Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Jacobites" to "Japan" (part) (part 2)

At first a source of strength to Turkey as being the only well-organized and disciplined force in the country, the janissaries soon became its bane, thanks to their lawlessness and exactions. One frequent means of exhibiting their discontent was to set fire to Constantinople; 140 such fires are said to have been caused during the 28 years of Ahmed III.’s reign. The janissaries were at all times distinguished for their want of respect towards the sultans; their outbreaks were never due to a real desire for reforms of abuses or of misgovernment, but were solely caused to obtain the downfall of some obnoxious minister.

The first recorded revolt of the janissaries is in 1443, on the occasion of the second accession of Mahommed II., when they broke into rebellion at Adrianople. A similar revolt happened at his death, when Bayazid II. was forced to yield to their demands and thus the custom of the accession-bakshish was established; at the end of his reign it was the janissaries who forced Bayazid to summon Prince Selim and to hand over the reins of power to him. During the Persian campaign of Selim I. they mutinied more than once. Under Osman II. their disorders reached their greatest height and led to the dethronement and murder of the sultan. It would be tedious to recall all their acts of insubordination. Throughout Turkish history they were made use of as instruments by unscrupulous and ambitious statesmen, and in the 17th century they had become a praetorian guard in the worst sense of the word. Sultan Selim III. in despair endeavoured to organize a properly drilled and disciplined force, under the name of nizam-i-jedid, to take their place; for some time the janissaries regarded this attempt in sullen silence; a curious detail is that Napoleon’s ambassador Sebastiani strongly dissuaded the sultan from taking this step. Again serving as tools, the janissaries dethroned Selim III. and obtained the abolition of the nizam-i-jedid. But after the successful revolution of Bairakdar Pasha of Widdin the new troops were re-established and drilled: the resentment of the janissaries rose to such a height that they attacked the grand vizier’s house, and after destroying it marched against the sultan’s palace. They were repulsed by cannon, losing 600 men in the affair (1806). But such was the excitement and alarm caused at Constantinople that the nizam-i-jedid, or sekbans as they were now called, had to be suppressed. During the next 20 years the misdeeds and turbulence of the janissaries knew no bounds. Sultan Mahmud II., powerfully impressed by their violence and lawlessness at his accession, and with the example of Mehemet Ali’s method of suppressing the Mamlukes before his eyes, determined to rid the state of this scourge; long biding his time, in 1825 he decided to form a corps of regular drilled troops known as eshkenjis. A fetva was obtained from the Sheikh-ul-Islam to the effect that it was the duty of Moslems to acquire military science. The imperial decree announcing the formation of the new troops was promulgated at a grand council, and the high dignitaries present (including certain of the principal officers of the janissaries who concurred) undertook to comply with its provisions. But the janissaries rose in revolt, and on the 10th of June 1826, began to collect on the Et Meidan square at Constantinople; at midnight they attacked the house of the aga of janissaries, and, finding he had made good his escape, proceeded to overturn the caldrons of as many ortas as they could find, thus forcing the troops of those ortas to join the insurrection. Then they pillaged and robbed throughout the town. Meanwhile the government was collecting its forces; the ulema, consulted by the sultan, gave the following fetva: “If unjust and violent men attack their brethren, fight against the aggressors and send them before their natural judge!” On this the sacred standard of the prophet was unfurled, and war was formally declared against these disturbers of order. Cannon were brought against the Et Meidan, which was surrounded by troops. Ibrahim Aga, known as Kara Jehennum, the commander of the artillery, made a last appeal to the janissaries to surrender; they refused, and fire was opened upon them. Such as escaped were shot down as they fled; the barracks where many found refuge were burnt; those who were taken prisoner were brought before the grand vizier and hanged. Before many days were over the corps had ceased to exist, and the janissaries, the glory of Turkey’s early days and the scourge of the country for the last two centuries, had passed for ever from the page of her history.

See M. d’Ohsson, Tableaux de l’empire ottoman (Paris, 1787-1820); Ahmed Vefyk, Lehjé-i-osmanié (Constantinople, 1290-1874); A. Djévad Bey, État militaire ottoman (Constantinople, 1885).

JANIUAY, a town of the province of Iloilo, Panay, Philippine Islands, on the Suague river, about 20 m. W.N.W. of Iloilo, the capital. Pop. (1903), 27,399, including Lambúnao (6661) annexed to Janiuay in 1903. The town commands delightful views of mountain and valley scenery. An excellent road connects it with Pototan, about 10 m. E. The surrounding country is hilly but fertile and well cultivated, producing rice, sugar, tobacco, vegetables (for the Iloilo market), hemp and Indian corn. The women weave and sell beautiful fabrics of pina, silk, cotton and abaca. The language is Panay-Visayan. Janiuay was founded in 1578; it was first established in the mountains and was subsequently removed to its present site.

JANJIRA, a native state of India, in the Konkan division of Bombay, situated along the coast among the spurs of the Western Ghats, 40 m. S. of Bombay city. Area, 324 sq. m. Pop. (1901), 85,414, showing an increase of 4% in the decade. The estimated revenue is about £37,000; there is no tribute. The chief, whose title is Nawab Sahib, is by descent a Sidi or Abyssinian Mahommedan; and his ancestors were for many generations admirals of the Mahommedan rulers of the Deccan. The state, popularly known as Habsan (= Abyssinian), did not come under direct subordination to the British until 1870. It supplies sailors and fishermen, and also fire-wood, to Bombay, with which it is in regular communication by steamer.

The Nawab of Janjira is also chief of the state of Jafarabad (q.v.).

JAN MAYEN, an arctic island between Greenland and the north of Norway, about 71° N. 8° W. It is 34 m. long and 9 in greatest breadth, and is divided into two parts by a narrow isthmus. The island is of volcanic formation and mountainous, the highest summit being Beerenberg in the north (8350 ft.). Volcanic eruptions have been observed. Glaciers are fully developed. Henry Hudson discovered the island in 1607 and called it Hudson’s Tutches or Touches. Thereafter it was several times observed by navigators who successively claimed its discovery and renamed it. Thus, in 1611 or the following year whalers from Hull named it Trinity Island; in 1612 Jean Vrolicq, a French whaler, called it Île de Richelieu; and in 1614 Joris Carolus named one of its promontories Jan Meys Hoek after the captain of one of his ships. The present name of the island is derived from this, the claim of its discovery by a Dutch navigator, Jan Mayen, in 1611, being unsupportable. The island is not permanently inhabited, but has been frequently visited by explorers, sealers and whalers; and an Austrian station for scientific observations was maintained here for a year in 1882-1883. During this period a mean temperature of 27.8° F. was recorded.

JANSEN, CORNELIUS (1585-1638), bishop of Ypres, and father of the religious revival known as Jansenism, was born of humble Catholic parentage at Accoy in the province of Utrecht on the 28th of October 1585. In 1602 he entered the university of Louvain, then in the throes of a violent conflict between the Jesuit, or scholastic, party and the followers of Michael Baius, who swore by St Augustine. Jansen ended by attaching himself strongly to the latter party, and presently made a momentous friendship with a like-minded fellow-student, Du Vergier de Hauranne, afterwards abbot of Saint Cyran. After taking his degree he went to Paris, partly to recruit his health by a change of scene, partly to study Greek. Eventually he joined Du Vergier at his country home near Bayonne, and spent some years teaching at the bishop’s college. All his spare time was spent in studying the early Fathers with Du Vergier, and laying plans for a reformation of the Church. In 1616 he returned to Louvain, to take charge of the college of St Pulcheria, a hostel for Dutch students of theology. Pupils found him a somewhat choleric and exacting master and academic society a great recluse. However, he took an active part in the university’s resistance to the Jesuits; for these had established a theological school of their own in Louvain, which was proving a formidable rival to the official faculty of divinity. In the hope of repressing their encroachments, Jansen was sent twice to Madrid, in 1624 and 1626; the second time he narrowly escaped the Inquisition. He warmly supported the Catholic missionary bishop of Holland, Rovenius, in his contests with the Jesuits, who were trying to evangelize that country without regard to the bishop’s wishes. He also crossed swords more than once with the Dutch Presbyterian champion, Voetius, still remembered for his attacks on Descartes. Antipathy to the Jesuits brought Jansen no nearer Protestantism; on the contrary, he yearned to beat these by their own weapons, chiefly by showing them that Catholics could interpret the Bible in a manner quite as mystical and pietistic as theirs. This became the great object of his lectures, when he was appointed regius professor of scriptural interpretation at Louvain in 1630. Still more was it the object of his Augustinus, a bulky treatise on the theology of St Augustine, barely finished at the time of his death. Preparing it had been his chief occupation ever since he went back to Louvain. But Jansen, as he said, did not mean to be a school-pedant all his life; and there were moments when he dreamed political dreams. He looked forward to a time when Belgium should throw off the Spanish yoke and become an independent Catholic republic on the model of Protestant Holland. These ideas became known to his Spanish rulers, and to assuage them he wrote a philippic called the Mars gallicus (1635), a violent attack on French ambitions generally, and on Richelieu’s indifference to international Catholic interests in particular. The Mars gallicus did not do much to help Jansen’s friends in France, but it more than appeased the wrath of Madrid with Jansen himself; in 1636 he was appointed bishop of Ypres. Within two years he was cut off by a sudden illness on the 6th of May 1638; the Augustinus, the book of his life, was published posthumously in 1640.

Full details as to Jansen’s career will be found in Reuchlin’s Geschichte von Port Royal (Hamburg, 1839), vol. i. See also Jansénius by the Abbés Callawaert and Nols (Louvain, 1893).

(St C.)

JANSENISM, the religious principles laid down by Cornelius Jansen in his Augustinus. This was simply a digest of the teaching of St Augustine, drawn up with a special eye to the needs of the 17th century. In Jansen’s opinion the church was suffering from three evils. The official scholastic theology was anything but evangelical. Having set out to embody the mysteries of faith in human language, it had fallen a victim to the excellence of its own methods; language proved too strong for mystery. Theology sank into a branch of dialectic; whatever would not fit in with a logical formula was cast aside as useless. But average human nature does not take kindly to a syllogism, and theology had ceased to have any appreciable influence on popular religion. Simple souls found their spiritual pasture in little mincing “devotions”; while robuster minds built up for themselves a natural moralistic religion, quite as close to Epictetus as to Christianity. All these three evils were attacked by Jansen. As against the theologians, he urged that in a spiritual religion experience, not reason, must be our guide. As against the stoical self-sufficiency of the moralists, he dwelt on the helplessness of man and his dependence on his maker. As against the ceremonialists, he maintained that no amount of church-going will save a man, unless the love of God is in him. But this capacity for love no one can give himself. If he is born without the religious instinct, he can only receive it by going through a process of “conversion.” And whether God converts this man or that depends on his good pleasure. Thus Jansen’s theories of conversion melt into predestination; although, in doing so, they somewhat modify its grimness. Even for the worst miscreant there is hope—for who can say but that God may yet think fit to convert him? Jansen’s thoughts went back every moment to his two spiritual heroes, St Augustine and St Paul, each of whom had been “the chief of sinners.”

Such doctrines have a marked analogy to those of Calvin; but in many ways Jansen differed widely from the Protestants. He vehemently rejected their doctrine of justification by faith; conversion might be instantaneous, but it was only the beginning of a long and gradual process of justification. Secondly, although the one thing necessary in religion was a personal relation of the human soul to its maker, Jansen held that that relation was only possible in and through the Roman Church. Herein he was following Augustine, who had managed to couple together a high theory of church authority and sacramental grace with a strongly personal religion. But the circumstances of the 17th century were not those of the 5th; and Jansen landed his followers in an inextricable confusion. What were they to do, when the outward church said one thing, and the inward voice said another? Some time went by, however, before the two authorities came into open conflict. Jansen’s ideas were popularized in France by his friend Du Vergier, abbot of St Cyran; and he dwelt mainly on the practical side of the matter—on the necessity of conversion and love of God, as the basis of the religious life. This brought him into conflict with the Jesuits, whom he accused of giving absolution much too easily, without any serious inquiry into the dispositions of their penitent. His views are expounded at length by his disciple, Antoine Arnauld, in a book on Frequent Communion (1643). This book was the first manifestation of Jansenism to the general public in France, and raised a violent storm. But many divines supported Arnauld; and no official action was taken against his party till 1649. In that year the Paris University condemned five propositions from Jansen’s Augustinus, all relative to predestination. This censure, backed by the signatures of eighty-five bishops, was sent up to Rome for endorsement; and in 1653 Pope Innocent X. declared all five propositions heretical.

