THERE is a country whose written history stretches in an uninterrupted tale over 2532 years; whose sovereigns have formed one unbroken dynasty since 660 B.C.; whose first ruler, of the still reigning family, was contemporary with Nebuchadnezzar and Tullus Hostilius; whose present Emperor is the 122d of his race; whose principles of action have remained virtually unchanged for five-and-twenty centuries.

That country is Japan.

Even if it possessed no other merit than this extraordinary antiquity, such a country would deserve to be looked at with attention; but the manners and the character of its people are almost more striking than its ancient lineage; while the interest of the subject is still further increased by the strange fact that, after resolutely shutting itself out from all contact with the world, this country is now suddenly abandoning its traditions, is seeking to change its whole condition, is striving to adopt NEW SERIES.-VOL XVI., No. 5

European laws and habits, and to take a place amongst the nations. A great Embassy, including some of the most illustrious of its nobles, has just landed in England, with the object of studying the elements of Western civilization, and ot applying them on its return. A sketch of the present condition of Japan may therefore be somewhat useful at this moment.

But in order to understand the situation as it now is, it is essential to trace its growth, and to indicate the causes which have produced it; for that purpose the main features of the history of this curious nation must be roughly recalled to memory.

The Empire of Japan was definitely established more than six hundred years before the Christian era by Zen Mou, who, as is shown by his first title of "Lord of the Narrow Country," was originally the petty chieftain of a mountain valley. It was he who founded the dynasty of the Mikados, and who invented the ingenious system of their deification after death,

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which, under the name of the religion of Sinto, or the Kamis, has been so powerful an agent in maintaining intact the prestige of his descendants. His successors seem to have had to do a vast deal of fighting, and though their half-sacred character generally prevented them from appearing personally in the field, their generals had plenty of occupation during some two thousand years; the reason being that their subjects, though strictly loyal, were particularly riotous, and indulged themselves in an indefinite quantity of local wars of the most varied kind. The majority of the Mikados during this long period have not left much mark in history, but some few of them were able statesmen and great rulers the long catalogue of their doings offers, however, but little interest, until about six hundred years ago. All that is worth noticing in the interval is that the Mikados were very long-lived; that in 85 B.C. the Emperor of that day conferred on one of his sons the title of Shiogun or Generalissimo, and thereby unconsciously prepared the way for the extinction of the power of his family thirteen centuries afterwards; that one Buretz, who reigned about the time of Mahomet, carried cruelty to a height which it has rarely attained elsewhere, even amongst the most inventive torturers; for when he had grown tired of the insufficient satisfaction of cutting his courtiers into small pieces, and of dissecting them alive, he conceived the new amusement of making them climb to the top of tall trees, which he forthwith cut down under them; that the introduction of Buddhism, towards the year 700, supplied a series of new motives for carrying on fighting, the partisans of the new faith disagreeing violently with the Sintoists, and of course settling their disputes by battle; and that the books of Confucius were imported at the end of the ninth century, but seemingly without producing any special quarrels.

But when the twelfth century began, new circumstances had arisen, and new events occurred, of a really important nature. Incessant fighting, and the disorders consequent upon it, had slowly developed the separate power of the Daimios or local nobles, who by degrees had grown to be virtually independent of the Mikado. They still remained under his nominal command-they paid him tribute, and and received from him investiture; but in

