I'd like to spend a few moments talking about the times. I am sure many of you are familiar with the period of the Meiji Revolution, but I think it is useful to remind ourselves, since 130 years have passed, what kind of changes and what kind of challenges existed at that time, and what they might mean for us today.

1872, the year that the Asiatic Society first began to meet, was also the year the first railway was completed between Yokohama and Shimbashi. It was in October that the first train ran; it was also in October that the first lecture meeting of the Asiatic Society was held. This was a time of tremendous change within the Japanese society; telegraph lines were built, harbors were being developed, lighthouses were being constructed, and there were other railway lines rapidly being built, in the Kansai area as well as in other parts of Japan.

Communication was extremely important; the essence of Japan's success was its interest in contact with the western world. At that time communication by the steam engine and the steam ship predominated. When a ship would come into harbor, everybody would run down, and take a day or half a day off in order to get the mail. It's hard to imagine today, with our computers, our email services, our rapid access to telephones and other electronic communications, that communication at its best with the West took many weeks with the fastest of the steamships.

This was a time of radical technical innovation. The motivation for this was above all trade. In other words, the two things that motivated the coming together of Japan and the West were trade and technology. But with it came a tremendous influx of people that contributed to the revolutionary changes in Japanese industry, technology, education and society. Among this tremendous variety of people, there were many persons who were not necessarily scholars, who had a deep interest in Japan, and were willing to commit a tremendous amount of their time and energy to study the Japanese language, Japanese cultural history, religion, literature, etc. That type of study needed a forum, a meeting place, and that was the reason why the Asiatic Society was first formed. These people have often been called "scholarly amateurs". Many of them were medical doctors, technicians, engineers, and others, but nonetheless they were willing and able to devote themselves intensively and over a long period of time in tryingo understand this country which they were hosted in.