This important collection incorporates many of the key works (in total fourteen) by Western scholars and others on different aspects of the Japanese language which represent the second, or 'rediscovery' phase - the first being dominated by Jesuit linguistic scholarship at the turn of the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries resulting from their attempts to convert Japan to Christianity. These language resources and skills, however, were virtually wiped out during the following two centuries when Western culture and religion were outlawed (1630s-1850s).