Comparative Platforms of Japan's Major Parties . Tr. and arranged by Cecil H. Uyehara, Michio and Shimako Royama, and Shijuro Ogata. Introduction by Allan B. Cole. Medford, Mass.: The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 1955. v, 65 (mimeo.).

broad familiarity with the basic problems of Japanese history and an intimate knowledge of the most recent research in the field. As a result, the author's extensive essay is in some ways far more useful than many of the lengthier and more detailed works which have been standard fare for years. For all of its merits, however, an educator must doubtless have serious reservations about Modem Japan. Since the book is manifestly not aimed at the scholar, it should properly be evaluated in terms of its objectives. In this respect, it is highly problematical that it has satisfactorily fulfilled its purpose. Rather than combining the values of scholarship and popular writing, Tiedemann's work falls between the two. Japanese history is ordinarily difficult enough for westerners to learn. Teaching of the subject calls, moreover, for special techniques. To expose a beginner in the field to a highly concentrated mass of political data, no matter how carefully pruned, will assuredly neither stimulate interests nor be productive of results. Exclusion of the cultural and avoidance of the interpretive are not, moreover, necessarily the wisest method. The best that may be hoped from a book like Modern Japan is that the layman may know something about Japanese history. Whether he will acquire some understanding of Japan and the Japanese is another matter. The documents assembled by Tiedemann to elaborate his text are valuable, if conventional. Though all of the eighteen selections have previously been published in English translation, it is convenient, since some of them are to be found only in works difficult of access, to have them so readily at hand. But considering the purpose for which they are presented, it is evident that the documents as a whole lack the balance so excellently maintained in the text. Thus, while the earlier materials highlight the search for principle and the struggle for power during the first half of the Meiji period, almost all of the remaining items, covering the years since 1889, are concerned with issues of foreign policy. In view of his unquestioned skill in the Japanese language, it is to be regretted that the author did not prepare some translations de novo.