The present crisis in Russo-Japanese re-1 may have the unlooked-for effect of making Russia and Japan understand maze than ever they did before of each other's history and language. Many Russian officers in Liaotung and Viadivostock have lately taken to the study of Japanese and some of them have translated from that language books which are now en sale in the book-stores. A great deal of attention is bestowed. too, on the vernacular Press; and the history of Dai-Nippon seems to exercise quite 2 fascination over Russian readers. So at least I should judge from the numerous articles on Japanese historical subjects that I find i Russian nows-papers. I picked up accidentally the other day, 1 copy of aul obscure paper called the " Kronstadtky Vyestneck" which I came across a long article on the "Origins of Civil in Japan" which seems to have been taken from another Russian paper, the "Pravit Vyestn." It is not very likely, however, that th's craze for thin ese will be permanent owing, other things, to the fact thy becoming more and more the language of Japan, and that the cream of the natly Press is skimmed off by expert hands into the English newspapers w pear in the country.
The Russian Language in Japan.
The conquests made by the Ru language in Japan and China will perhaps be more permanent. The Far Eastern crisis seems certainly to have given a great impetus to the study of the Russian language in this part of the world. The number of Japanese who have taken up that language in the School of Foreis*: Languages at Tokio is, I am toll, so great that no more pupils car ko received, and the trade done by. boo's-sollers in Russian grammars and _dictionaries, intended for English students, so brisk as to astonish publishers in Eny-land. A Russian grammar with the explanations in Japanese which has been published by the Chaplain of the Russian Legation at Tokio is selling very well, while many Japanese teachers of the Muscovite tongue are rushing into print Japonaise with—phrase-books, lexicons, grammars, etc., some of them not guito up to the mark.
Tf Russia advances at her present rate in North China, the day must come when a knowledge of Russian will become as necessary in the Legations at Peking a knowledge of English is necessary in Calcutta. The same remark ta the business men and Consuls all over North China, though I do not believe that either of these two classes is makin, any particular haste in this matter.
For military men and seamen trading with Siberia and Liaotung the utility of Russian is already recogn's: On' the Japanese vessel which brought me here some time ago, the first officer centd speak Russian Anently and I think that seme of the officers on all the Japanese vessels trading with Russian possessions in this part of the world have some acquaintance with the same tongue. For army oticers both in Englané and in Japan a knowledge of Ru is ing more desirable every dat lieve that the number Japanese military men and merchants,—it is often hard to distinguish between them just now,—who are at present. scattered all over Manchuria and East Siberia and who speak Russian fluently, is pretty large. The Japanese fishermen of Hokkaido and of the west coast of Japan generally require a knowledge of Russian in order to carry out successfully their fishing (and poaching) enterprises along the coast of Saghalien and Kamschatka, and, of course, when any functionary has to he "fixed," as the Aimericans' say, a colloquial knowledge of his language is almost if not absolutely necessary. _. With the greater development of the Siberian fisheries and the coast. of the Primorsk and Manchuria, the Russian language will, I think, become more extensively known among Japanese.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.