The Mikado's Empire

Book II. Personal Experiences, Observations, And Studies In Japan

1870-1874.

By william ELLIOT GRIFFIS, A.M.,

LATE OF THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY OF TOKIO, JAPAN.

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

FRANKLIN SQUARE.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, by Harper & Brothers,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

TO

JAPANESE LOTERS OF KNOWLEDGE IN EVERY AGE :

THE DEAD,

WHO FIRST KINDLED THE SACRED FIRE, WHO PASSED ON THE TORCH ;

THE MARTYRS,

WHO SUFFERED DEATH FOR THEIR LOYALTY, PATRIOTISM, DEVOTION TO NATIONAL UNITY, RESTORATION, AND REGENERATION;

THE STUDENTS,

WHO, IN NOBLE THIRST FOR TRUTH, FOUND HONORED GRAVES IN ALIEN SOIL ; THE LIVING,

WITH WHOM RESTS THE FUTURE OF THEIR BEAUTIFUL LAND,

THIS SKETCH

OF THEIR COUNTRY AND PEOPLE, MADE IN THE INTEREST OP TRUTH, AND SET DOWN WITHOUT EXTENUATION OR MALICE, IS,

WITH FRATERNAL REGARD,

DEDICATED

BY THEIR COMRADE AND FRIEND,

THE AUTHOR.

Preface

Japan, once in the far-off Orient, is now our nearest Western neighbor. Her people walk our streets ; her youth sit, peers and rivals of our students, in the class-room ; her art adorns our homes, and has opened to us a new Gate Beautiful. The wise men from the West are, at this writing, opening their treasures of tea, silk, gold-lacquer, bronze.s, and porcelain at the first centennial of our nation’s birth.

We hail the brightness of the rising of this first among Asiatic nations to enter modern life, to win and hold a place among the foremost peoples of the earth. It is time that a writer treated Japan as something else than an Oriental puzzle, a nation of recluses, a land of fabulous wealth, of universal licentiousness or of Edenic purity, the fastness of a treacherous and fickle crew, a Paradise of guileless children, a Utopia of artists and poets. It is time to drop the license of exaggeration, and, with the light of common day, yet with sympathy and without prejudice, seek to know what Dai Nippon is and has been.

It has been well said by a literary critic and reader of all the books on the subject that to write a good history of Japan is difficult, not so much from lack of materials, but from the differences in psychology. This I realize. My endeavor, during eight years’ living contact with these people, has been, from their language, books, life, and customs, to determine their mental parallax, and find out how they think and feel.

I have not made this book in libraries at home, but largely on the soil of the mikado’s empire. I have slight obligation to acknowledge to foreign writers, except to those working scholars in Japan who have written during the last decade with knowledge of the language. To them I owe much ; first and most of all to Mr. Ernest Satow, who, in the special department of historical research, stands leader. To Messrs. Aston, Mitford, Pfoundes, Hepburn, Brown, Blakiston, Von Brandt, and Parkes, I am also indebted. I am under many obligations

PREFACE.

to the editor of The Japan Mail. This scholarly paper, published in Yokohama, is a most valuable mirror of contemporaneous Japanese history, and a rich store-house of facts, especially the papers of the Asiatic Society of Japan. The Japan Herald and The Japan Gazette have also been of great service to me, for which I here thank the proprietors. The constant embarrassment in treating many subjects has been from wealth of material. I have been obliged to leave out several chapters on important subjects, and to treat others with mere passing allusions.

