Published by 
 
 J B MILLET COMPANY 
 
 Boston Mass USA 
 
 

JAPAN. 
 
 I 
 
 THE EMPIRE; ITS SIZE, BUILDINGS, CITIES AND SCENERY. 
 
 APAN, since the resumption of her intercourse with Western nations forty 
 years ago, has attracted multitudes of foreign tourists, and has inspired an 
 extraordinarily large number of them to write books about her beauties 
 and her quaintnesses. Not one of these many authors has been wholly 
 condemnatory. Most of them found something to admire in the manners 
 and customs of her people, and all have been charmed by her scenery. 
 Certainly in the matter of seascape and landscape Nature has been pro- 
 fusely kind to the Isles of Nippon. They rise out of the sea with so 
 many graces of form, and lie bathed in an atmosphere of such sparkling softness, that 
 it is easy to sympathize with the legend ascribing their origin to crystals dropped from 
 the point of the creator’s spear, d hat they fell from some heaven of generous gods is a 
 theory more consonant with their aspect than the sober fact that they form part of a great 
 ring welded by volcanic energy in the Pacific Ocean, and that still, from time to time, 
 they shudder with uneasy memories of the fiery forces that begot them. Eastern Asia 
 thrusts two long, slender arms into far Oriental waters : Kamtchatka in the north, 
 Malacca in the south ; and between these lies a giant girdle of islands holding in its 
 embrace Siam, Cochin China, the Middle Kingdom, Korea and the eastern end of the 
 Great White Czar’s dominions, thus extending from latitude 50° north to the equator. 
 When Commodore Perry anchored at Uraga in 1854 the empire of Japan stretched along 
 two fifths of this girdle. Beginning on the south at Cape Sata, the lowest point of the 
 Island of the Nine Provinces (Kiushu), it ended, on the north, with a disputed fragment of 
 Saghalien and an unsettled number of the attenuated filament of islets called the Kuriles. 
 Since then the emjrire has been pushed ten degrees southward. Now, including the Riukiu 
 (Loochoo) Islands and Formosa, it constitutes three fifths of the girdle — a distance of two 
 thousand miles — and extends over thirty degrees of latitude and thirty-five of longitude. 
 Its expansion has followed the law of geographical affinities, — temporarily trangressed in the 
 case of the United States only, and ultimately to be verified by their history also, — south- 
 
2 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 ward the star of empire has taken its way. One loss of territory, however, was suffered by 
 Japan in that interval, perhaps by way of permanent punishment for standing so long aloof 
 from the outer world; she had to surrender to Russia the island of Saghalien — Karafuto, 
 as her people call it. Saghalien forms a kind of territorial link between Japan and Russia. 
 
 Its northwestern coast 
 almost feels the current 
 of the Amur debouching 
 at Nikolaievsk, and Yezo 
 on its south is within 
 easy rowing distance. 
 Naturally Russians 
 from the Amur region 
 and Japanese from Yezo 
 found their way to the 
 island and pushed for- 
 ward until their “spheres 
 of influence” overlapped. 
 Complications arose, and 
 Japan, then almost pow- 
 erless for offence or de- 
 fence in so remote and inhospitable a part of her dominions, found her people harassed and 
 her settlements destroyed Iry Russian men-of-«'ar. These were not acts of wanton aggres- 
 sion, Russia's ultimate purpose being to establish commercial relations with her neighbor. 
 Perhaps Japan may be excused for hesitating to court the closer acquaintance of a people 
 whom she knew only as incendiaries and raiders. At all events she hesitated so long 
 that when at last (1S75) she made up her mind to settle the question Saghalien had already 
 been almost entirely colonized by Russian subjects, and its e.xchange for the northern islands 
 of the inhospitable Kuriles seemed the sole e.xit from the dilemma. Assuredly this was not 
 a profitable exchange for Japan, but it constituted a fitting sequel to her protracted and 
 invertebrate squabbles with Russia — squabbles that began in 1790 and taught the Japanese 
 to regard the great Northern Power with distrust that recent events have not tended to dispel. 
 Possibly instructed by her Saghalien experience, Japan took care that no other islands of 
 questionable ownership within easy reach of her shores should remain a bait to aggressive 
 appetites. 
 
 In 1871 she sent a commissioner and a body of colonists to take formal possession of 
 the Bonin group, known to her as Ogasawara-jima, which, though discovered by her mariners 
 nearly two hundred years previously, had not hitherto been included within her sphere of active 
 occupation. But on the south, forming a series of stepping-stones between her territory and 
 
JAPAN. 
 
 3 
 
 Formosa, stretched a cluster of islands not to be so easily dealt with. They were the Riiikiu 
 group, called by the outside world the Loochoo, or Lewchew. Commodore Perry, whose 
 patriotic sentiment often took the form of a desire to acquire “ ports of refuge ” in the East, 
 strongly urged the United States government to adopt that course with regard to suitable 
 harbors in Riukiu and the Bonins, and it is probable that his suggestion would have been 
 acted on had his mission to Japan provoked any rough reception. But the fate of the Riukiu 
 Islands was not to be so easily settled. Japan, indeed, never permitted herself to doubt that 
 the islands were her property. They had long been regarded as an appanage of the Satsuma 
 fief, among whose revenues their yearly taxes were counted. Their people spoke a language 
 having close affinities with that of Japan, and their manners and customs showed an even 
 more marked relationship. But they paid tribute to China, and the latter maintained toward 
 them a demeanor of unpractical proprietorship. Not many years after the centralization of 
 administrative authority in Japan and the abolition of feudalism, an event occurred that sub- 
 jected the claims of the two powers to a conclusive test. A Riukiuan junk was cast away 
 upon the coast of Formosa, and the crew were foidly murdered by the Formosans. The Ja|> 
 anese government, at once assuming with regard to Riukiu the protective obligations of a 
 sovereign, summoned China to punish her Formosan subjects and compensate the families of 
 the murdered sailors. China resorted to her usual tactics of evasion. Instead of challenging 
 Japan's attitude toward Riukiu, she sought rather to shuffle out of her own responsibility for 
 the doings of the Formosans, so that, after a sufficient e.xercise of patience, Japan undertook 
 the punitive duty herself, and sent a military expedition to Formosa to exact reparation in 
 loco. This happened in 1874. It was the most suggestive event in Japan’s modern history. 
 That she herself interpreted it to mean war with her big neighbirr, no one living in the coun- 
 try at the time and observing the shock of patriotic excitement that thrilled the whole nation, 
 could for a moment doubt. Yet Japan was in no sense equipped for such a contest. Her 
 new administration was not yet fully organized; her finances had not emerged from the con- 
 fusion consequent upon transferring the accounts of the numerous fiefs to one central ledger; 
 her army was still in an embryonic stage; she had virtually no navy, nor any resources of 
 marine transport ; her treasury was almost empty, and her credit stood low. Nevertheless 
 she did not shrink from the severest test of her sense of national responsibility, and if the 
 spirit that she displayed was not rightly construed by the world at the time, it was because 
 Western statesmen did not think the subject worthy of careful attention. As for the Pekin 
 government, they had no fancy for fighting, ami when Great Britain stepped in to mediate. 
 China readily agreed to indemnify Japan, provided that she witlulrew her expeditionary force 
 from Formosa. But the Riukiu proljlem had now been carried into the field of practical poli- 
 tics, and its solution threatened to involve an interminable controversy. General Grant, visit- 
 ing the East in the course of his tour round the world in 1879, f<'tmd the governments in 
 Tokyo and Pekin as far as ever from an understanding. He suggested a partition of the 
 
4 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 islands in dispute, and Japan readily agreeing, negotiations on that basis were opened in the 
 Chinese eapital. 
 
 It had not yet been proved by experience that every evidence of a foreign states 
 willingness to compromise is invariably construed by China as a sign of weakness. When 
 
 a convention for the di- 
 vision of the islands had 
 been drafted and signed 
 by the plenipotentiaries 
 of the two empires, the 
 Chinese government 
 turned around and de- 
 clared in effect that no 
 l)lenary powers had been 
 vested in their represent- 
 ative, and that the docu- 
 ment must be submitted 
 for examination and, if 
 need be, amendment at 
 
 A WINTER SCENE IN YOKOHAMA. tlie liatlds of tWO OthcE 
 
 Although Yokohama is but one degree further north than Los Angeles, California, its climate is much colder In winter. hitr h Oftl Ci 'll S XllCrC- 
 
 upon the Japanese plenipotentiary left Pekin, and the Riukiu Islands were finally incorpo- 
 rated into the empire of Japan under the title of Okinawa Prefecture. China pigeon-holed 
 her grievance, but before she found any easy opportunity to air it with efiect the Korean 
 cpiestion and the war precipitated by it in 1894 dwarfed all previous problems into insig- 
 nificance. In the sequel of that war, Japan added Formosa and the Pescadores to her 
 dominions, which thus consist now of five large islands and a multitude of islets, the latter 
 scattered along her coasts or grouped into four clusters, the Kuriles (Chi-shima), on the 
 north; the Bonins (Ogasawara-jinia), on the east; the Loochoo (Riukiu or Okinaw'a), on the 
 south, and the Pescadores, off the southwest coast of F'orniosa. The total area of these 
 islands and islets is 162,000 square miles in round numbers, of which 16,000 square miles 
 have been added since the centralization of the government in 1S67. Taken in order of 
 magnitude, the five principal islands are Hondo, or Nippon (.86,294 square miles), Vezo 
 (30,000 square niile.s), I'orniosa (14,982 square miles), Kiushu (13,763 square miles), and 
 Shikoku (6,854 square mile.s). Previously to the acquisition of Formosa, the area of the 
 Japanese empire was equal to that of the British Isles, Holland and Belgium combined. 
 Wbth the addition of Formosa and the Pescadores, it has become aiiproxiniately equal 
 to the area of the British Isles, Holland, Belgium and Denmark. It is noteworthy that 
 the extension has been wholly southward ; w hatever diininution has taken place is on the 
 
JA PAN. 
 
 5 
 
 north. The facts that Japan’s debut upon the stage of the world has been the signal for her 
 territorial expansion ; that the direction of her growth is southward ; that her resources 
 are now, for the first time, in process of rapid development; that her people, fired with 
 national enthusiasm and permeated from highest to lowest with military spirit, entertain one 
 absorbing ambition, to make their country the leading Power in the Orient ; that she has 
 shown extraordinary capacity for assimilating whatever is good and ser\ iceable in Western 
 civilization, and that her modern enterprises, though wholly unguided by experience, have in 
 every case been successful — these facts impart vivid interest to the next chapters of her 
 history. There are, indeed, some modifying considerations not without significance. These 
 will be noted in their proper place; but the general situation seems to be summed up in the 
 above statement. 
 
 From time immemorial Japan has been tormented by earthquakes. She thrills with 
 volcanic energy. Since the seventh century of our era, destructive visitations of this nature 
 figure with painful perpetuity in her records. They seldom attain the dimensions of a 
 national catastrophe, but at intervals, happily growing longer, terrible destruction of life and 
 property has to be laid to their account. Since the days when all striking exhibitions of nat- 
 ural force were attributed to supernatural agencies, the people of Japan have been accustomed 
 to speak of a gigantic fish that lashes their coasts in moments of fury and sets the ocean 
 rolling shoreward in 
 mountains. There is a 
 measure of truth in this, 
 as in every expression 
 of popular observation. 
 