reality they had each of them acquired royal rights in their respective provinces. They made war on their own account, administered justice in their own names, coined money, levied taxes, and had power of life and death over the population of their district, which reverently called them the "Lords of our heads." The Mikado of the period, Koniei, determined to put an end to all this rioting, and to re-establish unity of government. With that object he collected a large army, gave the direction of it to his General, Yoritomo, and told him to crush out the local chieftains. Yoritomo went to work to do it, but not quite as Koniei wished. He allied himself with the most powerful of the Daimios, upset the rest, reorganized them all into a regular feudality, and ended by getting himself appointed Shiogun, annexing, for the first time, to that purely military office the entire direction of the civil and political affairs of the country, and declaring that the separate power which he thus assumed was hereditary in his family. Such was the origin of what we erroneously call the Temporal Emperors of Japan. The party of the Mikado, of course, objected to this usurpation, and fought bravely against the new self-constituted government. Torrents of blood were shed, savage cruelties were perpetrated; but in the long-run, after several generations had been slaughtered, the power of the Shioguns became definitive and undisputed. Still, notwithstanding their success, they never seem to have thought of actually suppressing the Mikado; on the contrary, they reigned solely in his name and for his account. The divine nature of the imperial race, the long duration of its dynasty, had so attached the nation to it, that any attack upon the person of the Mikados was impracticable. They preserved the title, the pomp, and the appearances of supreme royalty, with the power of investiture of both Shioguns and Daimios; they continued to be the fountain of honor, and they retained a distinct right of veto over the Shiogun's acts. It is, however, an error to suppose that they became spiritual chiefs or pontiffs. They never exercised or possessed any theocratic powers. They continued to be nominally the sole temporal emperors of Japan, though they were pensioned by the Shiogun, and had scarcely any practical authority. In order to prevent collisions, the Mikado and the

Shiogun wisely determined to live apart. The former took his residence at Miako, while the latter went to Yedo, three hundred miles away. He had, however, to make a journey to Miako once a-year, to do homage to his superior.

This new organization did not work quite smoothly. The descendants of Yoritomo did not manage to keep the sort of throne which he had established for them. They were turned out by new rebellions, and their place was occupied successively by a variety of adventurers, none of whom have left a name excepting Oda Novunaga and Taiko Fideyos. The latter, who was at first an apothecary's apprentice, and became Shiogun in 1590, grew to be so powerful that he was able to declare war on China, to land in the Corea with 160,ooo men, and to beat the Chinese armies in every encounter during several years. His son was dispossessed by Iyeyas, (who had been the intimate friend of Taiko), and he at last founded a permanent succession. His descendants reigned at Yedo until the suppression of the separate government of the Shiogun in 1868. It should be observed that since 1853 the Shiogun has been called Taicoon by Europeans.

From the time of the Iyeyas no more civil wars took place. The interest of Japanese history thenceforth lies in the relations which commenced between Japan and Europe.

Europe first heard of the existence of Japan from Marco Polo, who alluded to it in the story of his travels by the name of Zipangu, and gave a short description of it from what he gathered from the Chinese. The Portuguese became aware, after their settlement in India, that Zipangu was a land lying to the east of China, that it was therefore called Jih-pon, or "Sun Source," and that it was rich in precious metals, silk, and other valuable productions. But they do not appear to have made any attempt to get there; and it was not till 1543 that three Portuguese sailors landed on the Japanese coast by accident, a tempest having blown them thither, as they were on their on their way from Siam to Northern China in a junk. They were very well received by the Diamio of the locality-mainly, however because one of them possessed an arquebus, and astonished the chieftain by his shooting-and after a stay of some duration, were allowed to

leave, and got back to Goa with the story of their adventures, and of the wonderful country they had discovered. The Portuguese traders in the Eastern seas immediately opened up dealings with the new land; and shortly afterwards, in 1849, St. Francis Xavier went there and laid the foundations of the Jesuit missions. Trade and conversions prospered rapidly and simultaneously; the Japanese showed, it is true, a good deal of hesitation and some ill-will on both subjects; but the Portuguese, both priests and merchants, were men of energy; they pushed resolutely onwards, baptising, and building churches on the one hand, selling goods and making huge profits on the other.

It seems scarcely credible that the Japanese should have stood all this, especially as from the very first there was a large and powerful party amongst them whose sole desire was to at once drive the Portuguese into the sea. If they did not realise that desire, it was because their instinctive hatred and mistrust of foreigners had not yet had time to become a fixed principle of action; and also because the Portuguese of that epoch were not men to be easily beaten off. The missionaries were worthy successors of the great Apostle of the Indies; the mariners and the merchants had in them something of the blood of Cortes and Pizarro, and may even have indulged the dream of imitating those conquerors. For these reasons they got on well at first; converts to Christianity were counted by thousands; profits, represented by the exportation of precious metals, were counted by millions. But Japan was further off than Mexico or Peru, and the Japanese were a very different race from the subjects of Montezuma and Atahualpa; the Portuguese possessed no force to back up their projects; the Japanese gradually got out of temper; and after some fifty years of admirable success, both in trade and preaching, signs of hostility began to appear. Decrees were issued against the Christian religion; edicts were made against all foreigners; both were capriciously withdrawn, and then once more set in force; converts were put to death, and churches were destroyed. Then came another period of relative calm. At last, in 1624, out broke the final storm; Christianity was suppressed by law, the ports were closed, strangers were ordered off, and an almost universal murdering of converts and priests took place,

