Not content with the reality of Japan as it is or as it was, some imaginative writers have founded novels on Japanese subjects. We thus have books such as Arimas, which is whimsical and clever, and a dozen others that somehow we have never been able to make up our mind to dip into. As for books of travel, there is literally no end to the making of them. Almost every possible space of time, from Seven Weeks in Japan to Eight Years in Japan and Nine Years in Nipon, has furnished the title for a volume. So have almost all the more piquant adjectives with the word "Japan" attached, as The Real Japan, Heroic Japan, Ceremonial Japan, Agitated Japan, Le Japon Pittoresque, Le Japon Pratique, etc., etc. There are Expeditions to Japan, Sketches of Japan, Runs in Japan, Gleanings from Japan, Short Leave to Japan, Japan as we Saw it, Lotos-time in Japan, Journeys, Travels, Trips, Excursions, Impressions, Letters, etc., etc., almost ad infinitum; "and apt alliteration's artful aid" has been borrowed for such titles as A Jaunt in Japan, The Gist of Japan, Japanese Jingles, and several others. A Diplomatist's Wife in Japan, by Mrs. Hugh Fraser, and other works from the same hand give a readable account of life in Tōkyō and at the usual summer holiday resorts, while Weston, in his Japanese Alps, leads us touring among the little-known peaks of the provinces of Etchū, Hida, and Shinano. Many excellent things, on the other hand, may be unearthed from the files of old newspapers. See, for instance, Rudyard Kipling's Letters to the "Times," 1892, which are the most graphic ever penned by a globe-trotter,—but then what a globe-trotter! They have been republished in From Sea to Sea. Many general books of travel have chapters devoted to Japan. The liveliest is Miss Duncan's Social Departure. For though the author revels in Japan as "a many-tinted fairy-tale," the sense of humour which never deserts her prevents her enthusiasm from degenerating into mawkishness. Perhaps the most entertaining specimen of globe-trotting literature of another calibre is that much older book, Miss Margaretha Weppner's North Star and Southern Cross. We do not wish to make any statement which cannot be verified, and therefore we