This decree placed the Jansenists between two fires; for although the five propositions only represented one side of Jansen’s teaching, it was recognized by both parties that the whole question was to be fought out on this issue. Under the leadership of Arnauld, who came of a great family of lawyers, the Jansenists accordingly took refuge in a series of legal tactics. Firstly, they denied that Jansen had meant the propositions in the sense condemned. Alexander VII. replied (1656) that his predecessor had condemned them in the sense intended by their author. Arnauld retorted that the church might be infallible in abstract questions of theology; but as to what was passing through an author’s mind it knew no more than any one else. However, the French government supported the pope. In 1656 Arnauld was deprived of his degree, in spite of Pascal’s Provincial Letters (1656-1657), begun in an attempt to save him (see Pascal; Casuistry). In 1661 a formulary, or solemn renunciation of Jansen, was imposed on all his suspected followers; those who would not sign it went into hiding, or to the Bastille. Peace was only restored under Clement IX. in 1669.

This peace was treated by Jansenist writers as a triumph; really it was the beginning of their downfall. They had set out to reform the Church of Rome; they ended by having to fight hard for a doubtful foothold within it. Even that foothold soon gave way. Louis XIV. was a fanatic for uniformity, civil and religious; the last thing he was likely to tolerate was a handful of eccentric recluses, who believed themselves to be in special touch with Heaven, and therefore might at any moment set their conscience up against the law. During the lifetime of his cousin, Madame de Longueville, the great protectress of the Jansenists, Louis stayed his hand; on her death (1679) the reign of severity began. That summer Arnauld, who had spent the greater part of his life in hiding, was forced to leave France for good.

Six years later he was joined in exile by Pasquier Quesnel who succeeded him as leader of the party. Long before his flight from France Quesnel had published a devotional commentary—Réflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament—which had gone through many editions without exciting official suspicion. But in 1695 Louis Antoine de Noailles, bishop of Châlons, was made archbishop of Paris. He was known to be very hostile to the Jesuits, and at Châlons had more than once expressed official approval of Quesnel’s Réflexions. So the Jesuit party determined to wreck archbishop and book at the same time. The Jansenists played into their hands by suddenly raising (1701) in the Paris divinity school the question whether it was necessary to accept the condemnation of Jansen with interior assent, or whether a “respectful silence” was enough. Very soon ecclesiastical France was in a blaze. In 1703 Louis XIV. wrote to Pope Clement XI., proposing that they should take joint action to make an end of Jansenism for ever. Clement replied in 1705 with a bull condemning respectful silence. This measure only whetted Louis’s appetite. He was growing old and increasingly superstitious; the affairs of his realm were going from bad to worse; he became frenziedly anxious to propitiate the wrath of his maker by making war on the enemies of the Church. In 1711 he asked the pope for a second, and still stronger bull, that would tear up Jansenism by the roots. The pope’s choice of a book to condemn fell on Quesnel’s Réflexions; in 1713 appeared the bull Unigenitus, anathematizing no less than one-hundred-and-one of its propositions. Indeed, in his zeal against the Jansenists the pope condemned various practices in no way peculiar to their party; thus, for instance, many orthodox Catholics were exasperated at the heavy blow he dealt at popular Bible reading. Hence the bull met with much opposition from Archbishop de Noailles and others who did not call themselves Jansenists. In the midst of the conflict Louis XIV. died (September 1715); but the freethinking duke of Orleans, who succeeded him as regent, continued after some wavering to support the bull. Thereupon four bishops appealed against it to a general council; and the country became divided into “appellants” and “acceptants” (1717). The regent’s disreputable minister, Cardinal Dubois, patched up an abortive truce in 1720, but the appellants promptly “re-appealed” against it. During the next ten years, however, they were slowly crushed, and in 1730 the Unigenitus was proclaimed part and parcel of the law of France. This led to a great quarrel with the judges, who were intensely Gallican in spirit (see Gallicanism), and had always regarded the Unigenitus as a triumph of ultramontanism. The quarrel dragged indefinitely on through the 18th century, though the questions at issue were really constitutional and political rather than religious.

Meanwhile the most ardent Jansenists had followed Quesnel to Holland. Here they met with a warm welcome from the Dutch Catholic body, which had always been in close sympathy with Jansenism, although without regarding itself as formally pledged to the Augustinus. But it had broken loose from Rome in 1702, and was now organizing itself into an independent church (see Utrecht). The Jansenists who remained in France had meanwhile fallen on evil days. Persecution usually begets hysteria in its victims; and the more extravagant members of the party were far advanced on the road which leads to apocalyptic prophecy and “speaking with tongues.” About 1728 the “miracles of St Médard” became the talk of Paris. This was the cemetery where was buried François de Pâris, a young Jansenist deacon of singularly holy life, and a perfervid opponent of the Unigenitus. All sorts of miraculous cures were believed to have been worked at his tomb, until the government closed the cemetery in 1732. This gave rise to the famous epigram:

De par le roi, défense à Dieu

De faire miracle en ce lieu.

On the miracles soon followed the rise of the so-called Convulsionaries. These worked themselves up, mainly by the use of frightful self-tortures, into a state of frenzy, in which they prophesied and cured diseases. They were eventually disowned by the more reputable Jansenists, and were severely repressed by the police. But in 1772 they were still important enough for Diderot to enter the field against them. Meanwhile genuine Jansenism survived in many country parsonages and convents, and led to frequent quarrels with the authorities. Only one of its latter-day disciples, however, rose to real eminence; this was the Abbé Henri Grégoire, who played a considerable part in the French Revolution. A few small Jansenist congregations still survive in France; and others have been started in connexion with the Old Catholic Church in Holland.

Literature.—For the 17th century see the Port Royal of Sainte-Beuve (5th ed., Paris, 1888) in six volumes. See also H. Reuchlin, Geschichte von Port Royal (2 vols., Hamburg, 1839-1844), and C. Beard, Port Royal (2 vols., London, 1861). No satisfactory Roman Catholic history of the subject exists, though reference may be made to Count Joseph de Maistre’s De l’église gallicane (last ed., Lyons, 1881). On the Jansenism of the 18th century no single work exists, though much information will be found in the Gallican Church of Canon Jervis (2 vols., London, 1872). For a series of excellent sketches see also Seche, Les Derniers Jansénistes (3 vols., Paris, 1891). A more detailed list of books bearing on the subject will be found in the 5th volume of the Cambridge Modern History; and J. Paquier’s Le Jansénisme (Paris, 1909) may also be consulted.

(St C.)

JANSSEN, or Jansen (sometimes Johnson), CORNELIUS (1593-1664), Flemish painter, was apparently born in London, and baptized on the 14th of October 1593. There seems no reason to suppose, as was formerly stated, that he was born at Amsterdam. He worked in England from 1618 to 1643, and afterwards retired to Holland, working at Middelburg, Amsterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, and dying at one of the last two places about 1664. In England he was patronized by James I. and the court, and under Charles I. he continued to paint the numerous portraits which adorn many English mansions and collections. Janssen’s pictures, chiefly portraits, are distinguished by clear colouring, delicate touch, good taste and careful finish. He generally painted upon panel, and often worked on a small scale, sometimes producing replicas of his larger works. A characteristic of his style is the very dark background, which throws the carnations of his portraits into rounded relief. In all probability his earliest portrait (1618) was that of John Milton as a boy of ten.

JANSSEN, JOHANNES (1820-1891), German historian, was born at Xanten on the 10th of April 1829, and was educated as a Roman Catholic at Münster, Louvain, Bonn and Berlin, afterwards becoming a teacher of history at Frankfort-on-the-Main. He was ordained priest in 1860; became a member of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies in 1875; and in 1880 was made domestic prelate to the pope and apostolic pronotary. He died at Frankfort on the 24th of December 1891. Janssen was a stout champion of the Ultramontane party in the Roman Catholic Church. His great work is his Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters (8 vols., Freiburg, 1878-1894). In this book he shows himself very hostile to the Reformation, and attempts to prove that the Protestants were responsible for the general unrest in Germany during the 16th and 17th centuries. The author’s partisanship led to some controversy, and Janssen wrote An meine Kritiker (Freiburg, 1882) and Ein zweites Wort an meine Kritiker (Freiburg, 1883) in reply to the Janssens Geschichte des deutschen Volkes (Munich, 1883) of M. Lenz, and other criticisms.

The Geschichte, which has passed through numerous editions, has been continued and improved by Ludwig Pastor, and the greater part of it has been translated into English by M. A. Mitchell and A. M. Christie (London, 1896, fol.). Of his other works perhaps the most important are: the editing of Frankfurts Reichskorrespondenz, 1376-1519 (Freiburg, 1863-1872); and of the Leben, Briefe und kleinere Schriften of his friend J. F. Böhmer (Leipzig, 1868); a monograph, Schiller als Historiker (Freiburg, 1863); and Zeit- und Lebensbilder (Freiburg, 1875).

See L. Pastor, Johannes Janssen (Freiburg, 1893); F. Meister, Erinnerung an Johannes Janssen (Frankfort, 1896); Schwann, Johannes Janssen und die Geschichte der deutschen Reformation (Munich, 1892).

JANSSEN, PIERRE JULES CÉSAR (1824-1907), French astronomer, was born in Paris on the 22nd of February 1824, and studied mathematics and physics at the faculty of sciences. He taught at the lycée Charlemagne in 1853, and in the school of architecture 1865-1871, but his energies were mainly devoted to various scientific missions entrusted to him. Thus in 1857 he went to Peru in order to determine the magnetic equator; in 1861-1862 and 1864, he studied telluric absorption in the solar spectrum in Italy and Switzerland; in 1867 he carried out optical and magnetic experiments at the Azores; he successfully observed both transits of Venus, that of 1874 in Japan, that of 1882 at Oran in Algeria; and he took part in a long series of solar eclipse-expeditions, e.g. to Trani (1867), Guntoor (1868), Algiers (1870), Siam (1875), the Caroline Islands (1883), and to Alcosebre in Spain (1905). To see the eclipse of 1870 he escaped from besieged Paris in a balloon. At the great Indian eclipse of 1868 he demonstrated the gaseous nature of the red prominences, and devised a method of observing them under ordinary daylight conditions. One main purpose of his spectroscopic inquiries was to answer the question whether the sun contains oxygen or not. An indispensable preliminary was the virtual elimination of oxygen-absorption in the earth’s atmosphere, and his bold project of establishing an observatory on the top of Mont Blanc was prompted by a perception of the advantages to be gained by reducing the thickness of air through which observations have to be made. This observatory, the foundations of which were fixed in the snow that appears to cover the summit to a depth of ten metres, was built in September 1893, and Janssen, in spite of his sixty-nine years, made the ascent and spent four days taking observations. In 1875 he was appointed director of the new astrophysical observatory established by the French government at Meudon, and set on foot there in 1876 the remarkable series of solar photographs collected in his great Atlas de photographies solaires (1904). The first volume of the Annales de l’observatoire de Meudon was published by him in 1896. He died at Paris on the 23rd of December 1907.

See A. M. Clerke, Hist. of Astr. during the 19th Century (1903); H. Macpherson, Astronomers of To-Day (1905).

JANSSENS (or Jansens), VICTOR HONORIUS (1664-1739), Flemish painter, was born at Brussels. After seven years in the studio of an obscure painter named Volders, he spent four years in the household of the duke of Holstein. The next eleven years Janssens passed in Rome, where he took eager advantage of all the aids to artistic study, and formed an intimacy with Tempesta, in whose landscapes he frequently inserted figures. Rising into popularity, he painted a large number of cabinet historical scenes; but, on his return to Brussels, the claims of his increasing family restricted him almost entirely to the larger and more lucrative size of picture, of which very many of the churches and palaces of the Netherlands contain examples. In 1718 Janssens was invited to Vienna, where he stayed three years, and was made painter to the emperor. The statement that he visited England is based only upon the fact that certain fashionable interiors of the time in that country have been attributed to him. Janssen’s colouring was good, his touch delicate and his taste refined.

