A Rehandling of Japanese History

Students of the cultures of Eastern Asia are apt to accuse specialists in European and American history of culpable ignorance in regard to that vast portion of the human race which inhabits the Asiatic continent. Their accusations are reasonably well founded. An expert in the history of the Renaissance would be properly scandalized if one of the local experts in Far Eastern history (if there are any) should profess ignorance of Savanarola, but he may feel no decent embarrassment at his own inability to place the Han dynasty within a thousand years of its proper dates.