In the early summer of 1868, two Higo students, Ise and Numagawa, arrived in the United States. They were followed by retainers of the daimios of Satsuma and Echizen, and other feudal princes. I was surprised and delighted to find these earnest youth equals of American students in good-breeding, courtesy, and mental acumen. Some of them remained under my instruction two years, others for a shorter time. Among my friends or pupils in New Brunswick, New Jersey, are Mr. Yoshida Kiyonari, H. I. J. M. Minister Plenipotentiary at Washington ; Mr. Takagi Samro, H. I. J. M. Vice-consul at San Francisco ; Mr. Tomita Tetsunosuke, H. I. J. M. Consul at New York ; Mr. Hatakevama Yoshinari, President of the Imperial University of Japan ; Captain Matsumura Junzo, of the Japanese navy. Among others were the two sons of Iwakura Tomomi, Junior Prime Minister of Japan ; and two young nobles of the Shimadzu family of Satsuma I also met Prince Adzuma, nephew of the mikado, and many of the prominent men, ex-daimios, Tokugawa retainers, soldiers in the war of 1868, and representatives of every department of service under the old shogunate and new National Government. Six white marble shafts in the eemetery at New Brunswick, New Jersey, mark the resting-place of Kusukabe Taro, of Fukui, and his fellow-countrymen, whose devotion to study cost them their lives. I was invited by the Prince of Echizen, while Regent of the University, through the American superintendent, Rev. G. F. Verbeck, to go out to organize a scientific school on the American principle in Fukui, Echizen, and give instruction in the physical sciences. I arrived in Japan, December 29th, 1870, and remained until July 25th, 1874. During all my residence I enjoyed the society of cultivated scholars, artists, priests, antiquaries, and students, both in the provincial and national capitals. From the living I bore letters of introduction to the prominent men in the Japanese Government, and thus were given to me opportunities for research and observation not often afforded to foreigners. My facilities for regular and

» PREFACE.

extended travel were limited only by my duties. Nothing Japanese was foreign to me, from palace to beggar’s hut. I lived in Dai Nippon during four of the most pregnant years of the nation’s history. Nearly one year was spent alone in a daimio’s capital far in the interior, away from Western influence, when feudalism was in its full bloom, and the old life in vogue. In the national capital, in the time well called “ the flowering of the nation,” as one of the instructors in the Imperial University, having picked students from all parts of the empire, I was a witness of the marvelous development, reforms, dangers, pageants, and changes of the epochal years 1872, 1873, and 1874. With pride I may say truly that I have felt the pulse and heart of New Japan.

I have studied economy in the matter of Japanese names and titles, risking the charge of monotony for the sake of clearness. The scholar will, I trust, pardon me for apparent anachronisms and omissions. For lack of space or literary skill, I have had, in some cases, to condense with a brevity painful to a lover of fairness and candor. The title justifies the emphasis of one idea that pervades the book.

In the department of illustrations, I claim no originality, except in their selection. Many are from photographs taken for me by natives in Japan. Those of my artist -friend, Ozawa, w'ere nearly all made from life at my suggestion. I have borrowed many fine sketches from native hooks, through Aime Humbert, whose marvelously beautiful and painstaking work, “Japon Illustre,” is a mine of illustration. Few artists have excelled in spirit and truth Mr. A. Wirgman, the artist of The London Illustrated News, a painter of real genius, whose w'orks in oil now adorn many home parlors of ex-residents in Japan, and whose gems, fine gold, and dross fill the sprightly pages of The Japan Punch. Many of his sketches adorn Sir Rutherford Alcock’s book on the vicissitudes of diplomatists, commonly called “The Capital of the Tycoon,” or “Three Years in Japan.” I am indebted both to this gentleman and to Mr. Laurence Oliphant, who wrote the charming volume, “ Lord Elgin’s Mission to China and Japan,” for many illustrations, chiefly from native sketches. Through the liberality of my publishers, I am permitted to use these from their stores of plates. I believe I have in no case reproduced old cuts without new or correct information that will a.ssist the general reader or those who wish to study the various styles of the native artists, five of which are herein presented. Hokusai, the Dickens, and Kamo, the Audubon of Japanese art, are well represented. The photographs of the living

PBEFACE. '

and of the renowned dead, from temples, statues, or old pictures, from the collections of daimios and nobles, are chiefly b}’ Uchida, a native photographer of rare ability, skill, and enthusiasm, who unfortunately died in 1875. Four \'ignettes are copied from the steel-plate engravings on the greenbacks printed in New York for the Ono National Banking Company of Tokio, by the Continental Bank-note Company of New York.

I gratefully acknowledge the assistance derived from native scholars in Fukui and Tokio, especially Messrs. Iwabuchi, Takakashi, and Ideura, my readers and helpers. To the members of the Mei Roku Sha, who have honored me with membership in their honorable body, I return my best thanks. This club of authors and reformers includes such men as Fukuzawa, Arinori Mori, Nakamura Masanawo, Kato Hiroyuki, Nishi Shiu, the Mitsukuri brothers, Shuihei and Rinsho, Uchida Masawo, Hatakeyama Yoshinari, and others, all names of fame and honor, and earnest workers in the regeneration of their country. To my former students now in New York, who have kindly assisted me in proof-reading, and last and first of all to Mr. Tosui Imadate, my friend and constant companion during the last six years, I return my thanks and obligations. I omit in this place the names of high officers in the Japanese Government, because the responsibility for any opinion advanced in this work rests on no native of Japan. That is all my own. To my sister, the companion, during two }'ears, of several of my journeys and visits in the homes of the island empire, I owe many an idea and inspiration to research. To the publishers of the North American Review^ Appletons' Journal^ and The Independent my thanks are due for permission to print part of certain chapters first published in these periodicals.