 For it is from the direc- 
 tion of the sea that the 
 seismic visit generally 
 comes. Pendent from 
 the great chain of volca- 
 noes that stretches from 
 the Kuriles to the Anda- 
 mans, a heavy loop lies 
 buried in the Pacific off 
 the Izumi promontory 
 on the mideastern coast 
 of the main island. In the craters of this loop are generated the forces that shock Japan 
 with greatest intensity. The islands themselves have few active volcanoes, or “ fire- 
 mountains ” {kwazan), as the people call them. Neither does it appear that the active 
 volcano is greatly to be dreaded as a source of seismic violence. The forces steadily dissi- 
 
6 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 pated by its continuous display of energy become dangerous only when, tamped in subter- 
 ranean mines, they suddenly seek exit upwards along lines of least resistance, the loosely 
 packed tunnels of extinct volcanoes. A vivid illustration of this theory was furnished ten 
 years ago by a mountain called Bandaisan. During eleven centuries the volcano had been 
 cluiescent. Stalwart forests had crept upwards t(r the edge of its once steaming crater; 
 villages had been built in the now' verdure-clad scars torn by its ancient violence, and to a 
 thermal spring bubbling w'ithin a stone's throw of the summit, invalids flocked, season after 
 season, thoughtless of any ill greater than their own ailments. But one morning a volcanic 
 mine exploding, without any previous notice, in the bowels of the mountain, tore aw'ay its 
 whole northern face and discharged into space seven hundred million tons of rocks and earth, 
 every particle of the colossal deluge rushing forward as though it had been shot from a 
 cannon. Of the appalling results to life and property it is needless to speak : they have been 
 recorded often enough. These resurrections of long deceased volcanoes are the most 
 
 awful of seismic phenomena. Next to them in destructive suddenness arc waves hurled 
 against the shore by submarine volcanoes, playing with tow'ns and hamlets as the storm 
 plays W'ith dead leaves, and strewing long reaches of coast with mangled corpses. Such a 
 wave invaded the northeastern shore of the main island in June, 1896, just sixty years 
 after the same region had suffered from a similar calamity. Yet there are evidences that 
 Japan is gradually acquiring immunity from these calamities. They grow’ few'er and 
 farther between with the lapse of centuries. fCyoto, for example, used to be notably sub- 
 ject to destructive shocks, but for sixty-five years it has remained comparatively safe. 
 Tokyo’s period of security has not been so long — only forty-six years. But during the 
 whole of that time scarcely a dozen habitations have been w'recked by earthquakes. On the 
 other hand, no city in Japan has had such awful experiences. In 1703 thirty-seven thousand 
 of its citizens w'ere crushed under falling houses or choked by huge waves. In 1855 fully 
 twice as many perished, and some seventeen thousand buildings weie shattered or burned. 
 
 It might be supposed that, living under the menace of such catastrophes, the Japa- 
 nese people would be tormented by constant apprehension, and that their uneasiness would 
 manifest itself in their daily life. To some extent that is the case. Their dwelling-houses, 
 for example, are always light wooden structures, sufficiently elastic to yield to forces which, 
 if rigidly resisted, would be instantaneously destructive. One result of this necessity is that 
 the higher efforts of architectural genius have found in Japan no field for their display. 
 Architectural decoration, indeed, has been carried to great lengths, and a roof curve of singu- 
 lar grace has been evolved. But these beauties are confined to sacred buildings and to the 
 houses of the nobility. A Japanese city is little better than a collection of shanties, and at 
 intervals in the wooden shutters (amado, literally, rain-doors) that surround every veranda 
 during the night, hinged panels are inserted to afford easy exit at the first vibration of an 
 earthquake, for the shutters themselves, being slid consecutively into their places and bolted 
 
MOUNT FUJI AS SEEN FROM KASHIWABARA. 
 
 Fuji, often called Fuji-san, Fuji-no-yama and Fusiyama, is the loftiest and most famous mountain in Japan. 
 Its altitude has been variously estimated at from 12,234 to 12,450 feet above the sea. It stands in the centre of 
 a great plain, about fifteen miles from the coast. Its vast bulk dominates the surrounding country, and its snow- 
 clad peak may be seen by the approaching mariner long before the coast line appears above the horizon. 
 Although now quiescent, Fuji must still be accounted a volcano. History records several violent eruptions, the 
 latest being in 1707. It is quite practicable to make an ascent to the summit between the latter part of July 
 and before the middle of September, but at any other time the peak is inaccessible. 
 

 
 
 
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JAPAN. 
 
 7 
 
 by a somewhat intricate contriv'ance, cannot be hastily removed. But apart from these spe- 
 cial accommodations, the Japanese seem to take little thought for the perils by which nature 
 has surrounded them. They laughingly catalogue the four most formidable factors of every- 
 day existence as “ earthquakes, thunderbolts, fires, and fathers ” (Jishiu, /caminan, kwaji, 
 oyaji), the classification itself evincing the spirit in which it is made. Probably no people in 
 the world take the goods that the gods send more gleefully or the evils more philosophically. 
 It has been calculated that the capital, Tokyo, is laid in ashes once in es'ery quarter of a cen- 
 tury ; that is to say, the houses destroyed there Iry fire in twenty-five years aggregate the 
 number comprising the whole city. The steam fire-engine has disturbed that estimate, but it 
 was true once, and it remains a truth to a majority of the citizens. They comprehend its 
 significance. The clanging of the fire-bell night after night, and sometimes time after time 
 in the same night, throughout the winter, means that, in hundreds of cases, competence 
 hardly earned by years of patient industry is converted into penury by the fire-demon in as 
 many minutes. Yet they call fire the “flower of the capital,” and ridicule the notion that any 
 one timid of such happenings should reside in the great city. There is no bravado in their 
 mood. They act as they speak. Women and children, seated in a temporary shelter beside 
 the smoking ruins of their homes, begin the day after their misfortune as they began the day 
 that preceded it. Their circumstances have changed, but their duty remains unaltered — to 
 bear their own share of 
 the sorrow without ever 
 intruding their burden 
 upon the notice of others. 
 
 Yet it is a pitiable 
 thought that the growth 
 of wealth should be re- 
 tarded by such catastro- 
 phes. The earthquake 
 is at the root of the evil. 
 
 It dictates the use of 
 flame-fuel for building 
 material, thus inviting 
 conflagrations, forbid- 
 ding architectural effort, 
 denuding the people’s 
 homes of all valuables that are not immediately portable, and invading their lives with 
 heart-breaking losses. During the era of enlightenment that commenced with the aboli- 
 tion of feudalism and the centralization of the government in 1S67 — the Mciji era, as it is 
 called — earthquakes were, for the first time, brought within the field of scientific research in 
 
 THE NAGARA-G.-\\V.\ HRIUGE AI'TER THE GRE.AT EARTIIC)UAKE IX 1S9I. 
 
 Central Japan was convulsed by this earthquake. Ten thousand persons were killed and twenty thousand wounded. One 
 hundred and iwenty-eieht thousand houses were destroyed. 
 
8 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 Japan. A seismological society was formed, originally at the instance of foreign experts but 
 ultimately under Japanese auspices, and investigations were conducted with much energy and 
 ability. Summing up the results obtained by long years of effort, we find that the inquiry 
 has not yet emerged from its preliminary stage. The principal achievement has been the 
 construction of seismographs capable of accurately registering the direction and force of 
 earth movements, ft has been demonstrated practically, as it might have been foretold theo- 
 retically, that, to resist the destructive effects of a shock, houses must be built so that the 
 oscillations of all their connected parts shall be synchronous; brick chimneys, for example, not 
 being rigidly attached to wooden roofs of which the inertia is markedly smaller. It has also 
 been shown that a deep trench surrounding an edifice interrupts, and therefore mitigates, the 
 transmission of the seismic force, and that, in the case of a city covering so extended an area 
 as Tokyo, difference of locality produces a palpable difference in the intensity with which an 
 earthcpiake makes itself felt. Seismic maps of all the principal centres of residence through- 
 out the empire ought, therefore, to be of prime importance for site-selecting purposes. But 
 life is short and the mischievous earthquake a rare visitor. These niceties of contrivance 
 and delicacies of forethought do not commend themselves to the average Japanese. He is 
 content to be guided by the empirical tradition that, as the bending bamboo springs straight 
 after the blast, so the light wooden structure that yields a little to the seismic thrust is much 
 more likely to survive than the solid edifice that attempts to rigidly resist an irresistible 
 force. In obedience to that creed his towns and cities ha^■e everywhere grown up in almost 
 squalid insignificance. The dwellings of the non-official classes are assemblies of pigmy 
 structures, never relieved by stately facade, lordly portico or towering steeple. Moreover, 
 unlike the Chinese, no Japanese builder has ever thought of decorating the front of a 
 store or place of business with broad panels of polychrome earrings, or other architectural 
 gewgaws, to invite the ravages of the elements and present, after a few seasons, an aspect 
 of battered dilapidation more suggestive of perishability than even the flimsy edifices them- 
 selves. The Japanese loves simplicity. If nature's waywardness has imposed on him the 
 necessity of firing in a frail and lorriy drvelling, his innate good taste saves him from 
 the solecism of attempting to disguise the unrvelcome necessity by incongruous devices. 
 Nothing could be more frankly unpretentious than the clusters of lorvly buildings that con- 
 stitute his torvns, and nothing more striking than the contrast betrveen these structures 
 and the massive edifices that are gradually rising into existence under the impulse of the 
 country's imported civilization. At first, Japan rvas content to administer her nerv larr's, 
 carry on her nerv education, and transact the affairs of her newly organized State in 
 wooden buildings either of the old type, or of a hybrid character, cheap, indeed, but shock- 
 ingly unsightly. Hundreds, nay thousands, of this latter class of building may still be seen 
 in the official capitals of all the provincial communes ; rudimentary, rectangular structures, 
 without veranda, balcony or any projection to break the bald uniformity of their faces. 
 
JAPAN. 
 
 AN INNORMAL VISIT. 
 
 They are the communal schools, or telegraph and po.st offices, or, it may be, police bar- 
 racks. No effort has been made to harmonize them with their environment. They disfigure 
 the landscape, and suggest what happily is not true, that the alien systems taught or 
 pursued within their walls have not yet been assimilated into the life of the nation. But 
 in the great cities, espe- 
 cially in Tokyo,' it is dif- 
 ferent. There structures 
 wo r t h i 1 y represen tati ve 
 of the Mciji civilization 
 are rapidly springing up; 
 solid piles of brick and 
 stone, state departments, 
 courts of law, banks, 
 municipal edifices, min- 
 isterial residences, ho- 
 tels, clubs, and so forth. 
 