JANSSENS (or Jansens) VAN NUYSSEN, ABRAHAM (1567-1632), Flemish painter, was born at Antwerp in 1567. He studied under Jan Snellinck, was a “master” in 1602, and in 1607 was dean of the master-painters. Till the appearance of Rubens he was considered perhaps the best historical painter of his time. The styles of the two artists are not unlike. In correctness of drawing Janssens excelled his great contemporary; in bold composition and in treatment of the nude he equalled him; but in faculty of colour and in general freedom of disposition and touch he fell far short. A master of chiaroscuro, he gratified his taste for strong contrasts of light and shade in his torchlights and similar effects. Good examples of this master are to be seen in the Antwerp museum and the Vienna gallery. The stories of his jealousy of Rubens and of his dissolute life are quite unfounded. He died at Antwerp in 1632.

JANUARIUS, ST, or San Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples. According to the legend, he was bishop of Benevento, and flourished towards the close of the 3rd century. On the outbreak of the persecution by Diocletian and Maximian, he was taken to Nola and brought before Timotheus, governor of Campania, on account of his profession of the Christian religion. After various assaults upon his constancy, he was sentenced to be cast into the fiery furnace, through which he passed wholly unharmed. On the following day, along with a number of fellow martyrs, he was exposed to the fury of wild beasts, which, however, laid themselves down in tame submission at his feet. Timotheus, again pronouncing sentence of death, was struck with blindness, but immediately healed by the powerful intercession of the saint, a miracle which converted nearly five thousand men on the spot. The ungrateful judge, only roused to further fury by these occurrences, caused the execution of Januarius by the sword to be forthwith carried out. The body was ultimately removed by the inhabitants of Naples to that city, where the relic became very famous for its miracles, especially in counteracting the more dangerous eruptions of Vesuvius. Whatever the difficulties raised by his Acta, the cult of St Januarius, bishop and martyr, is attested historically at Naples as early as the 5th century (Biblioth. hagiog. latina, No. 6558). Two phials preserved in the cathedral are believed to contain the blood of the martyr. The relic is shown twice a year—in May and September. On these occasions the substance contained in the phial liquefies, and the Neapolitans see in this phenomenon a supernatural manifestation. The “miracle of St Januarius” did not occur before the middle of the 15th century.

A great number of saints of the name of Januarius are mentioned in the martyrologies. The best-known are the Roman martyr (festival, the 10th of July), whose epitaph was written by Pope Damasus (De Rossi, Bullettino, p. 17, 1863), and the martyr of Cordova, who forms along with Faustus and Martialis the group designated by Prudentius (Peristephanon, iv. 20) by the name of tres coronae. The festival of these martyrs is celebrated on the 13th of October.

See Acta sanctorum, September, vi. 761-891; G. Scherillo, Esame di un codice greco pubblicato nel tomo secondo della bibliotheca casinensis (Naples, 1876); G. Taglialatela, Memorie storico-critiche del culto del sangue di S. Gennaro (Naples, 1893), which contains many facts, but little criticism; G. Albini, Sulla mobilità dei liquidi viscosi non omogenei (Società reale di Napoli, Rendiconti, 2nd series, vol. iv., 1890); Acta sanctorum, October, vi. 187-193.

(H. De.)

JANUARY, the first month in the modern calendar, consisting of thirty-one days. The name (Lat. Januarius) is derived from the two-faced Roman god Janus, to whom the month was dedicated. As doorkeeper of heaven, as looking both into the past and the future, and as being essentially the deity who busied himself with the beginnings of all enterprises, he was appropriately made guardian of the fortunes of the new year. The consecration of the month took place by an offering of meal, salt, frankincense and wine, each of which was new. The Anglo-Saxons called January Wulfmonath, in allusion to the fact that hunger then made the wolves bold enough to come into the villages. The principal festivals of the month are: New Year’s Day; Feast of the Circumcision; Epiphany; Twelfth-Day; and Conversion of St Paul (see Calendar).

JANUS, in Roman mythology one of the principal Italian deities. The name is generally explained as the masculine form of Diana (Jana), and Janus as originally a god of light and day, who gradually became the god of the beginning and origin of all things. According to some, however, he is simply the god of doorways (januae) and in this connexion is the patron of all entrances and beginnings. According to Mommsen, he was “the spirit of opening,” and the double-head was connected with the gate that opened both ways. Others, attributing to him an Etruscan origin, regard him as the god of the vault of heaven, which the Etruscan arch is supposed to resemble. The rationalists explained him as an old king of Latium, who built a citadel for himself on the Janiculum. It was believed that his worship, which was said to have existed as a local cult before the foundation of Rome, was introduced there by Romulus, and that a temple was dedicated to him by Numa. This temple, in reality only an arch or gateway (Janus geminus) facing east and west, stood at the north-east end of the forum. It was open during war and closed during peace (Livy i. 19); it was shut only four times before the Christian era. A possible explanation is, that it was considered a bad omen to shut the city gates while the citizens were outside fighting for the state; it was necessary that they should have free access to the city, whether they returned victorious or defeated. Similarly, the door of a private house was kept open while the members of the family were away, but when all were at home it was closed to keep out intruders. There was also a temple of Janus near the theatre of Marcellus, in the forum olitorium, erected by Gaius Duilius (Tacitus, Ann. ii. 49), if not earlier.

The beginning of the day (hence his epithet Matutinus), of the month, and of the year (January) was sacred to Janus; on the 9th of January the festival called Agonia was celebrated in his honour. He was invoked before any other god at the beginning of any important undertaking; his priest was the Rex Sacrorum, the representative of the ancient king in his capacity as religious head of the state. All gateways, housedoors and entrances generally, were under his protection; he was the inventor of agriculture (hence Consivius, “he who sows or plants”), of civil laws, of the coining of money and of religious worship. He was worshipped on the Janiculum as the protector of trade and shipping; his head is found on the as, together with the prow of a ship. He is usually represented on the earliest coins with two bearded faces, looking in opposite directions; in the time of Hadrian the number of faces is increased to four. In his capacity as porter or doorkeeper he holds a staff in his right hand, and a key (or keys) in his left; as such he is called Patulcius (opener) and Clusius (closer). His titles Curiatius, Patricius, Quirinus originate in his worship in the gentes, the curiae and the state, and have no reference to any special functions or characteristics. In late times, he is both bearded and unbearded; in place of the staff and keys, the fingers of his right hand show the number 300 (CCC.), those of his left the number of the remaining days of the year (LXV.). According to A. B. Cook (Classical Review, xviii. 367), Janus is only another form of Jupiter, the name under which he was worshipped by the pre-Latin (aboriginal) inhabitants of Rome; after their conquest by the Italians, Janus and Jana took their place as independent divinities by the side of the Italian Jupiter and Juno. He considers it probable that the three-headed Janus was a triple oak-god worshipped in the form of two vertical beams and a cross-bar (such as the tigillum sororium, for which see Horatii); hence also the door, consisting of two lintels and side-posts, was sacred to Janus. The three-headed type may have been the original, from which the two-headed and four-headed types were developed. J. G. Frazer (The Early History of the Kingship, pp. 214, 285), who also identifies Janus with Jupiter, is of opinion that Janus was not originally a doorkeeper, but that the door was called after him, not vice versa. Janua may be an adjective, janua foris meaning a door with a symbol of Janus close by the chief entrance, to serve as a protection for the house; then janua alone came to mean a door generally, with or without the symbol of Janus. The double head may have been due to the desire to make the god look both ways for greater protection. By J. Rhys (Hibbert Lectures, 1886, pp. 82, 94) Janus is identified with the three-faced (sometimes three-headed) Celtic god Cernunnus, a chthonian divinity, compared by Rhys with the Teutonic Heimdal, the warder of the gods of the under-world; like Janus, Cernunnus and Heimdal were considered to be the fons et origo of all things.

See S. Linde, De Jano summo romanorum deo (Lund, 1891); J. S. Speÿer, “Le Dieu romain Janus,” in Revue de l’histoire des religions (xxvi., 1892); G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer (1902); W. Deecke, Etruskische Forschungen, vol. ii.; W. Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic (1899), pp. 282-290; articles in W. H. Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie and Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des Antiquités; J. Toutain, Études de Mythologie (1909). On other jani (arched passages) in Rome, frequented by business men and money changers, see O. Richter, Topographie der Stadt Rom (1901).

(J. H. F.)

JAORA, a native state of Central India, in the Malwa agency. It consists of two isolated tracts, between Ratlam and Neemuch Area, with the dependencies of Piplauda and Pant Piplauda, 568 sq. m. Pop. (1901), 84,202. The estimated revenue is £57,000; tribute, £9000. The chief, whose title is nawab, is a Mahommedan of Afghan descent. The state was confirmed by the British government in 1818 by the Treaty of Mandsaur. Nawab Mahommed Ismail, who died in 1895, was an honorary major in the British army. His son, Iftikhar Ali Khan, a minor at his accession, was educated in the Daly College at Indore, with a British officer for his tutor, and received powers of administration in 1906. The chief crops are millets, cotton, maize and poppy. The last supplies a large part of the Malwa opium of commerce. The town of Jaora is on the Rajputana-Malwa railway, 20 m. N. of Ratlam. Pop. (1901), 23,854. It is well laid out, with many good modern buildings, and has a high school and dispensary. To celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, the Victoria Institute and a zenana dispensary were opened in 1898.

JAPAN, an empire of eastern Asia, and one of the great powers of the world. The following article is divided for convenience into ten sections:—I. Geography; II. The People; III. Language and Literature; IV. Art; V. Economic Conditions; VI. Government and Administration; VII. Religion; VIII. Foreign Intercourse; IX. Domestic History; X. The Claim of Japan.

I.—Geography

The continent of Asia stretches two arms into the Pacific Ocean, Kamchatka in the north and Malacca in the south, between which lies a long cluster of islands constituting the Japanese empire, which covers 37° 14′ of longitude and 29° 11′ of latitude. On the extreme north are the Kuriles (called by the Japanese Chishima, or the “myriad isles”), which extend to 156° 32′ E. and to 50° 56′ N.; on the extreme south is Formosa (called by the Japanese Taiwan), which extends to 122° 6′ E., and to 21° 45′ N. There are six large islands, namely Sakhalin (called by the Japanese Karafuto); Yezo or Ezo (which with the Kuriles is designated Hokkaidō, or the north-sea district); Nippon (the “origin of the sun”), which is the main island; Shikoku (the “four provinces”), which lies on the east of Nippon; Kiūshiū or Kyushu (the “nine provinces”), which lies on the south of Nippon, and Formosa, which forms the most southerly link of the chain. Formosa and the Pescadores were ceded to Japan by China after the war of 1894-1895, and the southern half of Sakhalin—the part south of 50° N.—was added to Japan by cession from Russia in 1905. Korea, annexed in August 1910, is separately noticed.

Coast-line.—The following table shows the numbers, the lengths of coast-line, and the areas of the various groups of islands, only those being indicated that have a coast-line of at least 1 ri (2½ m.), or that, though smaller, are inhabited; except in the case of Formosa and the Pescadores, where the whole numbers are given:—

Number. Length of
coast in
miles. Area
in square
miles.

Nippon 1 4,765.03 99,373.57

Isles adjacent to Nippon 167 1,275.09 470.30

Shikoku 1 1,100.85 6,461.39

Isles adjacent to Shikoku 75 548.12 175.40

Kiūshiū 1 2,101.28 13,778.68

Isles adjacent to Kiūshiū 150 2,405.06 1,821.85

Yezo 1 1,423.32 30,148.41

Isles adjacent to Yezo 13 110.24 30.51

Sakhalin (Karafuto) 1 Unsurveyed 12,487.64

Sado 1 130.05 335.92

Okishima 1 182.27 130.40

Isles adjacent to Okishima 1 3.09 0.06

Awaji 1 94.43 217.83

Isles adjacent to Awaji 1 5.32 0.83

Iki 1 86.47 50.96

Isles adjacent to Iki 1 4.41 0.47

Tsushima 1 409.23 261.72

Isles adjacent to Tsushima 5 118.80 4.58

Riūkiū (or Luchu) Islands 55 768.74 935.18

Kuriles (Chishima) 31 1,496.23 6,159.42

Bonin (Ogasawara Islands) 20 174.65 26.82

Taiwan (Formosa) 1 731.31 13,429.31

Isles adjacent to Formosa 7 128.32 Not surveyed

Pescadores (Hoko-tō) 12 98.67 85.50

Totals 549 18,160.98 173,786.75

If the various smaller islands be included, a total of over 3000 is reached, but there has not been any absolutely accurate enumeration.

