The publication of a new volume of Lafcadio Hearn's exquisite studiesof Japan happens, by a delicate irony, to fall in the very month whenthe world is waiting with tense expectation for news of the latestexploits of Japanese battleships. Whatever the outcome of the presentstruggle between Russia and Japan, its significance lies in the factthat a nation of the East, equipped with Western weapons and girdingitself with Western energy of will, is deliberately measuring strengthagainst one of the great powers of the Occident.