 Side by side with these 
 the wooden dwellings 
 and stores of the city 
 proper shrink into still 
 
 more dwarf-like insignificance, so that it were difficult to find elsewhere a national capital 
 with streets more absolutely devoid of Ijeautiful, stately or dignified features. The citi- 
 zens, however, are fired with picturesque ambition. Ten years ago they devised a mag- 
 nificent plan of broadened streets, spacious parks and regenerated edifices. The city that 
 was to rise from these projects became known as the “Tokyo of dreamland.” It has not 
 yet emerged into the region of reality. Here and there only, the streets ha\-e been widened. 
 Whenever one of the frequent conflagrations lays a street in ruins, the new houses are 
 pushed far back from their old sites, with the result that in the poorest quarters, where 
 fires are most common, some of the streets have now assumed grand proportions. But the 
 houses themselves remain as insignificant as ever, and, of course, since every widening of a 
 thoroughfare ought to be accompanied by a proportionate increase in the dimensions of the 
 buildings that stand on either side of it, the process of Tokyo's so-called “ improvement ” 
 seems retrogressive from an artistic standpoint. Kyoto (population 230,000), the ancient 
 capital, presents in some respects a similar character, though as yet the humility of its archi- 
 tecture has not been so palpably accentuated by contrast with modern structures of over- 
 shadowing dimensions. During eleven centuries Kyoto was the seat of Japanese Imperial- 
 ism ; during three, Tokyo was the stronghold of the Tokugawa Regents. In an Occidental 
 
 * Circumference 30 miles, and area 100 square niiles, including all the suburbs; population 1,303,876. 
 
 
 
lO 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 State all the advantage.s of wealth, size and magnificence might be expected to belong to the 
 Imperial city. Put in Japan, while the Emperor governed after a nominal fashion, the 
 Regent, or S/togui:, as he rvas called, exercised the whole administrative power ; and whereas 
 the nobles that fretpiented the Court in Kyoto were men of scant incomes and limited 
 influence, the feudal chiefs that took their orders direct from the S/wg?in possessed large 
 wealth and were virtually supreme within the limits of their fiefs. This difference may be 
 read in the features of the two cities. Throughout the whole of the Western Capital — 
 Sai-kyo, or Kyoto, as distinguished from To-kyo, the Eastern Capital — there is not to be 
 found a solitary residence that could be associated, by any stretch of imagination, with 
 opulent ownership. The palace itself is severely simple. Decorative paintings, from the 
 brushes of some great artists, and the finely grained, knotless timbers of which it is built, 
 alone entitle it to be called something better than a mere shelter from the elements. .-\s for 
 the houses of the court noljles — the A'l/ge, every one of whom could trace his descent 
 directlv from an occupant of the throne — their structure and environment are eloquent of 
 straitened incomes, if not of actual poverty. It is true that when (794 A. D.) Kyoto was 
 chosen for the Imperial capital, the Emperor ruled as well as governed, and the plan of 
 the new metropolis was traced with a grandeur of conception upon which Japanese hi.s- 
 torians lo\-e to descant. The streets were laid out with mathematical precision, a e ast net- 
 work of , communications, comprised within a rectangle at the centre of whose northern 
 face stood the Imperial citadel. The Kyoto of that era was undoubtedly a city magnificent 
 according to the standard of its epoch, and that the daily life of its citizens was permeated 
 by a degree of refinement and civilization unknown in Europe at the time, there are 
 ample evidences to show. But architecturally it had no claim to be called grand, and as 
 conflagration after conflagration laid its imperial citadel and its streets in ashes, edifices 
 less and less pretentious ro.se from the ruins. For with the development of feudalism 
 and the decentralization of the administrative power, rvealth flowed from the capital to the 
 pnwinces, and though the former remained always the centre of whatever was aristocratic, 
 refined or artistic in the realm, the sovereign and his courtiers had to engage in a con- 
 stant struggle to make ends meet, and the loyalty of the citizens constrained them to 
 adapt the dimensions of their residences and the outward fashions of their lives to the 
 lowly examples set by the Emperor and his aristocracy. In Tokyo, on the other hand, all 
 the puissance and opulence of the empire's real ruler impressed themselves on the official 
 quarter of the city. Round the castle of the S/togmt a triple line of huge fosses stretched, 
 the outermost measuring nine and a half miles in length, the innermost one and a half, their 
 scarps built up with colossal blocks of granite, carried hundreds of miles over sea and set in 
 [)lace b}’ labor-emplo\'ing contrivances that must ha\-e been primitive at so remote an epoch, 
 — the beginning of the seventeenth centurv, - but were yet capable of achieving results 
 wonderful to contemplate e\'en to-day. Above these grand masses of masonry -were [nled 
 
JAPAN. 
 
 1 1 
 
 great banks of earth, their slopes turfed with fine Korean grass, and their summits planted 
 with pine trees, trained year after year to stretch e\’er-grcen arms towards the spacious moats, 
 varying in width from one hundred and seventy yards to twenty-two, through which flowed 
 broad sheets of waatcr, reaching the city by cunningly planned aqueducts from a river twenty 
 miles distant, d'here is 
 not to be found else- 
 where in the world a 
 more stupendous monu- 
 ment of military power, 
 and if any one consider- 
 ing such a work, as well 
 as its immediate prede- 
 cessor, the equally colo.s- 
 sal stronghold of the 
 great Taiko, in Osaka, 
 and its numerous con- 
 temporaries of lesser but 
 still striking proportions 
 in the principal fiefs, 
 refuses to credit the 
 Japanese mind with capacity for mighty conceptions, and the Japanese brain with competence 
 to plan and carry out great undertakings, he must be either prejudiced or deficient in the 
 deductive faculty. In this cyclopean fortress of Tokyo there is also to be seen the unswerving 
 homage to the beautiful that holds every Japanese a worshipper at nature's shrine, even 
 when he seems to rely most implicitly on his own resources of brain and muscle. Placid 
 lakes lapping the feet of stupendous battlements ; noble pines bending o\-er their own gnice- 
 ful reflection in still waters; long stretches of velvety sward making a perpetual presence of 
 rustic freshness among the dust and moil of city life ; flocks of soft-plumaged wild fowl 
 placidly sailing in the moats or sunning themselves on the banks, careless of the tumult and 
 din of the streets overhead ; sheets of lotus bloom glowing in the shadow of grim counter- 
 scarps — where but in Japan can we find so deliberate and so successful an effort to convert 
 the frowns of a fortress into the smiles of a garden? This castle of the Tokugawa Regents 
 is a portion of the alphabet by which we may read Japanese character. Hidden beneath a 
 passion for everything graceful and refined there is a strong yearning for the pageant of war 
 and for the dash of deadly onset; and just as the Shogun sought to display before the eyes of 
 the citizens of his capital a charming picture of gentle peace, though its setting was a frame- 
 work of vast military preparation, so the Japanese of every era has loved to turn from the 
 fencing-school to the arbor, from the field of battle to the society of the rockery and the 
 
 I.ANTKRX ArAKEKS. 
 
 Paper lanterns decorated by hand are made in many small shops, each workman exercising his own taste in desiring 
 and coloring them. 
 
12 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 cascade, deli^'htin^y; in the perils and struggles of the one as much as he admires the graces 
 and repose of the other. In another manner, also, feudalism left its impress upon the eastern 
 capital of the empire, for, in order to insure the allegiance of the great provincial barons, 
 they were required to reside in Tokyo — or Yedo, as it was then called — every second year; 
 
 and when, in obedience to this order, each 
 chieftain began to build for himself, his 
 family and his army of retainers an urban 
 residence and a suburban, there sprang up a 
 constructive rivalry that soon enriched the 
 city and its environs with a great number 
 of picturescgie parks and spacious mansions, 
 d'he average citizen, indeed, saw little of the 
 beauty of these places; there was no access 
 for him within their walled and carefully 
 guarded enclosures. But during the two 
 and a half centuries of their existence Tokyo 
 was a veritable city of gardens, all laid out 
 with C(msummate skill iind tended with lov- 
 ing care. The labor expended upon this 
 work must have been enormous. Every 
 rock- and the Japanese landscape-gardener 
 uses a profusion of rocks — rocks for the mar- 
 gins of lakes; rocks for the beds of cascades; 
 rocks to push their shoulders from hill and 
 shrubbery, and rocks to form i)aths across 
 
 A F.UR STL'DENT. ' 
 
 The paper hnlern serves the sime purpose as the ■' German student bmp.” partCl rCS CVCry rOCk had tO bc blOUgllt by 
 
 ship from distant provinces. They were no 
 mere bowlders that two or three men might lift, but portly masses of stone, weighing, 
 sometimes, tens of tons, and having to be dragged to their ornamental resting-places by 
 hundreds of shouting coolies and teams of straining oxen. Inside these parks, created at such 
 a lavish outlay of care and cost, stood houses that were miracles of the joiner’s skill and 
 the lumberman’s craft, where the representatives of military feudalism lived lives of refined 
 indulgence, amid works of art, transitions of flowery seasons, rustlings of silken robes, con- 
 tests of rhythmical conceits, and, sometimes, shocking catastrophes. No element of war or 
 arms seemed to obtrude itself into the luxurious languor of their existence, except that, flank- 
 ing the great gate of i\\t yas/iiki and stretching occasionally around three sides of the enclos- 
 ure, stood long, low buildings, their outward faces pierced at rare intervals by strongly barred 
 windows, and the chief article of furniture in all their rooms a sword-rack. 1 hese naga-ya 
 
JAPAN. 
 
 13 
 
 were the barracks of each baron’s men-at-arms, and up to the fall of feudalism so many streets 
 were bordered by edifices of that ominous type, and such a multitude of their inmates were to 
 be met striding along, a pair of razor-edged swords in their girdles and the pride of arms in 
 their mien, that for all the pretty parks and dainty mansions of the nobles, for all the disguise 
 of soft sward and tender-sprayed pines that overlay the grimness of the central castle’s battle- 
 ments, Tokyo could never be mistaken for anything but what it was, the citadel of a military 
 system embracing all the warlike resources of a battle-loving nation. At the Restoration of 
 1867, w-hen the Tokugawa Regents were striirped of their power, when feudalism was abol- 
 ished, and the Emperor resumed the administration of State affairs, an era of destruction set 
 in. Stripped of their revenues and no longer required to reside in the capital, the majority 
 of the barons left their Tokyo residences to be sold or dismantled, and among the men that 
 had planned and were now directing these great political changes none had leisure or means 
 to think of acquiring mansions and parks such as only wealthy nobles could be justified in 
 maintaining. With a few exceptions the parks disappeared. Denuded of everything salable, 
 — rocks, shrubs, timber, — their buildings burned or pulled to pieces, their enclosing walls 
 levelled with the ground, they became simply so many vacant spaces, breaking the continuity 
 of the city and imparting to it an aspect of unsightly irregularity. 
 
 It will be seen from what has been written here that in ancient as well as in modern 
 times tw'O Tokyos have 
 to be distinguished — 
 official Tokyo and com- 
 mercial Tokyo. It is 
 to the latter, or Tokyo 
 proper, that reference is 
 made wdien the build- 
 ings are described as 
 insignificant and almost 
 squalid, their general 
 aspect suggesting a 
 state of poverty and 
 business stagnation in 
 strange contrast with 
 the cheerful faces, com- 
 fortable garments and 
 
 easy-going ways of the citizens. This dual nature of the capital is a true reflection of the 
 nation’s social structure in former times, and to a lesser but still considerable degree in the 
 present era. The Japanese have always been divided into two distinct classes, — patricians, 
 shizoku, or the military class, as they are commonly called; and commoners, hcimiu, or ordi- 
 
 FUUT liRniCE .\CROSS -I'lIE .MiV.WOSll IT.V RIVER. 
 
