IT was a land of romance, in which one was transported, not in thought but in actual life, back to the days of Richard Coeur de Lion, a fairyland in the picturesqueness of its people and in its own natural beauties. When I left it, the romance had gone. The samurai and the lords had become undistinguishable by outward signs from the common herd, and elbowed their way through the streets unnoticed and uncared-for. The din of electric cars never ceased and steam factories added to their noise. Japan had become a land of materialism, a great military and commercial Power. But the spirit of the people is unchanged. It is still to-day what it was when the great Mongol was triumphantly driven from the shores of the Island Empire.