(Click to enlarge left section.)
(Click to enlarge right section.)

It will be observed that the coast-line is very long in proportion to the area, the ratio being 1 m. of coast to every 9.5 in. of area. The Pacific Ocean, which washes the eastern shores, moulds their outline into much greater diversity than does the Sea of Japan which washes the western shores. Thus the Pacific sea-board measures 10,562 m. against 2887 m. for that of the Japan Sea. In depth of water, too, the advantage is on the Pacific side. There the bottom slopes very abruptly, descending precipitously at a point not far from the north-east coast of the main island, where soundings have shown 4655 fathoms. This, the deepest sea-bed in the world, is called the Tuscarora Deep, after the name of the United States’ man-of-war which made the survey. The configuration seems to point to a colossal crater under the ocean, and many of the earthquakes which visit Japan appear to have their origin in this submarine region. On the other hand, the average depth of the Japan Sea is only 1200 fathoms, and its maximum depth is 3200. The east coast, from Cape Shiriya (Shiriyazaki) in the north to Cape Inuboye (Inuboesaki) near Tōkyō Bay, though abounding in small indentations, has only two large bays, those of Sendai and Matsushima; but southward from Tōkyō Bay to Cape Satta (Satanomisaki) in Kiūshiū there are many capacious inlets which offer excellent anchorage, as the Gulf of Sagami (Sagaminada), the Bays of Suruga (Surugawan), Ise (Isenumi) and Osaka, the Kii Channel, the Gulf of Tosa (Tosonada), &c. Opening into both the Pacific and the Sea of Japan and separating Shikoku and Kiūshiū from the main island as well as from each other, is the celebrated Inland Sea, one of the most picturesque sheets of water in the world. Its surface measures 1325 sq. m.; it has a length of 255 m. and a maximum width of 56 m.; its coast-lines aggregate 700 m.; its depth is nowhere more than 65 fathoms, and it is studded with islands which present scenery of the most diverse and beautiful character. There are four narrow avenues connecting this remarkable body of water with the Pacific and the Japan Sea; that on the west, called Shimonoseki Strait, has a width of 3000 yds., that on the south, known as Hayamoto Strait, is 8 m. across; and the two on the north, Yura and Naruto Straits, measure 3000 and 1500 yds. respectively. It need scarcely be said that these restricted approaches give little access to the storms which disturb the seas outside. More broken into bays and inlets than any other part of the coast is the western shore of Kiūshiū. Here three promontories—Nomo, Shimabara and Kizaki—enclose a large bay having on its shores Nagasaki, the great naval port of Sasebo, and other anchorages. On the south of Kiūshiū the Bay of Kagoshima has historical interest, and on the west are the bays of Ariakeno-ura and Yatsushiro. To the north of Nagasaki are the bays of Hakata, Karatsu and Imari. Between this coast and the southern extremity of the Korean peninsula are situated the islands of Iki and Tsushima, the latter being only 30 m. distant from the peninsula. Passing farther north, the shoreline of the main island along the Japan Sea is found to be comparatively straight and monotonous, there being only one noteworthy indentation, that of Wakasa-wan, where are situated the naval port of Maizuru and the harbour of Tsuruga, the Japanese point of communication with the Vladivostok terminus of the Trans-Asian railway. From this harbour to Osaka Japan’s waist measures only 77 m., and as the great lake of Biwa and some minor sheets of water break the interval, a canal may be dug to join the Pacific and the Sea of Japan. Yezo is not rich in anchorages. Uchiura (Volcano Bay), Nemuro (Walfisch) Bay and Ishikari Bay are the only remarkable inlets. As for Formosa, the peculiarity of its outline is that the eastern coast falls precipitously into deep water, while the western slopes slowly to shelving bottoms and shoals. The Pescadores Islands afford the best anchorage in this part of Japan.

Mountains.—The Japanese islands are traversed from north to south by a range of mountains which sends out various lateral branches. Lofty summits are separated by comparatively low passes, which lie at the level of crystalline rocks and schists constituting the original uplands upon which the summits have been piled by volcanic action. The scenery among the mountains is generally soft. Climatic agencies have smoothed and modified everything rugged or abrupt, until an impression of gentle undulation rather than of grandeur is suggested. Nowhere is the region of eternal snow reached, and masses of foliage enhance the gentle aspect of the scenery and glorify it in autumn with tints of striking brilliancy. Mountain alternates with valley, so that not more than one-eighth of the country’s entire area is cultivable.

The king of Japanese mountains is Fuji-yama or Fuji-san (peerless mount), of which the highest point (Ken-ga-mine) is 12,395 ft. above sea-level. The remarkable grace of this mountain’s curve—an inverted catenary—makes it one of the most beautiful in the world, and has obtained for it a prominent place in Japanese decorative art. Great streams of lava flowed from the crater in ancient times. The course of one is still visible to a distance of 15 m. from the summit, but the rest are covered, for the most part, with deep deposits of ashes and scoriae. On the south Fuji slopes unbroken to the sea, but on the other three sides the plain from which it rises is surrounded by mountains, among which, on the north and west, a series of most picturesque lakes has been formed in consequence of the rivers having been dammed by ashes ejected from Fuji’s crater. To a height of some 1500 ft. the slopes of the mountain are cultivated; a grassy moorland stretches up the next 2500 ft.; then follows a forest, the upper edge of which climbs to an altitude of nearly 8000 ft., and finally there is a wide area of ashes and scoriae. There is entire absence of the Alpine plants found abundantly on the summits of other high mountains in Japan, a fact due, doubtless, to the comparatively recent activity of the volcano. The ascent of Fuji presents no difficulties. A traveller can reach the usual point of departure, Gotemba, by rail from Yokohama, and thence the ascent and descent may be made in one day by a pedestrian.

The provinces of Hida and Etchiu are bounded on the east by a chain of mountains including, or having in their immediate vicinity, the highest peaks in Japan after Fuji. Six of these summits rise to a height of 9000 ft. or upwards, and constitute the most imposing assemblage of mountains in the country. The ridge runs due north and south through 60 to 70 m., and has a width of 5 to 10 m. It is mostly of granite, only two of the mountains—Norikura and Tateyama—showing clear traces of volcanic origin. Its lower flanks are clothed with forests of beech, conifers and oak. Farther south, in the same range, stands Ontake (10,450 ft.), the second highest mountain in Japan proper (as distinguished from Formosa); and other remarkable though not so lofty peaks mark the same regions. This grand group of mountains has been well called the “Alps of Japan,” and a good account of them may be found in The Japanese Alps (1896) by the Rev. W. Weston. On the summit of Ontake are eight large and several small craters, and there also may be seen displays of trance and “divine possession,” such as are described by Mr Percival Lowell in Occult Japan (1895).

Even more picturesque, though less lofty, than the Alps of Japan, are the Nikko mountains, enclosing the mausolea of the two greatest of the Tokugawa shōguns. The highest of these are Shirane-san (7422 ft.), Nantai-san (8169 ft.), Nyohô-zan (8100 ft.), and Omanago (7546 ft.). They are clothed with magnificent vegetation, and everywhere they echo the voices of waterfalls and rivulets.

In the north of the main island there are no peaks of remarkable height. The best known are Chiokai-zan, called “Akita-Fuji” (the Fuji of the Akita province), a volcano 7077 ft. high, which was active as late as 1861; Ganju-san (6791 ft.), called also “Nambu-Fuji” or Iwate-zan, remarkable for the beauty of its logarithmic curves; Iwaki-san (5230 ft.), known as Tsugaru-Fuji, and said by some to be even more imposing than Fuji itself; and the twin mountains Gassan (6447 ft.) and Haguro-san (5600 ft.). A little farther south, enclosing the fertile plain of Aizu (Aizu-taira, as it is called) several important peaks are found, among them being Iide-san (6332 ft.); Azuma-yama (7733 ft.), which, after a long interval of quiescence, has given many evidences of volcanic activity during recent years; Nasu-dake (6296 ft.), an active volcano; and Bandai-san (6037 ft.). A terrible interest attaches to the last-named mountain, for, after having remained quiet so long as to lull the inhabitants of the neighbouring district into complete security, it suddenly burst into fierce activity on the 15th of July 1888, discharging a vast avalanche of earth and rock, which dashed down its slopes like an inundation, burying four hamlets, partially destroying seven villages, killing 461 people and devastating an area of 27 sq. m.

In the province of Kōzuke, which belongs to the central part of the main island, the noteworthy mountains are Asama-yama (8136 ft.), one of the best known and most violently active volcanoes of Japan; Akagi-san, a circular range of peaks surrounding the basin of an old crater and rising to a height of 6210 ft.; the Haruna group, celebrated for scenic beauties, and Myogi-san, a cluster of pinnacles which, though not rising higher than 3880 ft., offer scenery which dispels the delusion that nature as represented in the classical pictures (bunjingwa) of China and Japan exists only in the artist’s imagination. Farther south, in the province of Kai (Kōshiu), and separating two great rivers, the Fuji-kawa and the Tenriu-gawa, there lies a range of hills with peaks second only to those of the Japanese Alps spoken of above. The principal elevations in this range are Shirane-san—with three summits, Nōdori (9970 ft.), Ai-no-take (10,200 ft.) and Kaigane (10,330 ft.)—and Hōōzan (9550 ft.). It will be observed that all the highest mountains of Japan form a species of belt across the widest part of the main island, beginning on the west with the Alps of Etchiu, Hida and Shinano, and ending on the east with Fuji-yama. In all the regions of the main island southward of this belt the only mountains of conspicuous altitude are Omine (6169 ft.) and Odai-gaharazan (5540 ft.) in Yamato and Daisen or Oyama (5951 ft.) in Hōki.

The island of Shikoku has no mountains of notable magnitude. The highest is Ishizuchi-zan (7727 ft.), but there are several peaks varying from 3000 to 6000 ft.

Kiūshiū, though abounding in mountain chains, independent or connected, is not remarkable for lofty peaks. In the neighbourhood of Nagasaki, over the celebrated solfataras of Unzen-take (called also Onsen) stands an extinct volcano, whose summit, Fugen-dake, is 4865 ft. high. More notable is Aso-take, some 20 m. from Kumamoto; for, though the highest of its five peaks has an altitude of only 5545 ft., it boasts the largest crater in the world, with walls nearly 2000 ft. high and a basin from 10 to 14 m. in diameter. Aso-take is still an active volcano, but its eruptions during recent years have been confined to ashes and dust. Only two other mountains in Kiūshiū need be mentioned—a volcano (3743 ft.) on the island Sakura-jima, in the extreme south; and Kirishima-yama (5538 ft.), on the boundary of Hiūga, a mountain specially sacred in Japanese eyes, because on its eastern peak (Takachiho-dake) the god Ninigi descended as the forerunner of the first Japanese sovereign, Jimmu.

Among the mountains of Japan there are three volcanic ranges, namely, that of the Kuriles, that of Fuji, and that of Kirishima. Fuji is the most remarkable volcanic peak. The Japanese regard it as a sacred mountain, and numbers of pilgrims make the ascent in midsummer. From 500 to 600 ft. is supposed to be the depth of the crater. There are neither sulphuric exhalations nor escapes of steam at present, and it would seem that this great volcano is permanently extinct. But experience in other parts of Japan shows that a long quiescent crater may at any moment burst into disastrous activity. Within the period of Japan’s written history several eruptions are recorded the last having been in 1707, when the whole summit burst into flame, rocks were shattered, ashes fell to a depth of several inches even in Yedo (Tōkyō), 60 m. distant, and the crater poured forth streams of lava. Among still active volcanoes the following are the best known:—

Name of Volcano.
Height in feet. Remarks.

Tarumai (Yezo) 2969.

Forms southern wall of a large ancient crater now occupied by a lake (Shikotsu). A little steam still issues from several smaller cones on the summit of the ridge, as well as from one, called Eniwa, on the northern side.

Noboribetsu (Yezo)
1148.

In a state of continuous activity, with frequent detonations and rumblings. The crater is divided by a wooded rock-wall. The northern part is occupied by a steaming lake, while the southern part contains numerous solfataras and boiling springs.

Komagatake (Yezo)
3822.

The ancient crater-wall, with a lofty pinnacle on the western side, contains a low new cone with numerous steaming rifts and vents. In a serious eruption in 1856 the S.E. flank of the mountain and the country side in that direction were denuded of trees.