14 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 nary folks ; the numerical ratio between them being as one to twelve approximately. The 
 patricians had a monopoly of the administrative and military power; the commoners had 
 only to till the soil, take fish out of the seas and rivers, and conduct the vulgar opera- 
 tions of trade and barter. From the pageant of war, from the sweets of office, from the 
 pride of rank, from the arena of intellectual competition, the hcimin were completely 
 excluded. Their lives were as subordinate to those of the shizokii as their lowly dwellings 
 were overshadowed by the latter’s massive castles. This gulf of separation was not always 
 so wide. Its dimensions grew with the development of military feudalism, and its growth is 
 accurately represented in the leading features of the two capitals. When Kyoto became the 
 metropolis of the empire, distinctions of caste had not yet been sharply accentuated by the 
 supremacy of the sword. The mass of the people still lived close to their sovereign, figura- 
 tively speaking, and strategical considerations did not imperatively limit the choice of sites 
 for the Imperial capital. There was virtual freedom of selection, except that custom had 
 long dictated separate residences for the Emperor and the Heir Apparent — a custom com- 
 mon in Occidental countries, and still observed in Japan, with this modification, howe\'er, that 
 whereas the sovereign and his apparent successor now reside in the same city, the rule 
 formerly was to choose wholly different localities. Of course it resulted that there grew up 
 about the palace of the prince material interests and moral associations opposed to a change 
 of habitation, and thus, on his accession to the throne, he usually transferred the capital of 
 the empire from the place occupied by his predecessor to the site of his own palace. In 
 addition to this source of frequent change, it happened occasionally that the residence of the 
 Imperial Court, and therefore the capital of the empire, was moved from one place to another 
 twice or even thrice during the same reign, the only limit set to all these shittings being that 
 the five adjacent provinces occupying the waste of the main island, and known as “ Gokinai," 
 were regarded as possessing some prescriptive title to contain the seat of government, 
 Yamato being especially honored in that respect. A long list might be compiled of places 
 distinguished by Imperial residence during the early centuries, notable among them being 
 Kashiwara, the capital of the Emperor Jimmu; Naniwa (now Osaka), that of the Emperor 
 Nintoku; Otsu, that of the Emperor Tenchi; ami Fujiwara, that of the Emperor Temmu. 
 It must be noted, however, that in those ages of comparative simplicity and frugality the 
 seat of government was not invested with attributes of pomp and grandeur such as the 
 haughtier conceptions of later generations prescribed. The sovereign’s mode of life differed 
 little from that of his subjects, and the transfer of his residence from place to place involved 
 no costly or disturbing effect. But as civilization progressed ; as the population grew ; as the 
 business of administration became more complicated; as increasing intercourse with China 
 furnished new standards for measuring the interval between ruler and ruled, and, above all, as 
 class distinctions acquired emphasis, the character of the palace assumed magnificence propor- 
 tionate to the Imperial ceremonies and national receptions that had to be held there. It is 
 
JAPAN. 
 
 15 
 
 not easy to trace the gradual stages of this development, but it had certainly proceeded far 
 by the beginning of the eighth century, for the capital then established at Nara by the 
 Empress Gemmyo was on a scdle of unprecedented magnitude and splendor. A lady's name 
 is fitly associated with this first payment of large tribute to outward appearances. Se\'en 
 sovereigns reigned at 
 Nara consecutively. 
 
 They were held there 
 from generation to gen- 
 eration partly by the 
 environment they them- 
 selves created, and 
 partly, no douljt, by a 
 perception of the advan- 
 tages accruing from a 
 thorough centralization 
 of the governing power. 
 
 But when the Emperor 
 Kwammu (782-805 .A.. D.) 
 ascended the throne, he 
 found that Nara was not 
 conveniently situated for administrative purposes, and after some uncertainty he finallv 
 selected Uda, in Yamashiro province, and took steps to transfer his Court thither. The 
 event was invested -with much ceremony, and was regarded as a sidjject of national rejoicing, 
 the people calling the capital Heiaiijo, or the “ citadel of tranquillity.” This is the modern 
 Kyoto. It continued to be the Imperial capital during a period of 1,074 years, though not 
 the seat of administrative authority ; for from the establishment of military feudalism in the 
 twelfth century until its abolition in the sequel of the Mciji Restoration (1867) the sovereign 
 ruled in name only, the e.vecutive power being wielded in reality by a military regent who 
 had his own capital elsewhere. Seventy-seven Emperors held their courts successi\-ely in 
 Kyoto, with diminishing pomp and pageant as the centuries rolled by, but never with any 
 diminution of the sanctity attributed to them by their subjects. During an interval so pro- 
 tracted, the city, of course, underwent many changes, but to this day its general plan remains 
 on the lines of its earliest projection. It was built after the scheme of Nara, with modifica- 
 tions borrowed from the metropolis of the Tang dynasty in China. The outline was rectan- 
 gular, 1 7,530 feet from north to south, and 1 5,080 feet from east to west. Moats and palisades 
 surrounded the whole, — the system of crenelated walls and flanking towers not having been 
 yet introduced, — and the Imperial palace, its citadel, administrative departments and assem- 
 bly halls occupied the centre of the northern portion. The palace was approached from the 
 
 eoOl'ERS .\T WORK. 
 
 Juvenile artisans and shop-keepers in Japan perform much of the labor that is usually done by their elders in other countries. 
 
i6 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 south, its main gate {Sliujaku-mon') opening upon a long street 280 feet wide (called Shujaku- 
 oji, or the Shujaku thoroughfare) which ran right down the centre of the city, terminating at 
 the Rojo gate. The city \vas thus divided into two equal parts of which the eastern was 
 designated Sakyo, or “ left metropolis,” and the western Ukyo, or “ right metropolis." 
 
 The superficial division was into districts [jo) of which there were nine, all equal in 
 size e.vcept those on the east and west of the palace. An elaborate system of subdi\usion 
 was adopted. The unit or ko (house) was a space meaning 100 feet by 50. Pight of these 
 units made a row [gyo) ; four rows, a street (fhci) ; four streets, a di\'ision [ho) ; four divisions, 
 a square (//t>) ; and four squares, a district (y'o). The entire capital contained 1,216 cho and 
 38,912 houses. The arrangement of the streets was strictly regular. They lay parallel and 
 at right angles, like the lines on a checkerboard. The Imperial citadel measured 3,840 feet 
 from east to west, and 4,600 feet from north to south. On each side were three gates; in the 
 middle stood the palace, surrounded by the buildings of the various administrative depart- 
 ments, and in front were the assembly and audience halls. The nine districts were divided 
 from each other by streets, varying in width from 170 feet to 80 feet. They intersected the 
 city from cast to west; were numbered from i to 9, as ichijo, mjo, saujo, and so on — 
 names retained until this day — and were themselves intersected in turn by similar streets 
 running north and south, and by lanes at regular intervals. The buildings, as has been 
 
 already stated, were 
 lowly and insignificant. 
 Even in the case of 
 the palace the architects 
 observed the austere 
 canons of the Shinto 
 cult, which prescribed 
 purity and simplicity as 
 the essential attributes 
 of refinement ; and in 
 the case of the citizens’ 
 dwellings every effort 
 to obtain lightness, airi- 
 ness or ornamentation 
 was reserved for cham- 
 bers opening upon inner 
 courts, or looking out on miniature back gardens, so that the front effect was sombre and 
 monotonous. Many of the houses were roofed with shingles, but some had slate-colored 
 tiles, and the palace itself was rendered conspicuous by green glazed tiles imported from 
 China. The conception of such a city at such an epoch — half a century before Lodbrok, 
 
 KACO KEARERS. 
 
 The jinrikisha is used wherever the roads permit of wheeling, but in the mountain paths the kago lakes its place, The 
 latter is simply a sling on a bamboo pole carried by two bearers. 
 
THE BRONZE BUDDHA AT KAMAKURA. 
 
 There are countless images of Buddha to be found throughout Japan, but none of them can for a moment 
 compare with this great work of art, which stands facing the sea on the deserted site of Kamakura, an 
 ancient capital of Japan. It is wonderfully impressive, not merely because of its size, but because it truly 
 symbolizes the central idea of Buddhism — the intellectual calm which comes of perfected knowledge and the 
 subjugation of all passion. To-day it stands in the open air, surrounded by a small park kept in order 
 
 by private subscription. When built in 1251 it was under cover of a large temple 150 feet square. A 
 
 tidal wave in 1369 destroyed the building, but left the statue unharmed. The temple was rebuilt and again 
 destroyed by a second tidal wave in 1494, since which time the image has remained uncovered. It is, 
 
 however, in excellent preservation, and will no doubt be able to resist the elements for centuries to come. 
 The first temple erected on this spot was in the eighth century, but the temple which first sheltered the 
 image was built in 1241. 
 
 The eyes of the Buddha are of pure gold, and the silver boss on the forehead weighs 30 pounds. 
 
 The image is built of bronze castings brazed together, and the hollow interior contains a small shrine and 
 
 a ladder leading up into the head. The dimensions are as follows; 
 
 Height ..... 
 
 Circumference .... 
 
 Length of face 
 
 Width from ear to ear 
 
 Round white boss on forehead 
 
 Length of eye 
 
 Length of eyebrow . 
 
 Length of ear 
 Length of nose 
 
 Width of mouth 
 Height of bump of wisdom . 
 Diameter of bump of wisdom 
 Curls (of which there are 830). 
 
 Height 
 
 Diameter .... 
 Length from knee to knee 
 Circumference of thumb . 
 
JAPAN. 
 
 17 
 
 the Dane, sailed up the Seine, and fifty-five years before the birth of Alfred the Great — bears 
 eloquent testimony to the highly civilized condition of Japan and to the Emperor Kwammu’s 
 greatness of mind and resources. But the general plan of the capital teaches another lesson 
 also : it shows that the residences of the people received as much consideration as the twenty- 
 two edifices comprised within the palace enclosure. Kyoto, in short, was the metropolis of 
 the nation, not the central citadel of a military administration. 
 
 Tokyo’s history is totally dissimilar. It was originally a mere fortress. The great 
 natural fastness of Japan lies between a range of mountains of which Fujiyama is the crown, 
 and a network of rivers, of which the principal is the Tonegawa. Within this fastness the 
 military regents established themselves. At first they were content to hold the passes of the 
 mountains against possible attacks fntm the south. Their capital was then (bdawara, a sea- 
 shore city lying inside the fastness and at the base of the mountains. By and by, however, 
 it became necessary to guard the river front also, and the first captain to whom that duty 
 was intrusted, Ota Dokan, made Yedo his headquarters and constructed there a fortress des- 
 tined to be subsequently converted into the magnificent military stronghold described above. 
 This happened in the middle of the fifteenth century. There were no evidences then of the 
 place’s future greatness ; a few fishermen's hamlets, an immense reedy plain, e.xcellently 
 suited for deploying troops, and a sweep of great rivers easy to hold against an enemy, these 
 were the features that Ota found. Planning his fortress, he took no thought whatever for 
 the people of the district. 
 