I trust the tone of the work will not seem dogmatic. I submit with modesty what I have written on the Ainos. I am inclined to believe that India is their original home ; that the basic stock of the Japanese people is Aino ; and that in this fact lies the root of the marvelous difference in the psychology of the Japanese and their neighbors, the Chinese.

“ Can a nation be born at once ?” “ With God all things are pos-

sible.”

AY. E. G.

Contents

BOOK I.

HISTORY OF JAPAN FROM 660 B.C. TO 1872 A.D.

OHAPTEE PAGE

I. The Background

It is manifest that to understand a people and their national life, the physical conditions under which they live must be known. To enjoy the picture, we must study the background.

Dai Nippon, as the nath'es call their beautiful land, occupies a significant position on the globe. Lying in the Pacific Ocean, in the temperate zone, it bends like a crescent off the continent of Asia. In the extreme north, at the island of Saghalin, the distance from the main-land of Asia is so slight that the straits may be crossed easily in a canoe. From Kiushiu, with the island of Tsushima lying between, the distance from Corea is but one day’s sail in a junk. For 4000 miles eastward from the main island stretches the Pacific, shored in by the continent of America. From Yezo to Kamtchatka, the Kuriles stretch like the ruins of a causeway, prolonged by the Aleutian Islands, to Alaska. The configuration of the land is that resulting from the combined effects of volcanic action and the incessant motion of the corroding waves. The area of the empire is nearly equal to that of our Middle and New England States. Of the 150,000 square miles of surface, two-thirds consist of mountain land. The island of Saghalin (ceded to Russia in May, 1875) is one mountain chain ; that of Yezo one mountain mass. On the main island,* a solid backbone of mountainous elevations runs continuously from

* Dai Nippon, or Nihon, means Great Japan, and is the name of the entire empire, not of the main island. The foreign writers on Japan have almost unanimously blundered in calling the largest island “ Niphon.” Hondo is the name given to the main island in the Military Geography of Japan (Heiyo Nippon Chin Yoshi, Tokio, 1872) published by the War Department, and which is used in this work throughout.

THE MIKADO'S EMPIRE.

Rikuoku to Shinano, whence it branches off into subordinate chains that are prolonged irregularly to Nagato and into Kiushiu and Shikoku. Speaking generally, the heights of the mountains gradually increase from the extremities to the centre. In Saghalin, they are low ; in Yezo, they are higher: increasing gradually on the north of the main island, they culminate in the centre in the lofty ranges of Shinano, and the peaks of Nantaizan, Yatsugadake, Hakuzan (nine thousand feet high), and Fuji, whose summit is over twelve thousand feet above the sea. Thence toward the south they gradually decrease in height. There are few high mountains along the sea-coast. The land slopes up gradually into hills, thence into lesser peaks, and finally into lofty ranges.

As Fuji, with his tall satellites, sweeps up from the land, so Japan itself rises up, peak-like, from the sea. From the shores the land plunges abruptly down into deep water. Japan is but an emerged crest of a submarine mountain — perhaps the edge of hard rock left by the submergence of the earth-crust which now fioors the Sea of Japan and the Gulf of Tartary. There seems little reason to doubt that Saghalin, Yezo, Hondo, and Kiushiu were in geologic ages united together, forming one island. Surrounded on all sides by swift and variable currents, the islands everywhere on the sea -borders exhibit the effect of their action. At most points the continual detritus is such as to seriously encroach on the land area, and the belief holds among certain native sea -coast dwellers, strengthened by the traditional tales of past ravages, that in process of time the entire country, devoured by successive gnawings of the ocean, will finally sink into its insatiable maw.

The geological formations of the country — the natural foundations — are not as yet accurately determined. Enough, however, is known to give us a fair outline of fact, which future research and a thorough survey must fill up.* Of the soil, more is known.

