Excerpt from A History of Japan, Vol. 3: The Tokugawa Epoch, 1652-1868 The serious student will naturally prefer to use this instalment Of Japan's history in conjunction with its predecessors, but those who begin here may be assured that the author's enthusiasm for his subject communicates itself in SO lively a fashion that both pleasure and instruction may be had by dipping into his pages at almost any point. Shoguns, statesmen, scholars, swordsmen, ladies wielding influence from their elegant seclusion, the tax-paying peasantry and the despised merchants are Shown to us in their mutual relations, vividly bringing the life Of the past before the eye Of imagination. The author passed away after having committed to writing this last result of his industrious researches among Japanese and foreign records but before he was able to see it published. The task of preparing the manuscript for the printer, adding a supple mentary chapter and reading the proofs was undertaken by the late Professor J. H. Longford, formerly Consul at Nagasaki and himself the author of The Story of Old Japan. He has enriched the text with many footnotes. Unfortunately he did not live to end the work and it was transferred to my less worthy hands for completion. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.