they mostly follow a prescription, reviewing different aspects of a country which is strangely unlike the lands of Christendom, though it has entered into economic competition with them. I have here tried to present something rather different. Encouraged by the fact that Japan in Recent Times, 1912-1926, has been found useful by other makers of books as well as by readers who sought to increase their knowledge, I have attempted here to present a sequel though it is only part of the same story in the sense that it continues the record. A reign that seemed likely to be quiet and humdrum has proved so full of happenings that it has been difficult, even at slightly greater length, to record these eleven years as adequately as the previous sixteen. But for readers who would like the facts rather than my gloss upon them, here is a book full of them. During ten of the eleven years I was seldom absent from the editorial desk of the Japan Chronicle., so there was little about current events that did not come my way, and I have tried to select from the mass the most significant and most closely related. Sometimes so many things were happening at once that it has been impossible to observe a strict chronology and the subject rather than the date has had to be considered. As in my previous book I have adhered to the Japanese custom of putting the surname first and the personal name after also, where titles are concerned, I have used the highest attained instead of explaining that the Mr. of one day was the Baron of the next.