Esan 2067.

A volcano-promontory at the Pacific end of the Tsugaru Strait: a finely formed cone surrounded on three sides by the sea, the crater breached on the land side. The central vent displays considerable activity, while the rocky walls are stained with red, yellow and white deposits from numerous minor vents.

Agatsuma (Iwaki)
5230.

Erupted in 1903 and killed two geologists.

Bandai-san (Iwashiro)
6037.

Erupted in 1888 after a long period of quiescence. The outbreak was preceded by an earthquake of some severity, after which about 20 explosions took place. A huge avalanche of earth and rocks buried the Nagase Valley with its villages and inhabitants, and devastated an area of over 27 sq. m. The number of lives lost was 461; four hamlets were completely entombed with their inhabitants and cattle; seven villages were partially wrecked; forests were levelled or the trees entirely denuded of bark; rivers were blocked up, and lakes were formed. The lip of the fracture is now marked by a line of steaming vents.

Azuma-yama (Fukushima)
7733.

Long considered extinct, but has erupted several times since 1893, the last explosion having been in 1900, when 82 sulphur-diggers were killed or injured; ashes were thrown to a distance of 5 m., accumulating in places to a depth of 5 ft.; and a crater 300 ft. in diameter, and as many in depth, was formed on the E. side of the mountain. This crater is still active. The summit-crater is occupied by a beautiful lake. On the Fukushima (E.) side of the volcano rises a large parasitic cone, extinct.

Nasu (Tochigi) 6296.

Has both a summit and a lateral crater, which are apparently connected and perpetually emitting steam. At or about the main vents are numerous solfataras. The whole of the upper part of the cone consists of grey highly acidic lava. At the base is a thermal spring, where baths have existed since the 7th century.

Shirane (Nikko) 7422.

The only remaining active vent of the once highly volcanic Nikko district. Eruption in 1889.

Shirane (Kai) 10,330.

Eruption in 1905, when the main crater was enlarged to a length of 3000 ft. It is divided into three parts, separated by walls, and each containing a lake, of which the middle one emits steam and the two others are cold. The central lake, during the periods of eruption (which are frequent), displays a geyser-like activity. These lakes contain free sulphuric acid, mixed with iron and alum.

Unzen (Hizen) 4865.

A triple-peaked volcano in the solfatara stage, extinct at the summit, but displaying considerable activity at its base in the form of numerous fumaroles and boiling sulphur springs.

Aso-take (Higo) 5545.

Remarkable for the largest crater in the world. It measures 10 m. by 15, and rises almost symmetrically to a height of about 2000 ft., with only one break through which the river Shira flows. The centre is occupied by a mass of peaks, on the W. flank of which lies the modern active crater. Two of the five compartments into which it is divided by walls of deeply striated volcanic ash are constantly emitting steam, while a new vent displaying great activity has been opened at the base of the cone on the south side. Eruptions have been recorded since the earliest days of Japanese history. In 1884 the ejected dust and ashes devastated farmlands through large areas. An outbreak in 1894 produced numerous rifts in the inner walls from which steam and smoke have issued ever since.

Kaimon (Kagoshima Bay)
3041.

One of the most beautiful volcanoes of Japan, known as the Satsuma-Fuji. The symmetry of the cone is marred by a convexity on the seaward (S.) side. This volcano is all but extinct.

Sakura-jima
(Kagomshima Bay)
3743.

An island-volcano, with several parasitic cones (extinct), on the N. and E. sides. At the summit are two deep craters, the southern of which emits steam. Grass grows, however, to the very edges of the crater. The island is celebrated for thermal springs, oranges and daikon (radishes), which sometimes grow to a weight of 70 ℔.

Kiri-shima
(Kagoshima Bay)
5538.

A volcanic range of which Takachiho, the only active cone, forms the terminal (S.E.) peak. The crater, situated on the S.W. side of the volcano, lies some 500 ft. below the summit-peak. It is of remarkably regular formation, and the floor is pierced by a number of huge fumaroles whence issue immense volumes of steam.

Izuno Oshima (Vries
Island) (Izu) 2461.

The volcano on this island is called Mihara. There is a double crater, the outer being almost complete. The diameter of the outer crater, within which rises the modern cone to a height of 500 ft. above the surrounding floor, is about 2 m.; while the present crater, which displays incessant activity, has itself a diameter of ¼ m.

Asama (Ise) 8136.

The largest active volcano in Japan. An eruption in 1783, with a deluge of lava, destroyed an extensive forest and overwhelmed several villages. The present cone is the third, portions of two concentric crater rings remaining. The present crater is remarkable for the absolute perpendicularity of its walls, and has an immense depth—from 600 to 800 ft. It is circular, ¾ m. in circumference, with sides honeycombed and burned to a red hue.

Some of the above information is based upon Mr. C. E. Bruce-Mitford’s valuable work (see Geog. Jour., Feb. 1908, &c.).

Earthquakes.—Japan is subject to marked displays of seismic violence. One steadily exercised influence is constantly at work, for the shores bordering the Pacific Ocean are slowly though appreciably rising, while on the side of the Japan Sea a corresponding subsidence is taking place. Japan also experiences a vast number of petty vibrations not perceptible without the aid of delicate instruments. But of earthquakes proper, large or small, she has an exceptional abundance. Thus in the thirteen years ending in 1897—that is to say, the first period when really scientific apparatus for recording purposes was available—she was visited by no fewer than 17,750 shocks, being an average of something over 3½ daily. The frequency of these phenomena is in some degree a source of security, for the minor vibrations are believed to exercise a binding effect by removing weak cleavages. Nevertheless the annals show that during the three centuries before 1897 there were 108 earthquakes sufficiently disastrous to merit historical mention. If the calculation be carried farther back—as has been done by the seismic disaster investigation committee of Japan, a body of scientists constantly engaged in studying these phenomena under government auspices,—it is found that, since the country’s history began to be written in the 8th century A.D., there have been 2006 major disturbances; but inasmuch as 1489 of these occurred before the beginning of the Tokugawa administration (early in the 17th century, and therefore in an era when methods of recording were comparatively defective), exact details are naturally lacking. The story, so far as it is known, may be gathered from the following table:—

Date A.D. Region. Houses
destroyed. Deaths.

684 Southern part of Tosa — — (1)

869 Mutsu — — (2)

1361 Kiōto — —

1498 Tōkaidō — 2,000(3)

1569 Bungo — 700

1596 Kiōto — 2,000

1605 (31/1) Pacific Coast — 5,000

1611 (27/9) Aizu — 3,700

1614 (2/12) Pacific Coast (N.E.) — 1,700

1662 (16/6) Kiōto 5,500 500

1666 (2/2) Pacific Coast (N.E.) — 1,500

1694 (19/12) Ugo 2,760 390

1703 (30/12) Tōkyō 20,162 5,233

1707 (28/10) Pacific Coast of Kiūshiū and Shikoku 29,000 4,900

1751 (20/5) Echigo 9,100 1,700

1766 (8/3) Hirosaki 7,500 1,335

1792 (10/2) Hizen and Higo 12,000 15,000

1828 (18/2) Echigo 11,750 1,443

1844 (8/5) Echigo 34,000 12,000

1854 (6/7) Yamato, Iga, Ise 5,000 2,400

1854 (23/12) Tōkaidō (Shikoku) 60,000 3,000

1855 (11/11) Yedo, (Tōkyō 50,000 6,700

1891 (28/10) Mino, Owari 222,501 7,273

1894 (22/10) Shōnai 8,403 726

1896 (15/6) Sanriku 13,073 27,122

1896 (31/8) Ugo, Rikuchu 8,996 209

1906 (12/2) Formosa 5,556 1,228

(1) An area of over 1,200,000 acres swallowed up by the sea.
(2) Tidal wave killed thousands of people.
(3) Hamana lagoon formed.

In the capital (Tōkyō) the average yearly number of shocks throughout the 26 years ending in 1906 was 96, exclusive of minor vibrations, but during the 50 years then ending there were only two severe shocks (1884 and 1894), and they were not directly responsible for any damage to life or limb. The Pacific coast of the Japanese islands is more liable than the western shore to shocks disturbing a wide area. Apparent proof has been obtained that the shocks occurring in the Pacific districts originate at the bottom of the sea—the Tuscarora Deep is supposed to be the centre of seismic activity—and they are accompanied in most cases by tidal waves. It would seem that of late years Tajima, Hida, Kōzuke and some other regions in central Japan have enjoyed the greatest immunity, while Musashi (in which province Tōkyō is situated) and Sagami have been most subject to disturbance.

Plains.—Japan, though very mountainous, has many extensive plains. The northern island—Yezo—contains seven, and there are as many more in the main and southern islands, to say nothing of flat lands of minor dimensions. The principal are given in the following table:—

Name. Situation. Area. Remarks.

Tokachi plain Yezo. 744,000 acres. —

Ishikari ” ” 480,000 acres. —

Kushiro ” ” 1,229,000 acres. —

Nemuro ” ” 320,000 acres. —

Kitami ” ” 230,000 acres. —

Hidaka ” ” 200,000 acres. —

Teshio ” ” 180,000 acres. —

Echigo ” Main Island. Unascertained. —

Sendai ” ” ” —

Kwanto ” ” ”

In this plain lie the capital, Tōkyō, and the town of Yokohama. It supports about 6 millions of people.

Mino-Owari ” ” ”

Has 1½ million inhabitants.

Kinai ” ” ”

Has the cities of Osaka, Kiōto and Kobe, and 2½ million people.

Tsukushi ” Kiūshiū. ”

The chief coalfield of Japan.

Rivers.—Japan is abundantly watered. Probably no country in the world possesses a closer network of streams, supplemented by canals and lakes. But the quantity of water carried seawards varies within wide limits; for whereas, during the rainy season in summer and while the snows of winter are melting in spring, great volumes of water sweep down from the mountains, these broad rivers dwindle at other times to petty rivulets trickling among a waste of pebbles and boulders. Nor are there any long rivers, and all are so broken by shallows and rapids that navigation is generally impossible except by means of flat-bottomed boats drawing only a few inches. The chief rivers are given in the following table:—

Length
in miles. Source. Mouth.

Ishikari-gawa 275 Ishikari-dake Otaru.

Shinano-gawa 215 Kimpu-san Niigata.

Teshio-gawa 192 Teshio-take Sea of Japan.

Tone-gawa 177 Monju-zan, Kōzuke Choshi (Shimosa).

Mogami-gawa 151 Dainichi-dake(Uzen) Sakata.

Yoshino-gawa 149 Yahazu-yama (Tosa) Tokushima (Awa).

Kitakami-gawa 146 Nakayama-dake (Rikuchiu) Ishinomaki (Rikuzen).

Tenriu-gawa 136 Suwako (Shinano) Tōtōmi Bay.

Go-gawa or Iwa-megawa 122 Maruse-yama (Bingo) Iwami Bay.

Abukuma-gawa 122 Asahi-take (Iwashiro) Matsushima Bay.

Tokachi-gawa 120 Tokachi-dake Tokachi Bay.

Sendai-gawa 112 Kunimi-zan (Hiuga) Kumizaki (Satsuma).

Oi-gawa 112 Shirane-san (Kai) Suruga Bay.

Kiso-gawa 112 Kiso-zan (Shinano) Bay of Isenumi.

Arakawa 104 Chichibu-yama Tōkyō Bay.

Naga-gawa 102 Nasu-yama (Shimotsuke) Naka-no-minato (Huachi).

Lakes and Waterfalls.—Japan has many lakes, remarkable for the beauty of their scenery rather than for their extent. Some are contained in alluvial depressions in the river valleys; others have been formed by volcanic eruptions, the ejecta damming the rivers until exits were found over cliffs or through gorges. Some of these lakes have become favourite summer resorts for foreigners. To that category belong especially the lakes of Hakone, of Chiuzenji, of Shōji, of Inawashiro, and of Biwa. Among these the highest is Lake Chiuzenji, which is 4375 ft. above sea-level, has a maximum depth of 93 fathoms, and empties itself at one end over a fall (Kegon) 250 ft. high. The Shōji lakes lie at a height of 3160 ft., and their neighbourhood abounds in scenic charms. Lake Hakone is at a height of 2428 ft.; Inawashiro, at a height of 1920 ft. and Biwa at a height of 328 ft. The Japanese associate Lake Biwa (Omi) with eight views of special loveliness (Omi-no-hakkei). Lake Suwa, in Shinano, which is emptied by the Tenriu-gawa, has a height of 2624 ft. In the vicinity of many of these mountain lakes thermal springs, with remarkable curative properties, are to be found.

