The main interest of the world's history centres so indisputably in the doings of the Aryan and Semitic races, that even those whose attention has been chiefly devoted to other areas of human development cannot but concur in the judgment which assigns to the object of their studies a secondary place. At the same time, the second place, and even the third, has a claim to some hearing; and if we grant (as we are bound to do) the second place to China as the intellectual, and to some extent the political leader of Eastern Asia, the third place will perhaps be allowed to belong to Japan. Pending the settlement of the disputed Accadian question, Japanese literature takes us back many centuries further than the oldest documents of the Mongols, Mantchus, Turks, Finns, or any other nation of the Altaic stock; and, as the Archaic Japanese language may, on account of its superior antiquity, lay claim to the title of the Sanskrit of the Altaic tongues, so, also, is it to be presumed that the early Japanese civilization and religion present us with the most original features of Altaic thought and life.