■* Baron Richthofen, in a paper read before the Geological Society of Berlin, June 4th, 1873, thus generalizes the geology of Japan : The west and east portion of the aggregate body of the Japanese islands is in every way the direct continuation of the mountain system which occupies the south-eastern portion of China, the axial chain of which extends from the frontier of Annam to the island of Chusan, in the direction of W. 30° S., E. 30° N. It is accompanied on either side by a number of paraliel chains. The prolongation of this group of linear chains passes through the island of Kiushiu to the great bend of Japan (Suruga and Shinano). Through Kiushiu and the southern part of the main island, the structure of the hills and the rocks of which they are made up (chiefly Silurian

THE BACKOEOUND.

Even in a natural state, without artificial fertilization, most of the tillable land produces good crops of grain or vegetables. On myriads and Devonian strata, accompanied by granite) and the lines of strike are the same as those observed in South-eastern China. This system is intersected at either end by another, which runs S.S.W., N.N.E. On the west it commences in Eiushiu, and extends southward in the direction of the Liu Kiu Islands, while on the east it constitutes the northern branch of the main island, and, with a slight deviation in its course, continues through the islands of Yezo and Saghalin. A third system, which properly does not belong to Japan, is indicated by the S.W. and N.E. line of the Kuriles.

The above outline throws light on the distribution of volcanoes. The first system, where it occupies the breadth of the country for itself alone, is as free from volcanoes, or any accumulation of volcanic rocks, as it is in South-eastern China. The second system is accompanied by volcanoes. But the greatest accumulation of volcanic rocks, as well as of the extinct volcanoes, is found in the places of interference, or those regions where the lines of the two systems cross each other, and, besides, in that region where the third system branches off from the second. To the same three regions the volcanoes which have been active in historic times have been confined.

In the geological structure of Kiushiu, the longer axis is from N. to S.,but intersected by several solid bars made up of very ancient rocks, and following the strike of W. 30° 8., E. 30° N. They form high mountain barriers, the most central of which, south of the provinces of Higo and Bungo, rises to over seven thousand feet, and is extremely wild and rugged. In Satsuma, the various families of volcanic rocks have arrived at the surface in exactly the same order of succession as in the case of Hungary, Mexico, and many other volcanic regions, viz., first, propylite, or trachytic greenstone; second, andesite; third, trachyte and rhyolite ; fourth, the basaltic rocks. The third group was not visited by him. Thomas Antisell, M.D., and Professor Benjamin J. Lyman, M.E., and Henry S. Munroe, M.E., American geologists in Yezo, have also elucidated this interesting problem. From the first I quote. The mountain systems of Yezo and farther north are similar to those in the northern part of the main island. There are in Yezo two distinct S3'stems of mountains. One, coming down directly from the north, is a continuation of the chain in Karafto (Saghalin), which, after passing down south along the west shore of Yezo, is found in Rihuoku, Ugo, Uzen, and farther south. The second enters Yezo from the Kuriles Islands and Kamtchatka, running N. 20-25° E. and 8. 20-25° W., and crossing in places the first system. It is from the existence and crossing of these chains that Yezo derives its triangular form. The two systems possess very different mineral contents for their axes. The first has an essentially granitic and feldspathic axis, produced, perhaps, by shrinkage, and is slow of decomposition of its minerals forming the soils. The second has an axis, plutonic or volcanic, yielding basalts, traps, and diorites, decomposing readily, producing deep and rich soils. Hence the different kinds of vegetation on the two chains. Where the two chains cross, also, there is found a form of country closed up in the north and east by hills, the valleys opening to the south and west. This volcanic chain is secondary in the main island of Japan ; but in Yezo and in Kiushiu it attains great prominence.

Professor Benjamin 8. Lyman, an American geologist, has also made valuable surveys and explorations in Yezo, the results of which are given in the “ Reports of Horace Capron and his Foreign Assistants,” Tokio, 1875.

THE MIKADO'S EMPIRE.

of rice-fields, whicli have yielded richly for ages, the fertility is easily maiutained by irrigation and the ordinary application of manure, the natives being proficient in both these branches of practical husbandry.

