Yet the main moving force in Far Eastern developments is Japan. In
fact, Japan has been pulling the strings ever since September 18,
1931. The challenge to the _status quo_ in East Asia proceeds from
Tokyo, just as in Europe it proceeds from Berlin. Like Germany, but in
even greater measure, Japan has the strategic advantage of a central
position. She need not take too seriously the protests of European
powers halfway across the globe, and she is well aware that the main
centers of strength in the United States and the Soviet Union are
almost equally distant. Only Japan, of the major powers, has her home
bases wholly within the Far Eastern region.
And so today we are forced to think more and more about Japan. In large
part we are concerned with the immediate present. We want to know what
Japan is doing, and what she intends to do. Yet we can understand her
present foreign policy and form some idea of her probable future moves
only if we know something of her past as well. We must seek out the
forces that have shaped modern Japan.
So in this book we shall go back to the legendary traditions of the
Japanese nation, today being revived by Japanese patriots and preached
as a state religion. We shall see how the belief in hereditary power
as the privilege of the few has been strong in Japan from the earliest
times, resisting the influence of democratic ideas from both China and
the West; how even when Japan set up a constitutional government, the
seats of ancient privilege were preserved; and how Japan, with her
military leaders in the saddle, finally set out on the road to Empire.