Page:A handbook of modern Japan (IA handbookofmodern01clem).pdf/180

132 gant to expect that Japan's new constitutional garments should fit her perfectly from the first. They are too large for her. She has to grow into them, and of course the process is destined to be more or less awkward." We must agree with Prince Itō, the author of the Constitution, not only that there has been the experimental period, but also that "excellent results have thus far been obtained, when it is remembered how sudden has been the transition from feudalism to representative institutions." We ought, indeed, to bear in mind, that, when the Constitution was promulgated, Japan was only eighteen years out of feudalism and twenty-one years out of military despotism; so that, by both the Oriental and the Occidental reckoning, New Japan had only just come "of age" politically. She seems, therefore, deserving of the greatest credit for the progress of the first decade of constitutionalism.

"The Story of Japan" (Murray), "Advance Japan" (Morris), and "The Yankees of the East" (Curtis), give some information here and there about the government of Japan. But especially helpful are Wigmore's articles in the "Nation" and "Scribner's Monthly," Iyenaga's "Constitutional Development of Japan," Knapp's "Feudal and Modern Japan," Count (now Marquis) Itō's "Commentaries on the Constitution of the Empire of Japan," and Lay's "History of Japanese Political Parties" (Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. xxx. part iii.). See also "The Political Ideas of Modern Japan" (Kawakami), and "Dai Nippon" (Dyer), chaps. xiii. and xiv. Uycharu's "Political Development of Japan (1867-1909)" is the latest and best.