Page:A handbook of modern Japan (IA handbookofmodern01clem).pdf/30

 eastern coast of the mainland of Asia. The islands of Japan stretch along that shore in close proximity to Siberia, Korea, and China, and are not far distant from Siam. With all of those countries she enters, therefore, into most intimate relationship of many kinds. With Russia the relation is one of rivalry, of more or less hostility, at present passive, but likely to be aroused into activity by some unusually exasperating event. In any case, Japan is the only Far-Eastern power that can be relied upon to check the aggressions of Russia; and this fact the wise statesmen of Great Britain have clearly recognized by entering into the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Toward Korea, China, and Siam, Japan sustains a natural position of leadership, because she is far in advance of all those nations in civilization. Ties geographical, racial, social, political, intellectual, and religious, bind them more or less closely together, so that Japan can more sympathetically and thus more easily lead them out into the path of progress. The natural and common routes of trade and travel from the United States to those countries run via Japan, which thus becomes, in more senses than one, "the key of Asia"; and for that very reason she is also the logical mediator between the East and the West.

The Japanese call their country Dai Nihon, or Dai Nippon (Great Japan), and have always had a patriotic faith in the reality of its greatness. But this delightful delusion is rudely dispelled when the