 Nearly a century and a half later (1590 A. D.), leyasu, the first of the Tokugawa 
 Regents, in obedience to the order of the Taiko, made Yedo the capital of the eight provinces 
 bestowed on him by that most illustrious of Japan’s generals and statesmen. But in the 
 eyes of leyasu also the place was nothing more than a military citadel. The colossal for- 
 tress erected by him covered all the best building sites, and had not the sea been gradually 
 pushed back by the detritus of the three big rivers on the north, a city of a million inhabi- 
 tants could never have grown up at the foot of the Regent’s huge fosses and under the 
 shadow of his giant battlements. The castle has now become a mere residence ; its massive 
 gates removed, its tall flanking towers levelled with the ground ; the barracks of its men-at- 
 arms replaced by sward and shrubbery. But simultaneously with the disappearance of these 
 evidences of military supremacy, officialdom has reasserted the dominance of the shisoku by 
 erecting for itself buildings that contrast almost as strikingly with the dwellings of the 
 heimin as the Tokugawa stronghold contrasted with the humble city lying at its feet. That 
 distinction recognized — it can hardly be called a difference — Tokyo is seen to reflect faith- 
 fully the political changes that Japan has undergone since mediaeval times: the transition 
 from administration by the Emperor to administration by representatives of military feudal- 
 ism, and the transfer of the latter’s power to a shisoku hegemony, which made modern Japan, 
 but still stands high above the mass of the nation it leads and governs. Kyoto, on the other 
 
JAPAN. 
 
 hand, remains the capital of ancient Japan; its appearance typical of the quiet old times 
 when rulers and ruled were as one family, and essentially typical of the genuine spirit of 
 Japanese cirdlization, refinement without ostentation. It is true that gorgeous and impos- 
 ing Buddhist temples confer exceptional distinction on the city. But these are, in a sense, 
 
 exotics, owing their 
 magnificence of para- 
 phernalia and wealth of 
 decoration to the coun- 
 try w here the creed was 
 born. Everywhere the 
 houses of the citizens 
 
 present a modest though 
 thoroughly neat appear- 
 ance, their rusticity sug- 
 gesting few graces of 
 life until one passes 
 
 within and finds that 
 the humblest of these 
 dwellings looks out at 
 the back on a tiny park, 
 with miniature waterfalls, toy hills and dwarf forests, and that, although the tide of industrial 
 progress, with its grime and din, has not left this ancient city entirely uninvaded, the potter 
 or enameller may still be seen decorating his vases or building up his subtle tracery of many- 
 hued designs while the flowers and leaves that he copies look in at him through the windows 
 of his workshop. To see in clear outlines the influence that has been exercised upon the life 
 
 of the heimin by the advent of the new civilization that worships at the shrine of mammon, 
 
 FL’Jl-VA AT MIVAXOSIIITA. 
 
 charming resort in the Hakone Mountains near Yokohama, This hotel is well managed, having both European and 
 Japanese accommodations and fare. 
 
 it is necessary to go to Osaka,' now the commercial capital of Japan. There the whole city 
 
 is pervaded by an atmo.sphere of business, and gradually the movements of the citizens begin 
 to betray the anxious haste of trading communities in the Occident. '1 here has been a great 
 growth of population, a great extension of the streets, a great access of wealth. But the 
 prominent development seems to have been in the direction of factory chimneys. A thou- 
 sand of these unsightly erections now look down upon a city where, a quarter of a century 
 ago, not even one was to be seen ; a canopy of smuts and smoke begins to replace the crys- 
 talline purity of the old-time atmosphere, and the sobbing of the steam-engine invades the 
 laughter of the light-hearted citizens. Officialdom is absolutely unobtrusive, and the reser- 
 voir of the city’s water-works marks the site of Hideyoshi’s feudal fortress. 
 
 One feature common, though not in an equal degree, to all Japanese towns is the 
 
 ‘Area, 8 square miles; population. 484.000. 
 
JAPAN. 
 
 19 
 
 absence of any dazzling display of wares in shop-fronts. That part of the vender’s art 
 remains little de\-eloped, doubtless because trade, having always been despised as the 
 meanest of bread-earning professions, shrank from thrusting its evidences upon public notice. 
 In Kyoto some of the largest and wealthiest stores are distinguishable only by the air of 
 bustle that pervades their precincts, and even that used to be hidden from the aristocratic 
 customer, who found himself ushered into a quiet chamber, opening upon shrubberies and 
 rockeries, and with the most unbusiness-like aspect conceivable. These things have changed 
 somewhat with the times, but there is still implicit obedience to the old canon that prescribes 
 sobriety of exterior as an essential of good taste. Just as in a work of art the genuine 
 Japanese artist seeks to supply details of decoration and technique that become visible only 
 on close examination, so the Kyoto citizen builds his store in such a manner that whatever 
 it contains of the admirable or the attractive becomes visible only on passing within. The 
 visitor is astonished to find that a building seeming to consist altogether of a few weather- 
 beaten boards and gloomy lattices forms the front of a spacious compound, within which are 
 fireproof warehouses, neat and tasteful chambers, charming gardens, and show-rooms where 
 a wealth of fine wares are arranged with excellent taste and skilful business instinct. 
 
 In Tokyo the methods of the tradesman are less consistent with the traditions of 
 artistic modesty. The science of display without ostentation is not so well understood. It 
 is true that the dealer keeps his choicest specimens and most valuable stock packed away in 
 a fireproof “ godown," whence he will not take the trouble to fetch anything specially fine or 
 rare unless he diagnoses something of the connoisseur in his customer. Therein, however, 
 his concession is not to good taste but to caution. As a matter of choice, he would prefer to 
 marshal attractions in such a manner as to capture public attention, but whatever be the 
 measure of his will, the results he obtains look wholly contemptible compared with the arrays 
 of interesting and costly objects that deck the windows of an American or European store. 
 It may seem, indeed, that the fault lies primarily with the shops, which, being sombre and of 
 petty dimensions, cannot be easily adapted to exhibition purposes. But that is a feature 
 rather than a cause. The whole art of inviting custom by appeals to the eye remains unde- 
 veloped in Japan, partly because it is opposed to the genius of the people, and partly because 
 the low status of the merchant has hitherto condemned trade to a hole-and-corner existence. 
 It is beginning now to raise its head, but long years must elapse before a Japanese city 
 shows anything of the commercial glitter that characterizes an Occidental mart. 
 
 It does not fall within the scope of this work to speak at any length of the scenery of 
 Japan. Innumerable writers have already descanted upon the beauties of the much-favored 
 islands of the far Pacific, and so much eloquence has been devoted to describing their natural 
 charms, that the reality can scarcely fail to disappoint any estimate founded on these pane- 
 gyrics. Perhaps the most salient characteristic of the country is that its natural features 
 remain, in great part, undisturbed by the hand of man. The Japanese are industrious and 
 
20 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 frugal. Theirs is not a land where the necessaries of life can be obtained without a struggle. 
 Rice, the great staple of their food, is a cereal the cultivation of which involves toil of the 
 hardest and least inviting description. Wherever an opportunity offers to enlist the bounty 
 of nature it is eagerly utilized. Sailing through the Inland Sea, famous among all ocean 
 
 inlets for the charms of 
 its surroundings, one 
 sees that every little 
 spot of arable soil, 
 whether on rocky island 
 or steep hillside, has 
 been attacked by the 
 mattock of the indefati- 
 gable peasant, and that 
 every cove shelters a 
 hamlet whose inhabi- 
 tants snatch a precarious 
 living from sea and soil. 
 Yet, despite these evi- 
 dences of agricultural 
 earnestness, it is a fact 
 that eighty-eight parts out of every hundred of the superficies of these nominally much-favored 
 islands yield no food to the people. It is true that the cultivated area c.xpands year by year, 
 and that the expansion will probably continue as railways, roads and steamships bring new 
 districts within reach of markets. But in this matter the responsibility rests not with the 
 paucity of communications so much as with natural conditions. The state of soil that exists 
 at the sites of some of the chief cities finds a parallel throughout the country at large. Just 
 as the ashes and shards of repeated conflagrations have accumulated in the former case until 
 the real subsoil is beyond profitable reach, so in the latter, volcanoes, bursting through the 
 primitive rocks, have buried w ide areas under deep shrouds of pumice, so that hill slopes and 
 plains which ought to contribute generally to the nation's sustenance, are not capable of 
 nourishing anything better than bamboo-grass and stunted scrub. But if these volcanoes 
 have impaired the productive qualities of the land, they have immensely enhanced its scenic 
 beauties. The term volcano conveys, under ordinary circumstances, a suggestion of destruc- 
 tion, desolation, nakedness and disruption. Such features are not presented by the Japanese 
 volcano. It is usually a mountain of soft contours, placid aspect and tender verdure. For, 
 if nature created it in a hurry, she hastens also to subject it to climatic influences that rob it 
 of all ruggedness and clothe it with abundant vegetation. In central Japan the traveller may 
 find scenic sights of grandeur and wildness on an Alpine scale. But elsewhere the scenery 
 
JAPAN. 21 
 
 is essentially gentle — green valleys lying nestled in the arms of softly sloping hills, groves of 
 feathery bamboo and billow-boughed pines, fantastically indented seacoasts, where the waves 
 seldom raise their voices above a whisper, an atmosphere of exquisite opalescence, and brood- 
 ing over all a perpetual stillness that seems to be deepened rather than disturbed by the 
 occasional note of sweet-toned temple bells. With such scenery one does not fall in love at 
 first sight. Familiarity endears it. The newcomer must be disappointed if he looks to find 
 at once everything that he has been taught to expect. But he may rest assured that at the 
 last there will remain imprinted on his recollection a picture of satisfying beauty, although 
 its components are not separately striking or its colors brilliant. 
 
 There are, indeed, two great wants, the glow of flowers and the song of birds. So 
 conspicuously do flowers figure in Japanese decorati\-e art, and so much has been written 
 about the cherry-blossom and plum-blossom picnics of the peoitle, about their flower symbols 
 of the four seasons, their chrysanthemums, their peonies, their irises, and their wistaria, that 
 their country presents itself to the imagination as a veritable garden of Hesperia, brilliant, 
 beautiful and fragrant. But in truth the great value attached to flowers in Japan is due, not 
 to their profusion, but to their paucity. There are no pastures dewed with daisies anil 
 starred with buttercup, dandelion and cowslip ; no glades carpeted with bluebells ; no golden 
 plains of orange-scented gorse ; no groves of laburnum and lilac; no fields of glowing 
 poppies. \Vith the e.xception of the azalea, not a single flowering shrub or plant is suffi- 
 ciently gregarious to offer a wide expanse of blossom, and the azalea has its own favorite 
 haunts, not here, there and everywhere, but only in special localities, few and far between. 
 Nor is the bloom of the much-\-aunted cherry and plum richer or more abundant in Japan 
 than in the Occident. An American or English orchard displays in early summer a glory of 
 blossom not to be surpassed by anything in the far East. The difference is this : that the 
 cherry and plum, as fruits, being comparatiiely worthless in Japan, the flowers alone are 
 prized, and great groves of trees are planted in places of popular resort for the sake of the 
 grand but transient glow that they make in their season of bloom. Were the fruit valuable, 
 the Japanese cultivator is far too practical to sacrifice it to display. Ills treatment of the 
 pear proves this. The Japanese pear is a miserable fruit to Western palates : it is without 
 succulence or flavor; a superior kind of turnip. It certainly possesses no merits that entitle 
 it to careful culture. But everyone eats it in Japan, and at every wayside stall it figures 
 conspicuously among the autumn edibles. Therefore its flower is little accounted, Itut the 
 tree itself is guarded in orchards, and thither visitors go when the pears are ripening, not 
 when the flowers are in bloom. Yet a Japanese pear orchard presents a magnificent spectacle 
 in May. Thousands of trees are planted at equal intervals, their boughs trained so as to 
 spread laterally along a trellis of uniform height. Sometimes, as in the case of the Kawasaki 
 orchard, midway between Tokyo and Yokohama, this trellis covers an area of many acres, 
 and looking down on it in the blooming season, one sees a spread of blossom at once grand 
 
 
 
A DKAI.ER IX INLAID WOODENWARE. 
 
