Excerpt from The Imperial Agricultural College of Sapporo, Japan

The War of Restoration over, the Japanese Government turned its attention to more peaceful pursuits. It began to divert the overflowing energies of the warrior class and the superabundant strength of the oppressed peasantry into new channels of industrial warfare and conquest. A field well suited for enterprises of this kind was not wanting. For some years preceding the Restoration (1868) foreign relations had been forced upon Japan, and the contact with Russia in diplomacy brought vividly to mind the fact that the northern extremity of our Empire touched one end of the Czar's vast dominion. The northern islands of Japan, vaguely called Yezo, were for centuries a terra incognita among the people: all that was told about, and unfortunately most readily accepted by them was that the region was the abode of a barbarian folk known as the Ainu, and that it was a dreary waste of snow and ice, altogether unfit for inhabitation by a race of higher culture.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.