(F. By.)

Geology.—It is a popular belief that the islands of Japan consist for the most part of volcanic rocks. But although this conception might reasonably be suggested by the presence of many active and extinct volcanoes, Professor J. Milne has pointed out that it is literally true of the Kuriles alone, partially true for the northern half of the Main Island and for Kiūshiū, and quite incorrect as applied to the southern half of the Main Island and to Shikoku. This authority sums up the geology of Japan briefly and succinctly as follows (in Things Japanese, by Professor Chamberlain): “The backbone of the country consists of primitive gneiss and schists. Amongst the latter, in Shikoku, there is an extremely interesting rock consisting largely of piedmontite. Overlying these amongst the Palaeozoic rocks, we meet in many parts of Japan with slates and other rocks possibly of Cambrian or Silurian age. Trilobites have been discovered in Rikuzen. Carboniferous rocks are represented by mountain masses of Fusulina and other limestones. There is also amongst the Palaeozoic group an interesting series of red slates containing Radiolaria. Mesozoic rocks are represented by slates containing Ammonites and Monotis, evidently of Triassic age, rocks containing Ammonites Bucklandi of Liassic age, a series of beds rich in plants of Jurassic age, and beds of Cretaceous age containing Trigonia and many other fossils. The Cainozoic or Tertiary system forms a fringe round the coasts of many portions of the empire. It chiefly consists of stratified volcanic tuffs rich in coal, lignite, fossilized plants and an invertebrate fauna. Diatomaceous earth exists at several places in Yezo. In the alluvium which covers all, the remains have been discovered of several species of elephant, which, according to Dr Edmund Naumann, are of Indian origin. The most common eruptive rock is andesite. Such rocks as basalt, diorite and trachyte are comparatively rare. Quartz porphyry, quartzless porphyry, and granite are largely developed.” Drs von Richthofen and Rein discuss the subject in greater detail. They have pointed out that in the mountain system of Japan there are three main lines. One runs from S.W. to N.E.; another from S.S.W. to N.N.E., and the third is meridional. These they call respectively the “southern schist range,” the “northern schist range,” and the “snow range,” the last consisting mainly of old crystalline massive rocks. The rocks predominating in Japan fall also into three groups. They are, first, plutonic rocks, especially granite; secondly, volcanic rocks, chiefly trachyte and dolerite; and thirdly, palaeozoic schists. On the other hand, limestone and sandstone, especially of the Mesozoic strata, are strikingly deficient. The strike of the old crystalline rocks follows, in general, the main direction of the islands (S.W. to N.E.). They are often overlain by schists and quartzites, or broken through by volcanic masses. “The basis of the islands consist of granite, syenite, diorite, diabase and related kinds of rock, porphyry appearing comparatively seldom. Now the granite, continuing for long distances, forms the prevailing rock; then, again, it forms the foundation for thick strata of schist and sandstone, itself only appearing in valleys of erosion and river boulders, in rocky projections on the coasts or in the ridges of the mountains.... In the composition of many mountains in Hondo (the main island) granite plays a prominent part.... It appears to form the central mass which crops up in hundreds of places towards the coast and in the interior. Old schists, free from fossils and rich in quartz, overlie it in parallel chains through the whole length of the peninsula, especially in the central and highest ridges, and bear the ores of Chū-goku (the central provinces), principally copper pyrites and magnetic pyrites. These schist ridges rich in quartz show, to a depth of 20 metres, considerable disintegration. The resulting pebble and quartz-sand is very unproductive, and supports chiefly a poor underwood and crippled pines with widely spreading roots which seek their nourishment afar. In the province of Settsu granite everywhere predominates, which may be observed also in the railway cuttings between Hiōgo and Osaka, as well as in the temples and walls of these towns. The waterfalls near Kobe descend over granite walls and the mikageishi (stone of Mikage), famous throughout Japan, is granite from Settsu.... In the hill country on the borders of Ise, Owari, Mikawa and Tōtōmi, on the one side, and Omi, Mino and Shinano, on the other, granite frequently forms dark grey and much disintegrated rock-projections above schist and diluvial quartz pebbles. The feldspar of a splendid pegmatite and its products of disintegration on the borders of Owari, Mino and Mikawa form the raw material of the very extensive ceramic industry of this district, with its chief place, Seto. Of granite are chiefly formed the meridional mountains of Shinano. Granite, diorite and other plutonic rocks hem in the winding upper valleys of the Kiso-gawa, the Saigawa (Shinano river) and many other rivers of this province, their clear water running over granite. Also in the hills bordering on the plain of Kwanto these old crystalline rocks are widely spread. Farther northwards they give way again, as in the south, to schists and eruptive rocks. Yet even here granite may be traced in many places. Of course it is not always a pure granite; even hablit and granite-porphyry are found here and there. Thus, for instance, near Nikkō in the upper valley of the Daiya-gawa, and in several other places in the neighbouring mountains, a granite-porphyry appears with large, pale, flesh-coloured crystals of orthoclase, dull triclinic felspar, quartz and hornblende.” “From the mine of Ichinokawa in Shikoku come the wonderful crystals of antimonite, which form such conspicuous objects in the mineralogical cabinets of Europe.” (Rein’s Japan and Milne in Things Japanese.) The above conditions suggest the presence of tertiary formations, yet only the younger groups of that formation appear to be developed. Nor is there any sign of moraines, glacier-scorings or other traces of the ice-age.

The oldest beds which have yielded fossils in any abundance belong to the Carboniferous System. The Trias proper is represented by truly marine deposits, while the Rhaetic beds contain plant remains. The Jurassic and Cretaceous beds are also in part marine and in part terrestrial. During the whole of the Mesozoic era Japan appears to have lain on or near the margin of the Asiatic continent, and the marine deposits are confined for the most part to the eastern side of the islands.

The igneous rocks occur at several geological horizons, but the great volcanic eruptions did not begin until the Tertiary period. The existing volcanoes belong to four separate arcs or chains. On the south is the arc of the Luchu islands, which penetrates into Kiū Shiū. In the centre there is the arc of the Izu-no-Shichito islands, which is continued into Hondo along the Fossa Magna. In North Hondo the great Bandai arc forms the axis of the island and stretches into Yezo (Hokkaidō). Finally in the east of Yezo rise the most westerly volcanoes of the Kurile chain. The lavas and ashes ejected by these volcanoes consist of liparite, dacite, andesite and basalt.

Structurally Japan is divided into two regions by a depression (the “Fossa Magna” of Naumann) which stretches across the island of Hondo from Shimoda to Nagano. The depression is marked by a line of volcanoes, including Fuji, and is in part buried beneath the products of their eruptions. It is supposed to be due to a great fault along its western margin. South and west of the Fossa Magna the beds are thrown into folds which run approximately parallel to the general direction of the coast, and two zones may be recognized—an outer, consisting of Palaeozoic and Mesozoic beds, and an inner, consisting of Archaean and Palaeozoic rocks, with granitic intrusions. Nearly along the boundary between the two zones lie the inland seas of south Japan. Towards the Fossa Magna the folds bend northwards.

North and east of the Fossa Magna the structure is concealed, to a very large extent, by the outpourings of the volcanoes which form so marked a feature in the northern part of Hondo. But the foundation on which the volcanoes rest is exposed along the east coast of Hondo (in the Kwanto, Abukuma and Kitakami hills), and also in the island of Yezo. This foundation consists of Archean, Palaeozoic and Mesozoic beds folded together, the direction of the folds being N. by W. to S. by E., that is to say, slightly oblique to the general direction of this part of the island. Towards the Fossa Magna the folds bend sharply round until they are nearly parallel to the Fossa itself.

(P. La.)

It has been abundantly demonstrated by careful observations that the east coasts of Japan are slowly rising. This phenomenon was first noticed in the case of the plain on which stands the capital, Tōkyō. Maps of sufficiently trustworthy accuracy show that in the 11th century Tōkyō Bay penetrated much more deeply in a northern direction than it does now; the point where the city’s main river (Sumida or Arakawa) enters the sea was considerably to the north of its present position, and low-lying districts, to-day thickly populated, were under water. Edmund Naumann was the discoverer of these facts, and his attention was first drawn to them by learning that an edible sea-weed, which flourishes only in salt water, is called Asakusa-nori, from the place (Asakusa) of its original provenance, which now lies some 3 m. inland. Similar phenomena were found in Sakhalin by Schmidt and on the north-east coast of the main island by Rein, and there can be little doubt that they exist at other places also. Naumann has concluded that “formerly Tōkyō Bay stretched further over the whole level country of Shimosa and Hitachi and northwards as far as the plain of Kwantō extends;” that “the mountain country of Kasusa-Awa emerged from it an island, and that a current ran in a north-westerly direction between this island and the northern mountain margin of the present plain toward the north-east into the open ocean.”

Mineral Springs.—The presence of so many active volcanoes is partially compensated by a wealth of mineral springs. Since many of these thermal springs possess great medicinal value, Japan may become one of the world’s favourite health-resorts. There are more than a hundred spas, some hot, some cold, which, being easily accessible and highly efficacious, are largely visited by the Japanese. The most noteworthy are as follows:—

Name of Spa. Prefecture. Quality. Temp., F°.

Arima Hiogo Salt 100

Asama Nagano Pure 111—127

Asamushi Aomori Salt 134—168

Atami Shizuoka ” 131—226

Beppu Oita Carbonic Acid 109—132

Bessho Nagano Pure or Sulphurous 108—113

Dogo Ehime Pure 70—110

Hakone Kanagawa Pure, Salt or Sulphurous 98—168

Higashi-yama Fukushima Pure or Salt 117—144

Ikao Gumma Salt 111—127

Isobe ” ” Cold

Kusatsu ” Sulphurous 127—148

Nasu Tochigi Sulphurous 162-172

Noboribetsu Ishikari ” 125

Shibu Nagano Salt 98-115

Chiuzenji Shizuoka Carbonate of Soda and Sulphur 114-185

Takarazuka Hiogo Carbonic Acid Cold

Ureshino Saga ” 230

Unzen Nagasaki Sulphurous 158-204

Wagura Ishikawa Salt 180

Yamashiro ” ” 165

Yunoshima Hiogo ” 104-134

Climate.—The large extension of the Japanese islands in a northerly and southerly direction causes great varieties of climate. General characteristics are hot and humid though short summers, and long, cold and clear winters. The equatorial currents produce conditions differing from those existing at corresponding latitudes on the neighbouring continent. In Kiūshiū, Shikoku and the southern half of the main island, the months of July and August alone are marked by oppressive heat at the sea-level, while in elevated districts a cool and even bracing temperature may always be found, though the direct rays of the sun retain distressing power. Winter in these districts does not last more than two months, from the end of December to the beginning of March; for although the latter month is not free from frost and even snow, the balminess of spring makes itself plainly perceptible. In the northern half of the main island, in Yezo and in the Kuriles, the cold is severe during the winter, which lasts for at least four months, and snow falls sometimes to great depths. Whereas in Tōkyō the number of frosty nights during a year does not average much over 60, the corresponding number in Sapporo on the north-west of Yezo is 145. But the variation of the thermometer in winter and summer being considerable—as much as 72° F. in Tōkyō—the climate proves somewhat trying to persons of weak constitution. On the other hand, the mean daily variation is in general less than that in other countries having the same latitude: it is greatest in January, when it reaches 18° F., and least in July, when it barely exceeds 9° F. The monthly variation is very great in March, when it usually reaches 43° F.

During the first 40 years of the Meiji era numerous meteorological stations were established. Reports are constantly forwarded by telegraph to the central observatory in Tōkyō, which issues daily statements of the climatic conditions during the previous twenty-four hours, as well as forecasts for the next twenty-four. The whole country is divided into districts for meteorological purposes, and storm-warnings are issued when necessary. At the most important stations observations are taken every hour; at the less important, six observations daily; and at the least important, three observations. From the record of three decades the following yearly averages of temperature are obtained:—

F°.