 The exquisite workmanship and the beautiful texture of many of the woods thus tised, make this woodenware very 
 attractive to tourists, who sorrowfully discover that it will not withstand the 
 furnace-heated air in American houses. 
 
 curious to observe the almost intuitive recognition that this phase of the national disposition 
 receives from comparative strangers. Fresh from the society of a treaty-port community, 
 where he has been instructed to regard every Japanese as an inferior being, an object of 
 tolerance at best, the traveller from Europe or America, nevertheless, finds himself asking his 
 Jinrikisha-drAwcr or his baggage-carrier to identify some wayside flower new to alien eyes. 
 It does not occur to him that a parallel act in his own country would be to consult a cab- 
 driver about ornithological terms or a railway porter about scenic beauties. Yet in Japan 
 the query is generally justified by a correct answer. The rag-man, the sca\'enger, the char- 
 coal-burner, the maid-of-all-work de\'ote some of the spare moments of their unlovely lives to 
 the courtship of flowers, and are more than pleased to communicate the knowledge thus 
 acquired, which is sometimes very considerable. 
 
 22 JAPAN. 
 
 and lovely. Such sights would certainly be included among the holiday delights of the 
 nation were there no (jiiestion of .saving the flowers for the sake of the fruit. It is more 
 than probable that in the Occident, also, if the plum, the cherry, the apple and the pear were 
 not so pleasant to the palate, the trees that bear these fruits would obtain a new vogue on 
 account of their flowers; would figure conspicuously in gardens instead of being relegated to 
 orchards, and \voidd be massed so as to form profuse glories of bloom in park and landscape, 
 'riuis we are reduced to the prosaic reflection that a very practical element lies at the root 
 of the Japanese people’s apparent worship of blossoms elsewhere counted commonplace: 
 deprived of the fruit, they compensate themselves by making much of the flower. Still the 
 fact remains that no other nation is so thoroughly permeated with the love of flowers. It is 
 
JAPAN. 
 
 One expects to find that a people of such tastes have carried to a high point of 
 development the art of rural existence ; that from end to end their land is dotted with 
 picturesque dwellings standing among bright blossoms and many-tinted foliage. There is 
 nothing of the kind. If we except the suburban residences of the aristocrats of old times 
 and the plutocrats of modern, no evidence appears to show that life outside the cities 
 has any special charms for the Japanese, or that they appreciate the delights of what is 
 known in the West as a “country house.” The big farmers — who, it should be noted, were 
 not originally owners but only tenants of the land they tilled — did occasionally surround 
 themselves with some of the accessories always desired under similar circumstances in the 
 West. But it cannot be said that they ever thought of having mansions, parks, lakes or 
 groves in the Occidental sense of the terms. There were, in fact, no great estates that could 
 be alienated at will or handed down from father to son through long generations. The 
 farmer's house remained a farmer's house, and never assumed the aspect of a wealthy land- 
 owner's home. Security of tenure existed as a matter of practice, though not as a matter of 
 right. The feudal chief, whose fief was in effect an heirloom so long as his arm was strong 
 and so long as he neither failed in the duties of vassalage nor incited hostile intrigue by 
 immoral excesses, appreciated the advantage of leaving his tenants undisturbed from genera- 
 tion to generation. Not fear of ejectment, therefore, prevented the farmer from de\'oting a 
 part of his land to landscape gardening or flower culture on an extended scale. The deter- 
 rents were a practical consideration that his holding was taxed in the full ratio of its produc- 
 tive capacity, and a sentimental principle that, after all, he was only a farmer. It is not in the 
 genius of the Japanese that a man should simulate a station not belonging to him or endeavor 
 to seem what he is not. There are trifling exceptions to the wholesome rule. Many women, 
 for example, and some men dye their hair. Tens of thousands of boxes of a peculiarly con- 
 venient powder, an import from the omnipotent West, are sent out yearly from the cities to 
 the provinces, and many decoctions from the leaf of a shrub possessing similar properties used 
 to simmer once a month on braziers in the days of Japan's seclusion, and continue to simmer 
 in rarer instances to-day. Yet there is not a user of the vulgar powder or of the more costly 
 paste that will profess an age even one year below the truth. The physical concealment of 
 time’s touches is purely objective ; a concession to appearances. Sanemori blackened his 
 hair, nine centuries ago, lest young men should hesitate to cross swords with him in battle. 
 
 If Japanese women of this nineteenth century sometimes hide premature streaks of 
 sib’cr, it is because such things obtrude unpleasantly upon the observation of friends and 
 acquaintances. If Japanese men occasionally do the same, it is through fear of being set 
 aside as incapacitated for active employment. But neither man nor woman perpetrates the 
 shocking solecism of arraying age in the garments of youth. A spinster aping the show and 
 the simper of girlhood has no representative in Japan. So, too, the farmer lives outwardly 
 the life of a farmer; the merchant, that of a merchant; the artisan, that of an artisan. 
 
 
24 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 Merely to be wealthy does not — or, at any rate, did not in former times — confer a title to 
 assume the recognized environment of wealth. Hence the castle ot the feudal chief, with its 
 generally spacious and always artistically designed park, was the only evidence of opulent 
 and refined life in provincial districts until foreigners came and set the example of erecting, 
 
 mark of independent fortune. But these buildings are, without exception, unpretentious. 
 Mere temporary residences, their appearance is in conformity with their subordinate uses. 
 Besides, they are still comparatively few. For the bulk of the people there continues to be 
 only one ideal of holiday or rural existence — life at a spa. The land abounds with thermal 
 springs. Many of them vvcll up among delightful scenery, and alrout their healing waters 
 picturesque villages have gradually been built, assemblages of inns, where accommodation 
 fitted for all ranks and adapted to all incomes can be obtained. This absence of every 
 evidence of luxurious existence outside the great cities suggests an exaggerated conception 
 of the paltriness of the people’s resources, and is doubtless one of the reasons that have 
 induced several foreign observers to describe the Japanese as an essentially poor nation, and 
 to infer an unusual want of material comfort in their home lives. Poor they certainly are, 
 according to the standard of Occidental opulence, and comparatively comfortless must be the 
 existence of any people who inhabit flimsy wooden houses with inner walls of paper; who, 
 instead of sitting in the bright glow of coal or wood fires, cower over charcoal braziers, and 
 who sleep with their heads pillowed upon blocks of wood instead of piles of feathers. But 
 to conclude that Japanese homes lack the paraphernalia of a highly refined civilization, 
 or are without the most logical of all comforts, suitability to the mode of life dictated 
 by the climate, by the products of the soil, and by the physiographical conditions of 
 
 TEA HOUSE “EmSUYA,” ENOSillMA. 
 
 Refreshments are served upon the matted floor, the small cushions being used as seats. 
 
 at sites remote from 
 places of business, 
 houses entirely unsug- 
 gestive of their occu- 
 pants’ employment, or 
 designed solely for the 
 enjoyment of scenic and 
 seaside pleasures. The 
 fashion appealed at once 
 to the fancy of the Japa- 
 nese. They wondered 
 that its advantages had 
 not occurred to them 
 before, and to possess a 
 besso in the hills or on 
 the coast soon became a 
 
JAPAN. 
 
 25 
 
 the country, would be an error into which readers of this volume, at any rate, shall not be 
 betrayed. Upon entering the house of a Japanese gentleman, the foreign visitor of to-day is 
 at first disconcerted by the entire absence of all that he is accustomed to regard as essential to 
 domestic comfort. There are no chairs or other furniture in the reception room, and if he 
 dines with his host the meal will be served upon the floor. If he remains over night he will 
 find no bedstead or other furniture in his sleeping apartment, and as he bestows himself 
 between the comforters upon the floor for slumber, he will no douljt have much the same 
 sensations that he experiences in his own country when he enjoys a comfortable bivouac. 
 Not only are the ordinary appliances for comfort, as he understands it, entirely lacking, but 
 the outward signs of artistic refinement, at first glance, do not appear. There are no pictures, 
 books, bric-a-brac or other movable ornaments such as he is accustomed to find in Occidental 
 homes — merely a general barrenness that seems cold and uninv iting. Nevertheless a more 
 intimate acquaintance with his surroundings will tend not only to remove this impression, 
 but to supplant it with the conviction that the exquisite taste expressed by the simple means 
 employed is of a very high order, and that so far as physical comfort is concerned the appli- 
 ances used are fairlv well adapted to the requirements of the Japanese, even though they fail 
 to satisfy Occidental needs. 
 
II. 
 
 THR H.\RLY JAPANESE AND THEIR HISTORY. 
 
 
 ^EW problems present greater difficulties than that of tracing the origin of the 
 Jajjanese people back through ages of which the surviving records lack his- 
 torical accuracy or trustworthiness. Whether the race now inhabiting the 
 islands should be regarded as autochthonous or alien ; whether it may not be 
 even an amalgam of various nationalities; if alien, to what parent stock it 
 belonged, and how or at what era it found its way to Japan, — these are 
 unsettled cpiestions that have perple.xed anthropologists for many years, and continue to 
 supply food for discussion. It might reasonably be anticipated, arguing from the analogy of 
 other nations, that among the Japanese themselves a definite theory would exist; that tradi- 
 tion would have supplied for them a proud creed, identifying their forefathers with some of 
 the earth's renowned peoples. It might also be contended that, if the progenitors of the 
 nimble-witted, active-bodied, refined and high-spirited folk now bidding so earnestly for a 
 place in the comity of great nations, had migrated originally from a land peopled by men 
 possessing such excellent qualities as they themselves have for centuries displayed, many 
 annals descriptive of that primeval home would have been handed down, however dimly, 
 through the ages. There are no such annals, no such traditions. Fifteen hundred years 
 ago, when the Japanese first learned to record their ideas in writing, and when they under- 
 took to explain their own origin, so unfettered were they by any ethnographic evidences or 
 acknowledged beliefs that they immediately had recourse to the supernatural and derived 
 themselves from heaven. In the earliest times, their historians gravely related, a section of 
 the gods that dwelt upon high Olympus, Takama-iw-lmra, or the plains of high heaven, 
 descended to an unidentified place called Ilimuka, and thence gradually pushing eastward, 
 established themselves in the land of sunrise, making the province of Yamato their seat of 
 administration. It is impossible to be at once more sublime and more prosaic than this 
 transition from the empyrean to a r’ulgar geographical denomination. Western readers will 
 ask at once if the Japanese of to-day credit such a story of their origin. To that the aver- 
 age Japanese of to-day has been known to reply: “W'ho are you that ask? Have you not 
 had your own burning bush, your own Mount Sinai, your own immaculate conception ? Can 
 you conscientiously undertake to rationalize my history while your own contains so much 
 that is irrational?" Behind that tu quoque, however, there undoubtedly lurks in the inner 
 
 =6 
 
jlNRlKISHAS. 
 