The rivers on such narrow islands, where steep mountains and sharply excavated valleys predominate, are of necessity mainly useless for navigation. Ordinarily they are little more than brooks that flow lazily in narrow and shallow channels to the sea. After a storm, in rainy weather, or in winter, they become swollen torrents, often miles wide, sweeping resistlessly over large tracts of land which they keep perpetually desolate — wildernesses of stones and gravel, where fruitful fields ought to be. The area of land kept permanently waste in Japan on this account is enormous. The traveler, who to-day crosses a clear brook on a plank, may to-morrow be terrified at a roaring flood of muddy water in which neither man, beast, nor boat can live a moment. There are, however, some large plains, and in those we must look to find the navigable rivers. In the mountains of Shinano and Kodzuke are found the sources of most of the streams useful for navigation on the main island. On the plains of the Kuanto (from Suruga to Iwaki), Oshiu (Rikuchiu and Rikuzen), Mino, and Echigo, are a few rivers on which one may travel in boats hundreds of miles. One may go by water from Tokio to Niigata by making a few portages, and from Ozaka to the end of Lake Biwa by natural water. In the northern part of Hondo are several long rivers, notably the Kitagami and Sakata. In Yezo is the Ishikari. In Shikoku are several fine streams, which are large for the size of the islands. Kiushiu has but one or two of an}^ importance. Almost every one of these rivers abounds in fish, affording, with the surrounding ocean, an inexhaustible and easily attainable supply of food of the best quality. Before thei^ history began, the aboriginal islanders made this brain-nourishing food their chief diet, and through the recorded centuries to the quick-witted Japanese proper it has been the daily meat.

In the geologic ages volcanic action must have been extremely violent, as in historic time it has been almost continual. Hundreds, at least, of mountains, now quiet, were once blazing furnaces. The evergreenery that decks them to-day reminds one of the ivy that mantles the ruins, or the flowers that overgrow the neglected cannon on the battle-field. Even within the memory of men now living have the most awful and deadly exhibitions of volcanic desolation been witnessed. The annals of Japan are replete with the records of these flame-andlava-vomiting mountains, and the most harrowing tales of human life

THE BACEOEOUND.

destroyed and human industry overwhelmed are truthfully portrayed by the pencil of the artist and the pen of the historian in the native literature. Even now the Japanese count over twenty active and hundreds of dormant volcanoes. As late as 1874, the volcano of Taromai, in Yezo, whose crater had long since congealed, leaving only a few puffing solfataras, exploded, blowing its rocky cap far up into the air, and scattering a rain of ashes as far as the sea-shore, many miles distant. Even the nearly perfect cone of Shiribeshi, in Yezo, is but one of many of nature’s colossal ruins. Asama yama, never quiet, puffs off continual jets of steam, and at this moment of writing is groaning and quaking, to the terror of the people around it. Even the superb Fuji, that sits in lordly repose and looks down over the lesser peaks in thirteen provinces, owes its matchless form to volcanic action, being clothed by a garment of lava on a throne of granite. IJakuzan, on the west coast, which uprears its form above the clouds, nine thousand feet from the sea-level, and holds a lakelet of purest water in its bosom, once in fire and smoke belched out rocks and ulcered its crater jaws with floods of white and black lava. Not a few of these smoking furnaces by day are burning lamps by night to the mariner. Besides the masses and fields of scoria one everywhere meets, other evidences of the fierce unrest of the past are noticed. Beds of sulphur abound. Satsuma, Liu Kiu, and Yezo are noted for the large amount they easily produce. From the sides of Ilakuzan huge crystals of sulphur are dug. Solfataras exist in active operation in many places. Sulphur-springs may be found in almost every province. Hot-springs abound, many of them highly impregnated with mineral salts, and famous for their geyser-like rhythm of ebb and flow. In Shinano and Echigo the people cook their food, and the farmer may work in his fields by night, lighted by the inflammable gas which issues from the ground, and is led through bamboo tubes.

Connected with volcanic are the seismic phenomena. The records of Japan from the earliest time make frequent mention of these devastating and terrifying visitations of subterranean disorder. Not only have villages, towns, and cities been shaken down or ingulfed, but in many neighborhoods tradition tells of mountains that have disappeared utterly, or been leveled to earth. The local histories, so numerous in Japan, relate many such instances, and numerous gullies and depressions produced by the opening and partial closure of the earth-lips are pointed out. One, in the province of Echizen, is over a mile long, and resembles a great trench.

THE MIKADO'S EMPIRE.

In addition to a good soil, Japan has been generously endowed by the Creator with mineral riches. Most of the useful varieties of stone are found throughout the empire. Granite and the harder rocks, throuofh various degrees of softness, down to the easily carved or chipped sandstones and secondary formations useful for fortifications, buildings, tombs, walks, or walls, exist in almost every province.