Taihoku (in Formosa) 71

Nagasaki (Kiūshiū) 60

Kōbe (Main Island) 59

Osaka (Main Island) 59

Okayama (Main Island) 58

Nagoya (Main Island) 58

Sakai (Main Island) 58

Tōkyō (Capital) 57

Kiōto (Main Island) 57

Niigata (Main Island) 55

Ishinomaki (Main Island) 52

Aomori (Main Island) 50

Sapporo (Yezo) 44

The following table affords data for comparing the climates of Peking, Shanghai, Hakodate, Tōkyō and San Francisco:—

Longitude. Latitude. Mean
Temp., F°.

Peking 116° 29′ E. 39° 57′ N. 53

Shanghai 121° 20′ E. 31° 12′ N. 59

Hakodate 140° 45′ E. 41° 46′ N. 47

Tōkyō 138° 47′ E. 35° 41′ N. 57

San Francisco 122° 25′ E. 37° 48′ N. 56

Hottest Month. Mean Temp. of
Hottest Month.

Peking July 80

Shanghai ” 84

Hakodate August 71

Tōkyō ” 79

San Francisco September 63

Coldest Month. Mean Temp. of
Coldest Month.

Peking January 22

Shanghai ” 26

Hakodate ” 28

Tōkyō ” 36

San Francisco ” 49

There are three wet seasons in Japan: the first, from the middle of April to the beginning of May; the second, from the middle of June to the beginning of July; and the third, from early in September to early in October. The dog days (doyō) are from the middle of July till the second half of August. September is the wettest month; January the driest. During the four months from November to February inclusive only about 18% of the whole rain for the year falls. In the district on the east of the main island the snowfall is insignificant, seldom attaining a depth of more than four or five inches and generally melting in a few days, while bright, sunny skies are usual. But in the mountainous provinces of the interior and in those along the western coast, deep snow covers the ground throughout the whole winter, and the sky is usually wrapped in a veil of clouds. These differences are due to the action of the north-westerly wind that blows over Japan from Siberia. The intervening sea being comparatively warm, this wind arrives at Japan having its temperature increased and carrying moisture which it deposits as snow on the western faces of the Japanese mountains. Crossing the mountains and descending their eastern slopes, the wind becomes less saturated and warmer, so that the formation of clouds ceases. Japan is emphatically a wet country so far as quantity of rainfall is concerned, the average for the whole country being 1570 mm. per annum. Still there are about four sunny days for every three on which rain or snow falls, the actual figures being 150 days of snow or rain and 215 days of sunshine.

During the cold season, which begins in October and ends in April, northerly and westerly winds prevail throughout Japan. They come from the adjacent continent of Asia, and they develop considerable strength owing to the fact that there is an average difference of some 22 mm. between the atmospheric pressure (750 mm.) in the Pacific and that (772 mm.) in the Japanese islands. But during the warm season, from May to September, these conditions of atmospheric pressure are reversed, that in the Pacific rising to 767 mm. and that in Japan falling to 750 mm. Hence throughout this season the prevailing winds are light breezes from the west and south. A comparison of the force habitually developed by the wind in various parts of the islands shows that at Suttsu in Yezo the average strength is 9 metres per second, while Izuhara in the island Tsushima, Kumamoto in Kiūshiū and Gifu in the east centre of the main island stand at the bottom of the list with an average wind velocity of only 2 metres. A calamitous atmospheric feature is the periodical arrival of storms called “typhoons” (Japanese tai-fu or “great wind”). These have their origin, for the most part, in the China Sea, especially in the vicinity of Luzon. Their season is from June to October, but they occur in other months also, and they develop a velocity of 5 to 75 m. an hour. The meteorological record for ten years ended 1905 shows a total of 120 typhoons, being an average of 12 annually. September had 14 of these phenomena, March 11 and April 10, leaving 85 for the remaining 9 months. But only 65 out of the whole number developed disastrous force. It is particularly unfortunate that September should be the season of greatest typhoon frequency, for the earlier varieties of rice flower in that month and a heavy storm does much damage. Thus, in 1902—by no means an abnormal year—statistics show the following disasters owing to typhoons: casualties to human life, 3639; ships and boats lost, 3244; buildings destroyed wholly or partially, 695,062; land inundated, 1,071,575 acres; roads destroyed, 1236 m.; bridges washed away, 13,685; embankments broken, 705 m.; crops damaged, 8,712,655 bushels. The total loss, including cost of repairs, was estimated at nearly 3 millions sterling, which may be regarded as an annual average.

Flora.—The flora of Japan has been carefully studied by many scientific men from Siebold downwards. Foreigners visiting Japan are immediately struck by the affection of the people for flowers, trees and natural beauties of every kind. In actual wealth of blossom or dimensions of forest trees the Japanese islands cannot claim any special distinction. The spectacles most admired by all classes are the tints of the foliage in autumn and the glory of flowering trees in the spring. In beauty and variety of pattern and colour the autumnal tints are unsurpassed. The colours pass from deep brown through purple to yellow and white, thrown into relief by the dark green of non-deciduous shrubs and trees. Oaks and wild prunus, wild vines and sumachs, various kinds of maple, the dōdan (Enkianthus Japonicus Hook.)—a wonderful bush which in autumn develops a hue of ruddy red—birches and other trees, all add multitudinous colours to the brilliancy of a spectacle which is further enriched by masses of feathery bamboo. The one defect is lack of green sward. The grass used for Japanese lawns loses its verdure in autumn and remains from November to March a greyish-brown blot upon the scene. Spring is supposed to begin in February when, according to the old calendar, the new year sets in, but the only flowers then in bloom are the camellia japonica and some kinds of daphne. The former—called by the Japanese tsubaki—may often be seen glowing fiery red amid snow, but the pink (otome tsubaki), white (shiro-tsubaki) and variegated (shibori-no-tsubaki) kinds do not bloom until March or April. Neither the camellia nor the daphne is regarded as a refined flower: their manner of shedding their blossoms is too unsightly. Queen of spring flowers is the plum (ume). The tree lends itself with peculiar readiness to the skilful manipulation of the gardener, and is by him trained into shapes of remarkable grace. Its pure white or rose-red blossoms, heralding the first approach of genial weather, are regarded with special favour and are accounted the symbol of unassuming hardihood. The cherry (sakura) is even more esteemed. It will not suffer any training, nor does it, like the plum, improve by pruning, but the sunshine that attends its brief period of bloom in April, the magnificence of its flower-laden boughs and the picturesque flutter of its falling petals, inspired an ancient poet to liken it to the “soul of Yamato” (Japan), and it has ever since been thus regarded. The wild peach (momo) blooms at the same time, but attracts little attention. All these trees—the plum, the cherry and the peach—bear no fruit worthy of the name, nor do they excel their Occidental representatives in wealth of blossom, but the admiring affection they inspire in Japan is unique. Scarcely has the cherry season passed when that of the wistaria (fuji) comes, followed by the azalea (tsutsuji) and the iris (shōbu), the last being almost contemporaneous with the peony (botan), which is regarded by many Japanese as the king of flowers and is cultivated assiduously. A species of weeping maple (shidare-momiji) dresses itself in peachy-red foliage and is trained into many picturesque shapes, though not without detriment to its longevity. Summer sees the lotus (renge) convert wide expanses of lake and river into sheets of white and red blossoms; a comparatively flowerless interval ensues until, in October and November, the chrysanthemum arrives to furnish an excuse for fashionable gatherings. With the exception of the dog-days and the dead of winter, there is no season when flowers cease to be an object of attention to the Japanese, nor does any class fail to participate in the sentiment. There is similar enthusiasm in the matter of gardens. From the 10th century onwards the art of landscape gardening steadily grew into a science, with esoteric as well as exoteric aspects, and with a special vocabulary. The underlying principle is to reproduce nature’s scenic beauties, all the features being drawn to scale, so that however restricted the space, there shall be no violation of proportion. Thus the artificial lakes and hills, the stones forming rockeries or simulating solitary crags, the trees and even the bushes are all selected or manipulated so as to fall congruously into the general scheme. If, on the one hand, huge stones are transported hundreds of miles from seashore or river-bed where, in the lapse of long centuries, waves and cataracts have hammered them into strange shapes, and if the harmonizing of their various colours and the adjustment of their forms to environment are studied with profound subtlety, so the training and tending of the trees and shrubs that keep them company require much taste and much toil. Thus the red pine (aka-matsu or pinus densiflora), which is the favourite garden tree, has to be subjected twice a year to a process of spray-dressing which involves the careful removal of every weak or aged needle. One tree occupies the whole time of a gardener for about ten days. The details are endless, the results delightful. But it has to be clearly understood that there is here no mention of a flower-garden in the Occidental sense of the term. Flowers are cultivated, but for their own sakes, not as a feature of the landscape garden. If they are present, it is only as an incident. This of course does not apply to shrubs which blossom at their seasons and fall always into the general scheme of the landscape. Forests of cherry-trees, plum-trees, magnolia trees, or hiyaku-jikkō (Lagerstroemia indica), banks of azalea, clumps of hydrangea, groups of camellia—such have their permanent places and their foliage adds notes of colour when their flowers have fallen. But chrysanthemums, peonies, roses and so forth, are treated as special shows, and are removed or hidden when out of bloom. There is another remarkable feature of the Japanese gardener’s art. He dwarfs trees so that they remain measurable only by inches after their age has reached scores, even hundreds, of years, and the proportions of leaf, branch and stem are preserved with fidelity. The pots in which these wonders of patient skill are grown have to be themselves fine specimens of the ceramist’s craft, and as much as £200 is sometimes paid for a notably well trained tree.

There exists among many foreign observers an impression that Japan is comparatively poor in wild-flowers; an impression probably due to the fact that there are no flowery meadows or lanes. Besides, the flowers are curiously wanting in fragrance. Almost the only notable exceptions are the mokusei (Osmanthus fragrans), the daphne and the magnolia. Missing the perfume-laden air of the Occident, a visitor is prone to infer paucity of blossoms. But if some familiar European flowers are absent, they are replaced by others strange to Western eyes—a wealth of lespedeza and Indigo-fera; a vast variety of lilies; graceful grasses like the eulalia and the ominameshi (Patrina scabiosaefolia); the richly-hued Pyrus japonica; azaleas, diervillas and deutzias; the kikyo (Platycodon grandiflorum), the gibōshi (Funkia ovata), and many another. The same is true of Japanese forests. It has been well said that “to enumerate the constituents and inhabitants of the Japanese mountain-forests would be to name at least half the entire flora.”

According to Franchet and Savatier Japan possesses:—

Families. Genera. Species.

Dicotyledonous plants 121 795 1934

Monocotyledonous plants 28 202 613

Higher Cryptogamous plants 5 38 196

Vascular plants 154 1035 2743

The investigations of Japanese botanists are adding constantly to the above number, and it is not likely that finality will be reached for some time. According to a comparison made by A. Gray with regard to the numbers of genera and species respectively represented in the forest trees of four regions of the northern hemisphere, the following is the case:—

Atlantic Forest-region of N. America 66 genera and 155 species.

Pacific Forest-region of N. America 31 genera and 78 species.

Japan and Manchuria Forest-region 66 genera and 168 species.

Forests of Europe 33 genera and 85 species.

While there can be no doubt that the luxuriance of Japan’s flora is due to rich soil, to high temperature and to rainfall not only plentiful but well distributed over the whole year, the wealth and variety of her trees and shrubs must be largely the result of immigration. Japan has four insular chains which link her to the neighbouring continent. On the south, the Riūkiū Islands bring her within reach of Formosa and the Malayan archipelago; on the west, Oki, Iki, and Tsushima bridge the sea between her and Korea; on the north-west Sakhalin connects her with the Amur region; and on the north, the Kuriles form an almost continuous route to Kamchatka. By these paths the germs of Asiatic plants were carried over to join the endemic flora of the country, and all found suitable homes amid greatly varying conditions of climate and physiography.

Fauna.—Japan is an exception to the general rule that continents are richer in fauna than are their neighbouring islands. It has been said with truth that “an industrious collector of beetles, butterflies, neuroptera, &c., finds a greater number of species in a circuit of some miles near Tōkyō than are exhibited by the whole British Isles.”