with attendant cruelties of the most hideous kind. The Portuguese resisted as they could, and hung in their vessels about the coast, seeking still to trade; but in 1638 sterner measures were adopted, and what remained of Christians or Portuguese were swept away for good.

While all this was going on, the English, the Spaniards, and the Dutch had made attempts to get a share of the newly-opened trade, but the Portuguese managed to keep them almost out of it as long as they held their ground. When, however, they were driven off, the Dutch, who had been dealing in a trifling way since 1609, managed most cleverly to get in. They contrived to make the Japanese understand that they were Protestants, that they had consequently no kind of religious interest to serve, and therefore were not dangerous in that respect; they urged that certain European products had become necessary to Japan, and must be supplied by some one; and finally, after long patience and much humiliation, they obtained permission to establish and maintain one factory on an island in the harbor of Nagasaki. From that moment they alone possessed the right of trading with Japan, and immensely lucrative their commerce was for more than a hundred years. It dwindled down at last to one ship a year, and almost ceased to be of any pecuniary value; but it was kept up as a Dutch monopoly until 1854.

From 1638 the Japanese Government resolutely refused to allow any foreign vessel to touch at its ports under any pretext, and prohibited the slightest intercourse between foreigners and its own subjects. So pitilessly was this latter law applied, that even Japanese sailors who were wrecked on the Rusian or other neighboring shores were not permitted to go home again with out great difficulty, nor until after much purification. The half-dozen Dutchmen who managed the factory at Nagasaki were kept locked up in their little island of Decima, and were not allowed to hold any communication with the mainland, excepting once in every four years, when their manager had to visit Yedo to do homage to the Shiogun. The occasional attempts which were made by European war or trading ships to open communication on the coast were persistently repelled, by force if necessary: the closing of Japan against the outer world, was absolute and complete.

Time in no way weakened the conviction that the safety and the honor of the country depended on its isolation; even so recently as the year 1843, a new edict confirming the old principle was promulgated, and was handed to the Dutch for transmission to the European powers, in order to put an end to the growing visits of unwelcome ships. This edict said: "Shipwrecked persons of the Japanese nation must not be brought back to their country otherwise than in Dutch or Chinese vessels; for in case these shipwrecked persons shall be brought back in the ships of other nations, they will not be received. Considering the express prohibition, even to Japanese subjects, to explore or make examination of the coasts or islands of the empire, this prohibition, for greater reasons, is extended to foreigners." This decree supplies evidence enough that the old theories and convictions were still preponderant, and were likely, so far as apparent probabilities could be judged, to remain in force indefinitely. The opium war between England and China, the nature and objects of which were thoroughly known and understood by the Japanese, was an event not calculated to encourage them to re-open intercourse with foreigners.

So things went on until 1853, when, after one or two ineffectual attempts to open up communication, a squadron of United States war vessels steamed one day into the harbor of Yokohama; and Commodore Perry, who commanded it, informed the astounded governor that he had come to make a treaty. The local authorities instantly ordered him to sea, and said they would burn his ships if he did not go. The Commodore replied "Try;" but they did not try. Yankee coolness was too much for Japanese resistance, when put really to the test. So negotiations were set going: a letter to the Mikado, which the Commodore had brought from President Fillmore, was sent up to Miako, and the Americans agreed to come back in a few months for an answer. At the beginning of the following spring the Commodore returned; he wanted a treaty, and would not go away without one; the Shiogun got frightened, and gave in. On 31st March, 1854, the extorted document was signed, and Japan was once more opened, after 216 years of absolute isolation.

The other powers imitated somewhat