Page:A handbook of modern Japan (IA handbookofmodern01clem).pdf/132
| metallism; Loo Choo annexed; new codes; prefectural assemblies; Bank of Japan; Ōsaka Missionary Conference; new nobility; Japan Mail Steamship Company; Privy Council; Prince Haru made Crown Prince; anti-foreign reaction; promulgation of Constitution; first Diet; Gifu earthquake; war with China; Formosa; tariff revision; gold standard; freedom of press and public meetings; opening of Japan by new treaties; war with China; Tōkyō Missionary Conference; Anglo-Japanese Alliance. |
The student of Japanese history is confronted, at the outset, with a serious difficulty. In ancient times the Japanese had no literary script, so that all events had to be handed down from generation to generation by oral tradition. The art of writing was introduced into Japan, from China probably, in the latter part of the third century A. D.; but it was not used for recording events until the beginning of the fifth century. All these early records, moreover, were destroyed by fire; so that the only "reliance for information about . . . antiquity" has to be placed in the Kojiki,[1] or "Records of Ancient Matters," and the Nihongi,[2] or "Chronicles of Japan." The former, completed in 712 A. D., is written in a purer Japanese style; the latter, finished in 720 A. D., is "much more tinctured with Chinese philosophy"; though differing in some details, they