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 book. The background of English political life was also of great interest to the Japanese, at the moment absorbed in the struggle for a constitution and self-government.

Other works translated in the early days of the Emperor Meiji’s reign included Eighty Days Around the World (1878), Télémaque by Fenelon (1879), excerpts from the Decameron (1882) and Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1882). The selection is certainly puzzling, not to say chaotic, but every book