The documents in the present volume cover a wide range.

In greater or less detail are discussed affairs in the islands--civil, military, and religious, in which all the various ramifications of each estate are touched upon.

Reforms, both civil and religious, are urged and ordered; and trade and commerce, and general economic and social conditions pervade all the documents.

The efforts of Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish in eastern waters are a portent of coming struggles for supremacy in later times.

Japan, meditating on the closed door to Europeans, though still permitting the Dutch to trade there, continues to persecute the Christians, while that persecution is, on the other hand, lessening in violence in China.