 The two-wheeled vehicle known as a jinrikisha, drawn by a man, is the ordinary and almost exclusive mode 
 of conveyance in Japan. Horses are seldom used except in the army, and occasionally in agriculture. Two- 
 wheeled drays pushed and pulled by coolies carry heavy loads through the cities and along the country roads. 
 Human labor in Japan is cheaper than equine, and therefore the jinrikisha is in great demand. There are over 
 250,000 of them in daily use in Japan, and they may be hired by the day for seventy-five sens, or about forty 
 cents in gold. For this sum the “ ’rickshaw” man will patiently trot from 25 to 30 miles per day, exhibiting an 
 endurance that is both cheerful and pathetic. 
 
 The invention of the jinrikisha, somewhere about 1867, has been credited by foreign residents to an 
 American missionary named Goble. The natives say that in 1868 a paralytic old gentleman of Kyoto finding his 
 palanquin uncomfortable, built for himself a little cart which was the prototype of the present vehicle. In either 
 case the jinrikisha has been in use for less than thirty years. 
 
 
JAPAN. 
 
 r5»l 
 
 
 
 •&u 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 consciousness of the educated and intelligent Japanese a resolve not to scrutinize these 
 thinj^rs too closely. Whether or no the aye of the gods, the Kami-no-yo, of which, as a child, 
 he read with implicit credence, and of which, as a man, he recognizes the political uses, 
 should be openly relegated to the limbo of absurdities, he finds no pressing reasons to 
 inquire. Whether the deities had to take 
 part in an immodest dance in order to lure 
 the sun goddess from her cave; whether the 
 god of impulse fought with the god of fire 
 on the shores of the island of the nine prov- 
 inces ; whether the procreative divinities were 
 inspired by a bird ; whether the germs of a 
 new civilization were carried across the sea 
 by a prince begotten of the sunshine and 
 born in the shape of a crimson jewel, — these 
 are not problems that call for very serious 
 solution. They are rather allegories from 
 which emerges the serviceable political doc- 
 trine that the Emperor of Japan, being of 
 divine origin, rules by divine right. It is the 
 Japanese historian's method, or the Japanese 
 mythologist’s manner, of describing an attri- 
 bute claimed until very recently by all Occi- 
 dental sovereigns, and still asserted on behalf 
 of some. 
 
 Many things are told al.iout these mex-imki or “female fall" ,\t robe. 
 
 L J « ,1 -^1 After crossine the bridge the pathway leads to the On-daki or '■ Male Fall" further 
 
 heaven-descended tolk v ho peopled Japan 
 
 up the mountain. The former is 43 feet high, and the latter 62 feet. 
 
 hundreds of years before the Christian era, 
 
 and they are things that must be studied by any one desiring to acquaint himself with the 
 motives of Japanese decorative art, for there they play a picturesque and prominent part. 
 But they need not be related here, ha\ ing already filled many pages in the volumes of other 
 \vriters. W'hat more concerns us is the fact that the 7 'akama-uo-//ani immigrants did not 
 find an uninhabited country. They found men already dwelling there, men immensely infe- 
 rior to the newcomers, for these had their chiefs, their officials and their commoners; employed 
 fighting tactics that were apparently invincible, and represented a type of civilization very 
 high for so remote an era. Japanese history, which began to Ire written in the reign of the 
 Emperor Richu (.\. D. 400), traditionally supposed to be the seventeenth in descent from the 
 first mortal sovereign, Jimmu, seems to suggest that several tribes of aborigines resisted 
 the settlement of the heaven-descended immigrants; for we find the autochthons variously 
 
 
 
 
 
 .'1 
 
 j 
 
 ■n 
 
28 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 designated as Tsuchi-gumo (earth spiders), Yntsuka-haji (giants), Kuzu (moor-men), and 
 Saiki (raider.s). It has indeed been inferred Iry some critics that there was question 
 here not merely of different tribes of the same race, but of different races. The generally 
 accepted conclusion, hower er, used to be that only one race inhabited the islands at the 
 time of the coming of the Takama-no-hara immigrants, and that it was the race called 
 the Yi’:o in early Japanese annals, but now represented by the Ainu, a flat-faced, heas'y- 
 jawed, taun)’-tinged, hirsute people, of whom a little remnant survives in the northern 
 island, called by their name, Yezo, and known to Japanese of the J/eiji era as Hokkaido. 
 It will be shor\-n presenth' that there are cogent reasons for querying the theory that the 
 } cno, or Ainu, were the .sole inhabitants found by the so-called “heavenly visitors” in 
 Japan. For the sake of lucidity, however, two cpiestions had better be considered at once: 
 vdur were the A inn originally, and were they the primeval dwellers in Japan, or had they 
 also predecessors ? 
 
 To answer the former cpiestion a reference to physiological conditions is helpful. 
 Looking at a map of eastern Asia, it is seen that only some eight miles of sea separate Yezo 
 from .Saghalien. The interval was probably wider in early ages, for Japan has long been 
 subject to scecular movements. Her coasts are gradually raising themselves from the sea. 
 The same is true of Saghalien. Hence, forty or fifty centuries ago, the Strait of La Perou.se 
 may ha\"e measured more than it does now. But the difference can scarcely have been suffi- 
 cient to affect the possibilities of human immigration. Then, as now, a severe winter meant 
 that the watery inter\-al was frozen over completely, so as to offer easy passage for man or 
 beast. Another glance at the map shows that from Saghalien to the Amur district, across 
 the Gulf of Tartarv, is also a mere step. There, too, from time immemorial, the ice has been 
 in the habit of building frecpient bridges. It is a reasonable inference that people of the 
 Asiatic continent, finding themselves within reach of the Amur littoral, and finding, also, a 
 safe path across the sea, would have obeyed the instinct that always drives the inhabitants of 
 the bleak north towards the genial south, and, passing over to Saghalien, would thence have 
 pushed on to \'ezo, and from \'ezo would ultimately have reached the main island of Nippon 
 and the island of Kiushu, still farther south. This geographical suggestion is borne out by 
 ethnographical research, which identifies the Yezo with the Arctic tribes of northeastern 
 Asia, whom Rittich groups together as Hvperboreans. But there is nothing in the nature 
 of things to suggest that the Ainu were the first to cross from the Asiatic continent to the 
 Japanese islands; nothing to warrant the supposition that they had not been preceded by 
 another race of emigrants; perhaps by manv other races. In point of fact, traditions pre- 
 served among the Ainu, and pit-dwellings and shell-mounds discovered at \ arious places in 
 Japan, indicate that a distinct race had its home in the country before the coming of the 
 Ainu. They were the Koro-pokgnru, ov pit-dwellers, believed to be represented to-day by 
 some of the inhabitants of Saghalien, the Kuriles and southern Kamtchatka. These semi- 
 
JAPAN. 
 
 29 
 
 savages were completely driven out of Japan by the Ainu, no intermixture appearing to have 
 taken place. The Ainu themseh-es li\-ed in caves, wore long beards, and exhibited the pro- 
 pensities of birds of prey, all of which attributes may be inferred from the names given 
 to them in ancient Japanese annals. The immeasurable superiority of the Taknnia-no-hara 
 immigrants doubtless suggested the legend of their heavenly //'orv/wt/tfu. They knew how 
 to f(trge spears, swords and knives out of iron ; they used bows with feathered arrorvs ; the)' 
 understood the fire drill and the wedge; they wove hempen cloth; dressed elaborately, their 
 wardrobe including skirts, trousers, girdles, veils, hats, necklaces, bracelets and jewelled head 
 ornaments; they combed and arranged their hair; they dwelt in wooden houses of solid and 
 tolerably comfortable construction ; they rode on horseback ; kept cattle, dogs and fowl ; 
 li\’ed on flesh, fish and rice, and included chop-sticks, cooking-pots, cups and dishes among 
 their household utensils. To these invaders the either submitted and became servants, 
 
 or resisted and were harried with sword, spear and arrow, until, in the seventeenth century of 
 the Christian era, the last of them had been driven from Japan proper to a precarious resi- 
 dence in the northern island. There a gradual extermination, the inevitable fate of the 
 unfit, steadily befell them, so that at the present time only a few thousands remain of 
 a race that must once have numbered millions. 
 
 Did the contact of the Ainu with the Takania-no-hiv-a inr aders leave any permanent 
 mark upon the latter? 
 
 Was there any blending 
 of the two races? If 
 these questions can be 
 answered in the affirma- 
 tive, then there will be 
 interest in considering 
 the correlated problem 
 whether the Ainu them- 
 selves had been physio- 
 logically modified by 
 intercourse with their 
 predecessors, the k'oro- 
 pok-guru. If the answer 
 be negative, the inquiry 
 
 ^ This n 
 
 need not extend any far- 
 ther, since our subject is not obsolete Japan, to which the remnant of the moribund Ainu 
 race belongs, but Japan of the nineteenth century. By the Japanese themselves it is stoutly 
 affirmed that not the smallest mark of consanguinity can be traced between them and the 
 Ainu, or Yezo tribe. Unquestionably the languages of the two have nothing appreciable in 
 
 e has 380 branches supporled by scaffolding, covering a 
 Its age is prehistoric. 
 
30 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 common, and so far as outward appearance is concerned, the dissimilarity is conspicuous. 
 Nevertheless, certain German anthropologists have placed on record their opinion that the 
 Ainu are Mongolians, and that they differ less from the Japanese than the Germans them- 
 selves differ from the Armenians. For purposes of academical investigation that \derv has 
 doubtless some interest. But practical men naturally ask this question : If, after inhabiting 
 the same country during twenty-five centuries, the hirsute, dusky and conspicuously dirty 
 Ainu remains so radically unlike the smooth-faced, comparati\’el)' fair-complexioned and 
 scrupulously cleanly Japanese, how many centuries of centuries must hac’e been required to 
 differentiate the two peoples originally, supposing them to have had a common stock, as 
 Doenitz, Hilgendorf and Scheube assert? Were it possible to push research back to the 
 fountain-head, it might perhaps be found that all peoples on the face of the globe belonged at 
 one epoch to one family; but the discovery of their primordial relation could only accentuate 
 their present differences. We may accept it as an established fact that the Japanese and the 
 Ainu have no affinity whatever. 
 
 But the Japanese themselves are not a pure race. They present two easily distin- 
 guishable types, the plebeian and the patrician. This is not a question of mere coarseness 
 in contrast with refinement ; of the degeneration due to toil and exposure as compared uith 
 the impro\-ement produced by gentle li\'ing and mental cultivation. The representative of 
 the Japanese plebs has a conspicuously dark skin, prominent cheek bones, a large mouth, a 
 robust and heavily boned physique, a flat nose, full, straight eyes, and a receding forehead. 
 The aristocratic type is symmetrically and delicately built ; his complexion \-aries from yellow 
 to almost pure white; his eyes are narrow, set obliquely to the nose; the eyelids heavy; the 
 eyebrows lofty; the mouth small; the face oval; the nose aquiline; the hand remarkably 
 slender and supple. 
 