Almost all the useful metals long known to man are found in this island empire. Gold and silver in workable quantities are found in many places. The island of Sado is a mass of gold-bearing quartz. Copper is very abundant, and of the purest kind. Lead, tin, antimonv, and manganese abound. Of zinc and mercury there is but little. Iron is chieflv in the form of magnetic oxide. It occurs in the dilu- \dum of rivers and along the sea-coast, lying in beds, often of great thickness. The first quality of iron may be extracted from it. Iron-stone and many other varieties of ore are also found. Petroleum issues from the ground in Echigo, Suruga, Echizen, Yezo, and in Saghalin ; the ocean at some portions on the coast of the latter is said to be smeared with a fioating scum of oil for miles.

The botanical wealth of Japan is very great. A considerable number of vegetable species have doubtless been introduced by human agency into Japan from the Asiatic continent, but the indigenous plants and those imported by natural means are very numerous.

The timber of the main island, Kiushiu, and Shikoku is superb in appearance and growth, of great variety, beauty, and adaptability to the uses of man. Yezo is one vast boom and lumber yard. Thii-tysix varieties of useful timber-trees, including true oak, are found there. The Kuriles also afford rich supplies, and are capable of becoming to the empire proper what forest-clad Norway is to England. Yamato, on the main-land, is also famous for its forests, ranging from tallest evergreen trees of great size, fineness of grain, and strength of fibre, to the soft and easily whittled pines ; but the incessant demands for firing and carpentry make devastating inroads on the growing timber. Split wood for cooking, and charcoal for warmth, necessitate the system of forestry long in vogue in some parts of the empire requiring a tree to be planted for every one cut down ; and nurseries of young forest trees are regularly set out, though the custom is not universal. Most of the trees and many of the plants are evergreen, thus keeping the islands clothed in perpetual verdure, and reducing the visual difference between winter and summer, in the southern half of Hondo, at least, to a nearly tropical minimum.

THE BACKGROUND.

The various varieties of bamboo, graceful in appearance, and by its strength, symmetry, hollowness, and regularity of cleavage, adapted to an almost endless variety of uses, are almost omnipresent, from the scrub undergrowth in Yezo to that cultivated in luxuriant groves in Satsuma so as to be almost colossal in proportion. There is, however, as compared with our own country, a deficiency of fruit-trees and edible vegetables. The first use of most of the bread grains

and plants is historic. In very ancient times it is nearly certain

that the soil produced very little that could be used for food, except roots, nuts, and benies. This is shown both by tradition and history, and also by the fact that the names of vegetables in Japan are mostly foreign.

The geographical position of the Japanese chain would lead us to expect a flora American, Asiatic, and semi-tropical in its character. The rapid variations of temperature, heavy and continuous rains, succeeded by scorching heats and the glare of an almost tropical sun, are accompanied and tempered by strong and constant winds. Hence we find semi-tropical vegetable forms in close contact with Northern temperate types. In general the predominant nature of the Japan flora is shrubby rather than herbaceous.*

The geographical position of Japan hardly explains the marked resemblance of its flora to that of Atlantic America,f on the one hand, and that of the Himalaya region, on the other. Such, however, is the

* In the “Enumeratio Plantarum,” which treats of all the known exogens and conifers in Japan, 1699 species are enumerated, distributed in 643 genera, which are collocated in 132 orders. In other words, an imperfect botanical survey of the Nippon chain of islands shows that in it are represented nearly half the natural orders, ten per cent, of the genera, and nearly three per cent, of the species of dicotyledons known to exist on the surface of the globe. Future research must largely increase the number of species.

t Very large and splendidly illustrated works on botany exist in the Japanese language. The native botanists classify according to the Linnsean system. In their “Enumeratio Plantarum” (Paris, 1874), Drs. A. Franchet and L. Savatier have given a resume of all the known dicotyledonous plants in Japan. It is a work of great research and conscientious accuracy. I have seen excellent and voluminous native works, richly illustrated, on ichthyology, conchology, zoology, entomology, reptilology, and mineralogy. Some of these works are in ninety volumes each. Ten thousand dollars were spent by a wealthy scholar in Mino in the publication of one of them. They would not satisfy the requirements of the exact science of this decade, but they constitute an invaluable thesaurus to the botanical investigator. I am indebted for most of the information concerning the Japanese flora to a paper in the Japan Hail of September 25th, 1875, from the pen of a competent reviewer of Dr. Savatier’s great work.