Every educational system, whether extant or planned, is an inseparable part of the social structure of the country in which it is, or it is to be, applied. Education is dependent much more than is generally realized upon prevalent political, economic and cultural trends and in turn, reflects these trends. This means that while it is possible to describe an educational system as an isolated cultural phase, it is not possible to understand it properly apart from the total social context. It must be seen and evaluated as a part of a whole.

The poetry of every nation and age is a complex expression of the history, spirit, and individual genius of a people; and, as each successive generation evaluates a native or an alien poetic tradition from its own historical and cultural vantage-point, it discovers meanings and values as well as limitations and weaknesses in the poetry it reads. Each generation must reassess for itself the glory that was Greece or the grandeur of Japan—so that the attempt to describe the formative elements which underlie Japanese poetic expression is more than a single essay, individual, or generation can accomplish. But the undertaking nevertheless seems necessary today, when we can no longer be satisfied with the older extremes of Victorian condescension towards “Japanese epigrams”; the exclusively historical or biographical treatment which evades direct analysis of the poetry; or that simple-minded exoticism which prefers ignorant rapture to the disciplined effort of literary criticism. For the Westerner as well as for the Japanese, poetry lives only as it is understood and felt, and our experience of Japanese poetry today must reflect contemporary critical standards and techniques of analysis—the means of understanding given us by our own age and culture.

Our coverage of wartime broadcasts emitted by Radio Tokyo and its satellite stations, while unavoidably incomplete, nevertheless offers clear clues to the Japanese blueprint for Indonesia. The essence of propaganda is to hammer away at a few points, and we may infer from these what the Japanese intended to do, regardless of what they actually accomplished. Despite certain conflicts in regard to timing, priorities and, above all, overall direction, this program seems to have represented the combined goals of Japan's military and big business elements. Although most of the desiderata were the same as those set for the rest of what Japan termed the Southern Regions, Japanese propaganda to and about Indonesia exhibited certain variations from the norm. As the richest, most populous, most distant from Japan, and most thoroughly Muslim area in Southeastern Asia, Indonesia necessarily called for special handling. Its political division by the Japanese into three administrative areas under separate army and navy commanders was a further complicating factor.