father, in accordance with the general physiological law whereby the fair parent gives way to the dark. The time that has elapsed since Japanese Eurasians began to be numerous is not long enough to inform us whether this mixed race will endure, or whether, as so often happens in such cases, it will die out in the third or fourth generation.
Europeanisation. The Europeanisation of Japan is universally spoken of as a sudden and recent metamorphosis, dating from the opening of the country during the life-time of men not yet old. But this implies a faulty and superficial reading of history. Europeanisation commenced over three hundred and fifty years ago, namely, in A.D. 1542, when three Portuguese adventurers discovered the Japanese island of Tane-ga-shima, and astonished the local princelet with the sight and sound of their arquebuses.
The Europeanisation of Japan has been a drama in three acts. First, the Hispano-Portuguese act, beginning in 1542 and ending with the religious persecution—the extermination rather—of 1617-38. This act offers a succession of stirring scenes. Scarcely even in our own day have changes more sudden been effected. To begin with, the art of war was revolutionised, as well for defence as attack. Japanese feudal barons had had their castles before then, no doubt. The exact construction of those early castles, stockades, or by whatever other name we might most fittingly denote such wood and plaster strongholds, is a curious question which must be left to Japanese antiquarians to decide. The first castle built in the style which now survives in some few perfect and numerous ruined examples, was that erected at Azuchi in the province of Ōmi by Oda Nobunaga, who lived from 1534 to 1582. His active career thus coincided with the first wave of European influence, the Portuguese having arrived when he was a child of eight years old, the earliest Catholic missionaries (1549) when he was a lad of fifteen. Nobunaga became the leading spirit among the warriors of his age; in