 Here are two radically distinct types. What is more, they have been distinguished by 
 the Japanese themselves ever since any method of recording such distinctions existed. Con- 
 fident mention has been made above of the degree of ci\dlization to which the so-called 
 Tnkanianto-hara immigrants had attained fifteen or sixteen centuries ago. Our information 
 in that direction is obtained from two remarkable works, the Kojiki, or records of ancient 
 matters, compiled in the year 7 1 1 of the Christian era ; and the Nihon-gi, a chronicle of 
 Japan, compiled nine years later. The art of writing, as practised in Japan, had been known 
 for about three centuries when these two books were composed. M'hatever may be their 
 accuracy or inaccuracy with regard to the incidents of a past already remote at the time of 
 their authors’ labors, they certainly furnish a fairly trustworthy account of the state of the 
 country and its people during the early centuries of the Christian era. From them all mod- 
 ern historians have agreed to deduce facts about the civilization of ancient Japan. On the 
 other hand, the antiquity of the pictorial art furnishes information about the physical charac- 
 teristics of the people. This clew does not lead us quite so far back, it is true, as do the 
 
JAPAN. 
 
 pages of the Kojikt and the Nihou-gi, but it does take us to groands for asserting that, from 
 the very outset, the Japanese artist recognized and depicted only one type of male and female 
 beauty, namely, that distinguished in a marked, often an exaggerated, degree by the features 
 enumerated above as distinctive of the patrician class. There has been no evolution in this 
 matter. The painter had as clear a concep- 
 tion of his type ten centuries ago as he hati in 
 the days of Ilartinobu or Hokusai. Nothing 
 seems more natural than the supposition thtit 
 this higher type represents the finally domi- 
 nant race of immigrants, the so-called deni- 
 zens of Takama no-ham, especially as it is 
 to be found chiefly among the shisokn, or 
 military class, whereas the markedly lower 
 type is seen principally among the heimin, 
 the fishing, agricultural and trading popula- 
 tion. We have to conclude, then, that two 
 tides of immigration reached Japan indepen- 
 dently of the Koro-pokgnm and the Ainu, 
 and it follows, of course, that the inferior 
 race preceded the superior. Here the map 
 again comes to our assistance. Just as 
 Japan is practically connected on the north 
 with the Amur district of the Asiatic conti- 
 nent, so, on the south, the chain of islands to 
 which she belongs, stretches to the Malayan 
 peninsula, and the continuity is further 
 assisted, for purposes of communication, by 
 
 a current, called the Kuro-shiwo, setting from the Philippines towards Kiushu. Nothing is 
 more probable than that Malayan ad\-enturers found their way from island to isltiml until 
 they reached Japan, and that they had already peopled its southern parts, driving out any 
 Ainu found there, when the so-called Takama-no-ham invaders appeared upon the scene. 
 The Malayan type and the Japanese plebeian type are sufficiently similar to confirm that 
 hypothesis. It remains, then, to discover the origin of the Takama-no-ham immigrants. 
 
 Japanese history commences with the Emperor Jimmu, who in 663 B. C. is said to 
 have set out from a place called Mimizu, on the east coast of Kiushu, and, after an immensely 
 protracted voyage, to ha\m reached the Bay of Osaka. Landing there, he subdued the neigh- 
 boring districts, and established himself in Yamato province. Independently of the fact that 
 Japanese annals did not begin to be written until more than a thousand years after the 
 
 
32 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 allej^cd date of Jiminu s advcnture.s. there are internal evidences that impair the credibility of 
 this early history. But the main lacts, namely, that an invader arrived over sea, that he 
 established the Japanese dynasty, and that he was accompanied by the forefathers of the 
 thenceforth dominant race, may be accepted as true. W^estern ethnolop;ists are tolerably 
 ap;reed that Jimmii and his followers were Alonyolians. There have been attempts to iden- 
 tity them with the lost tribes of Israel; with the Aztecs and with other peoples of the Occi- 
 dent. In Japan there is a belief that they were Manchurians ; that is to say, a race which 
 oris^inally emitjrated from a remote part of India, a race distinct from the Chinese, of which 
 some settled in Manchuria, spread thence to the northeast of China, and finally passed to 
 Japan. It must be ajjreed, for the moment, to leave the problem partially unsolved; noting, 
 however, that though the Japanese shizoku cannot be absolutely identified with the Mon- 
 golian race of to-day, the differences are not so great as to be incapable of reference to the 
 modifying influences of environment acting throughout long centuries. At all events, we 
 may conclude that the final immigrants, Jimmu and his followers, or the so-called Takama- 
 mh/tam folk, found, on their arrival, a Malayan people inhabiting the southern and central 
 parts of Japan, and an Arctic tribe, the Ainu, living in the north, and that, while they amal- 
 gamated with the former after conquest, they drove out the latter, treating them as a wholly 
 inferior race, the result being that whereas the Japanese proper show i)lainly enough the 
 blending of the Mongolian and Malayan types, they show no affinity whatever with the Ainu. 
 
 These conclusions do not embrace all the suggestions furnished by tradition and 
 physiography. Inu’e accepted the probability that Arctic tribes found their way to Japan 
 
 along the chain of islands lying between the mouth of the Amur and the Tsugaru Strait; 
 that a tropical tribe migrated northward via the Philippines, Formosa and the Riukiu archi- 
 pelago ; and that a band of Mongolian conquerors arrived over sea. But at another point, 
 also, there exists between Japan and the Asiatic continent a practicable route, namely, from 
 the Korean peninsula by the islands known as Matsushima (Dagelet), the Liancourts and 
 Okishima, or by Tsushima, Iki and i\Iatsu-ura. The last of the former three stepping-stones 
 would have brought Korean adventurers within a few miles of the Japanese district of 
 Izumo. Now Izumo figures very prominently in the traditions that the authors of the 
 Kojiki and the Nilwn-gi applied themsel\-es to record. 
 
 M'hen something like consistency emerges from the web of myths and allegories into 
 which unlettered tradition wove the annals of Japan's earliest peoples, attention is immedi- 
 ately directed to Izumo as the seat of government. Before that time, the background of 
 history is occupied by mystic figures of deities whose very titles are abstractions, until at last 
 the God and Goddess of Procreation {Izanngi and Izanami) having begotten the islands of 
 the Japanese archipelago, beget, afterwards, personifications of the natural phenomena whose 
 operation is to render the islands inhabitable. Izauanii dies in giving birth to fire. Pro- 
 metheus-like, she purchases with her life this priceless gift to mortals. Izanagi, the Orpheus 
 
JAPAN. 
 
 33 
 
 of Japanese mythology, pays a profitless visit to the land of the shades in search of his 
 deceased spouse, and then himself assumes her functions as a child-bearer. From his left 
 eye emerges the Goddess of the Sun, from his right the (dod of the Moon, and from 
 his nose the Deity of Impulse, Siisano-o. To these three the empire of the universe is 
 bequeathed by their sire 
 But they fight among 
 themselves, and it is not 
 till five generations of 
 Izanagis descendants 
 have come and gone that 
 he nominates the first- 
 born of the sixth to the 
 sovereignty of Japan. 
 
 'Fhis monarch settles in 
 Izumo. Me apparently 
 represents the chieftain 
 of a Ijand of adventurers 
 who immigrated from 
 the direction of Korea. 
 
 By-and-by, another tide 
 of immigration, this time setting from the south, and composed, we may assume, oi the 
 Mongoloid wanderers already spoken of, reaches the shores of Kiushu, and a struggle ensues 
 between the newcomers and the children of the Deity of Impulse. The second immigrants 
 seem to have been worshippers of the Sun, for the God of that orb, Stisano-o s brother, is 
 their patron. A pact is at last arranged by the heavenly intervention of the disputants’ com- 
 mon ancestor. The Izumo rulers abdicate in favor of the inwiders, and in the sixth century 
 before our era, Jimmu Tenno, the so-called founder of the Imperial dynasty of Japan, is 
 established in the province of Yamato, as undisputed ruler of the south and centre, though 
 farther north his authority long continues to be resisted by the Ainu. 
 
 Jimmu, though everything that concerns him is wrapped in the obscurity of prehis- 
 toric times, has great interest for students of Japanese life and thought, since the story of his 
 doings, as constructed by the first of his country's annalists thirteen centuries later, shows at 
 least the kind of hero that men of subsequent generations were disposed to depict as the 
 founder of the sacred dynasty, the chief of the Japanese race. 1 he youngest of four sons, 
 he was nevertheless selected by his father to succeed to the rulership of the little colony of 
 invaders then settled in Kiushu, and his elder brothers obediently recognized this right of 
 choice. Hiko Flohodemi, or Sanu, as the hero was then called, is represented in the light 
 of a kind of viking. Learning of a delectable land in the east, inhabited by semi-barbarous 
 
34 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 R/ 
 
 tribes whose primitive arms were incapable of offering- any effective resistance to his trained 
 braves, he embarked all his available forces in war vessels, and set out upon a tour of aggres- 
 sion. Creeping along the eastern shore of Kiushu, and finally entering the Inland Sea, the 
 adventurers fought their way from point to point, landing sometimes to do battle with native 
 tribes, sometimes to construct new war junks, until, after seven years of fighting and wander- 
 ing, they finally emerged from the northern end of the Inland Sea and established themselves 
 in Yamato, destined to be thenceforth the Imperial province of Japan. In this long series of 
 campaigns, the chieftain lost his three brothers : one fell in fight ; two threw tliemselves into 
 the sea to calm a tempest that threatened to destroy the flotilla. Such are the deaths that 
 Japanese in all ages have regarded as ideal exits from this mortal scene — deaths by the 
 sword and deaths of loyal self-sacrifice. To the leader himself after his decease, the posthu- 
 mous name of Jimmu, or “ the man of divine bravery," was given, typifving the honor that 
 has always attached to the profession of arms in Japan. The distance from this primitive 
 viking's starting point to the place where he established his capital and consummated his 
 career of conquest, can easily be traversed by a modern steamer in three times as many 
 hours as the number of years devoted by Jimmu and his followers to the task. That the 
 craft in which they travelled were of the most inefficient type, may be gathered from the fact 
 that the \'iking’s progress eastward would have been finally interrupted by the narrou' strip 
 of water dividing Kiushu from the main island of Japan, had not a fisherman seated on a 
 turtle emboldened him to strike seaward. Thenceforth the turtle assumed a leading place in 
 the mythology of Japan — the type of longevity, the messenger of the marine deity who 
 dwelt in the crystal depths of the ocean, his palace peopled by lo\’ely maidens. The Goddess 
 of the Sun shone on his enterprise at times when tempest or fog threatened serious peril, and 
 a kite circling overhead indicated the direction of inhabited districts when he and his war- 
 riors had lost their way among mountains and forests. Ilow much of all this was trans- 
 mitted by tradition to the writers of Jimmu's history in the eighth century; how much was a 
 mere reflection of national customs which had then become sacred, and on which the political 
 scholars of the time desired to set the seal of antique sanction, who shall determine? If 
 Sanu and his warriors brought with them the worship of the sun, that would offer an inter- 
 esting inference as to their origin. If the aid that they received from his light was suggested 
 solely by the grateful homage that rice cultivators, thirteen centuries later, had learned to 
 pay to his beneficence, the Kojiki and the Nihon-gi must be read as mere transcripts of the 
 faiths and fashions of the era when they were written, not as records of previous ages. But 
 such distinctions have never been recognized by the Japanese. With them these annals of 
 their race’s beginnings have always commanded as inviolable credence as the testaments of 
 Christianity used to command in the Occident.