Of mammals 50 species have been identified and catalogued. Neither the lion nor the tiger is found. The true Carnivora are three only, the bear, the dog and the marten. Three species of bears are scientifically recognized, but one of them, the ice-bear (Ursus maritimus), is only an accidental visitor, carried down by the Arctic current. In the main island the black bear (kuma, Ursus japonicus) alone has its habitation, but the island of Yezo has the great brown bear (called shi-guma, oki-kuma or aka-kuma), the “grisly” of North America. The bear does not attract much popular interest in Japan. Tradition centres rather upon the fox (kitsune) and the badger (mujina), which are credited with supernatural powers, the former being worshipped as the messenger of the harvest god, while the latter is regarded as a mischievous rollicker. Next to these comes the monkey (saru), which dwells equally among the snows of the north and in the mountainous regions of the south. Saru enters into the composition of many place-names, an evidence of the people’s familiarity with the animal. There are ten species of bat (komori) and seven of insect-eaters, and prominent in this class are the mole (mugura) and the hedgehog (hari-nezumi). Among the martens there is a weasel (itachi), which, though useful as a rat-killer, has the evil repute of being responsible for sudden and mysterious injuries to human beings; there is a river-otter (kawauso), and there is a sea-otter (rakko) which inhabits the northern seas and is highly valued for its beautiful pelt. The rodents are represented by an abundance of rats, with comparatively few mice, and by the ordinary squirrel, to which the people give the name of tree-rat (ki-nezumi), as well as the flying squirrel, known as the momo-dori (peach-bird) in the north, where it hides from the light in hollow tree-trunks, and in the south as the ban-tori (or bird of evening). There are no rabbits, but hares (usagi) are to be found in very varying numbers, and those of one species put on a white coat during winter. The wild boar (shishi or ii-no-shishi) does not differ appreciably from its European congener. Its flesh is much relished, and for some unexplained reason is called by its vendors “mountain-whale” (yama-kujira). A very beautiful stag (shika), with eight-branched antlers, inhabits the remote woodlands, and there are five species of antelope (kamo-shika) which are found in the highest and least accessible parts of the mountains. Domestic animals have for representatives the horse (uma), a small beast with little beauty of form though possessing much hardihood and endurance; the ox (ushi) mainly a beast of burden or draught; the pig (buta), very occasionally; the dog (inu), an unsightly and useless brute; the cat (neko), with a stump in lieu of a tail; barndoor fowl (niwa-tori), ducks (ahiro) and pigeons (hato). The turkey (shichi-mencho) and the goose (gachō) have been introduced but are little appreciated as yet.

Although so-called singing birds exist in tolerable numbers, those worthy of the name of songster are few. Eminently first is a species of nightingale (uguisu), which, though smaller than its congener of the West, is gifted with exquisitely modulated flute-like notes of considerable range. The uguisu is a dainty bird in the matter of temperature. After May it retires from the low-lying regions and gradually ascends to higher altitudes as midsummer approaches. A variety of the cuckoo called holotogisu (Cuculus poliocephalus) in imitation of the sound of its voice, is heard as an accompaniment of the uguisu, and there are also three other species, the kakkōdori (Cuculus canorus), the tsutsu-dori (C. himalayanus), and the masuhakari, or juichi (C. hyperythrus). To these the lark, hibari (Alauda japonica), joins its voice, and the cooing of the pigeon (hato) is supplemented by the twittering of the ubiquitous sparrow (suzume), while over all are heard the raucous caw of the raven (karasu) and the harsh scream of the kite (tombi), between which and the raven there is perpetual feud. The falcon (taka), always an honoured bird in Japan, where from time immemorial hawking has been an aristocratic pastime, is common enough, and so is the sparrow-hawk (hai-taka), but the eagle (washi) affects solitude. Two English ornithologists, Blakiston and Pryer, are the recognized authorities on the birds of Japan, and in a contribution to the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan (vol. x.) they have enumerated 359 species. Starlings (muku-dori) are numerous, and so are the wagtail (sekirei), the swallow (tsubame) the martin (ten), the woodchat (mozu) and the jay (kakesu or kashi-dori), but the magpie (tōgarasu), though common in China, is rare in Japan. Blackbirds and thrushes are not found, nor any species of parrot, but on the other hand, we have the hoopoe (yatsugashira), the red-breast (komadori), the bluebird (ruri), the wren (miso-sazai), the golden-crested wren (itadaki), the golden-eagle (inu-washi), the finch (hiwa), the longtailed rose-finch (benimashiko), the ouzel—brown (akahara), dusky (tsugumi) and water (kawa-garasu)—the kingfisher (kawasemi), the crake (kuina) and the tomtit (kara). Among game-birds there are the quail (uzura), the heathcock (ezo-rachō), the ptarmigan (ezo-raichō or ezo-yama-dori), the woodcock (hodo-shigi), the snipe (ta-shigi)—with two special species, the solitary snipe (yama-shigi) and the painted snipe (tama-shigi)—and the pheasant (kiji). Of the last there are two species, the kiji proper, a bird presenting no remarkable features, and the copper pheasant, a magnificent bird with plumage of dazzling beauty. Conspicuous above all others, not only for grace of form but also for the immemorial attention paid to them by Japanese artists, are the crane (tsuru) and the heron (sagi). Of the crane there are seven species, the stateliest and most beautiful being the Grus japonensis (tanchō or tanchō-zuru), which stands some 5 ft. high and has pure white plumage with a red crown, black tail-feathers and black upper neck. It is a sacred bird, and it shares with the tortoise the honour of being an emblem of longevity. The other species are the demoiselle crane (anewa-zuru), the black crane (kuro-zuru or nezumi-zuru, i.e. Grus cinerea), the Grus leucauchen (mana-zuru), the Grus monachus (nabe-zuru), and the white crane (shiro-zuru). The Japanese include in this category the stork (kōzuru), but it may be said to have disappeared from the island. The heron (sagi) constitutes a charming feature in a Japanese landscape, especially the silver heron (shira-sagi), which displays its brilliant white plumage in the rice-fields from spring to early autumn. The night-heron (goi-sagi) is very common. Besides these waders there are plover (chidori); golden (muna-guro or ai-guro); gray (daizen); ringed (shiro-chidori); spur-winged (keri) and Harting’s sand-plover (ikaru-chidori); sand-pipers—green (ashiro-shigi) and spoon-billed (hera-shigi)—and water-hens (ban). Among swimming birds the most numerous are the gull (kamome), of which many varieties are found; the cormorant (u)—which is trained by the Japanese for fishing purposes—and multitudinous flocks of wild-geese (gan) and wild-ducks (kamo), from the beautiful mandarin-duck (oshi-dori), emblem of conjugal fidelity, to teal (kogamo) and widgeon (hidori-gamo) of several species. Great preserves of wild-duck and teal used to be a frequent feature in the parks attached to the feudal castles of old Japan, when a peculiar method of netting the birds or striking them with falcons was a favourite aristocratic pastime. A few of such preserves still exist, and it is noticeable that in the Palace-moats of Tōkyō all kinds of water-birds, attracted by the absolute immunity they enjoy there, assemble in countless numbers at the approach of winter and remain until the following spring, wholly indifferent to the close proximity of the city.

Of reptiles Japan has only 30 species, and among them is included the marine turtle (umi-game) which can scarcely be said to frequent her waters, since it is seen only at rare intervals on the southern coast. This is even truer of the larger species (the shōgakubo, i.e. Chelonia cephalo). Both are highly valued for the sake of the shell, which has always been a favourite material for ladies’ combs and hairpins. By carefully selecting certain portions and welding them together in a perfectly flawless mass, a pure amber-coloured object is obtained at heavy cost. Of the fresh-water tortoise there are two kinds, the suppon (Trionyx japonica) and the kame-no-ko (Emys vulgaris japonica). The latter is one of the Japanese emblems of longevity. It is often depicted with a flowing tail, which appendix attests close observation of nature; for the mino-game, as it is called, represents a tortoise to which, in the course of many scores of years, confervae have attached themselves so as to form an appendage of long green locks as the creature swims about. Sea-snakes occasionally make their way to Japan, being carried thither by the Black Current (Kuro Shiwo) and the monsoon, but they must be regarded as merely fortuitous visitors. There are 10 species of land-snakes (hebi), among which one only (the mamushi, or Trigonocephalus Blomhoffi) is venomous. The others for the most part frequent the rice-fields and live upon frogs. The largest is the aodaisho (Elaphis virgatus), which sometimes attains a length of 5 ft., but is quite harmless. Lizards (tokage), frogs (kawazu or kaeru), toads (ebogayeru) and newts (imori) are plentiful, and much curiosity attaches to a giant salamander (sansho-uwo, called also hazekai and other names according to localities), which reaches to a length of 5 ft., and (according to Rein) is closely related to the Andrias Scheuchzeri of the Oeningen strata.

The seas surrounding the Japanese islands may be called a resort of fishes, for, in addition to numerous species which abide there permanently, there are migatory kinds, coming and going with the monsoons and with the great ocean streams that set to and from the shores. In winter, for example, when the northern monsoon begins to blow, numbers of denizens of the Sea of Okhotsk swim southward to the more genial waters of north Japan; and in summer the Indian Ocean and the Malayan archipelago send to her southern coasts a crowd of emigrants which turn homeward again at the approach of winter. It thus falls out that in spite of the enormous quantity of fish consumed as food or used as fertilizers year after year by the Japanese, the seas remain as richly stocked as ever. Nine orders of fishes have been distinguished as the piscifauna of Japanese waters. They may be found carefully catalogued with all their included species in Rein’s Japan, and highly interesting researches by Japanese physiographists are recorded in the Journal of the College of Science of the Imperial University of Tokyo. Briefly, the chief fish of Japan are the bream (tai), the perch (suzuki), the mullet (bora), the rock-fish (hatatate), the grunter (oni-o-koze), the mackerel (saba), the sword-fish (tachi-uwo), the wrasse (kusabi), the haddock (tara), the flounder (karei), and its congeners the sole (hirame) and the turbot (ishi-garei), the shad (namazu), the salmon (shake), the masu, the carp (koi), the funa, the gold fish (kingyo), the gold carp (higoi), the loach (dojo), the herring (nishin), the iwashi(Clupea melanosticta), the eel (unagi), the conger eel (anago), the coffer-fish (hako-uwo), the fugu (Tetrodon), the ai (Plecoglossus altivelis), the sayori (Hemiramphus sayori), the shark (same), the dogfish (manuka-zame), the ray (e), the sturgeon (chō-zame) and the maguro (Thynnus sibi).

The insect life of Japan broadly corresponds with that of temperate regions in Europe. But there are also a number of tropical species, notably among butterflies and beetles. The latter—for which the generic term in Japan is mushi or kaichū—include some beautiful species, from the “jewel beetle” (tama-mushi), the “gold beetle” (kogane-mushi) and the Chrysochroa fulgidissima, which glow and sparkle with the brilliancy of gold and precious stones, to the jet black Melanauster chinensis, which seems to have been fashioned out of lacquer spotted with white. There is also a giant nasicornous beetle. Among butterflies (chōchō) Rein gives prominence to the broad-winged kind (Papilio), which recall tropical brilliancy. One (Papilio macilentus) is peculiar to Japan. Many others seem to be practically identical with European species. That is especially true of the moths (yachō), 100 species of which have been identified with English types. There are seven large silk-moths, of which two only (Bombyx mori and Antheraea yama-mai) are employed in producing silk. Fishing lines are manufactured from the cocoons of the genjiki-mushi (Caligula japonica), which is one of the commonest moths in the islands. Wasps, bees and hornets, generically known as hachi, differ little from their European types, except that they are somewhat larger and more sluggish. The gad-fly (abu), the housefly (hai), the mosquito (ka), the flea (nomi) and occasionally the bedbug (called by the Japanese kara-mushi because it is believed to be imported from China), are all fully represented, and the dragon-fly (tombō) presents itself in immense numbers at certain seasons. Grasshoppers (batta) are abundant, and one kind (inago), which frequent the rice-fields when the cereal is ripening, are caught and fried in oil as an article of food. On the moors in late summer the mantis (kama-kiri-mushi) is commonly met with, and the cricket (kūrogi) and the cockroach abound. Particularly obtrusive is the cicada (semi), of which there are many species. Its strident voice is heard most loudly at times of great heat, when the song of the birds is hushed. The dragon-fly and the cicada afford ceaseless entertainment to the Japanese boy. He catches them by means of a rod smeared with bird-lime, and then tying a fine string under their wings, he flies them at its end. Spiders abound, from a giant species to one of the minutest dimensions, and the tree-bug is always ready to make a destructive lodgment in any sickly tree-stem. The scorpion (sasori) exists but is not poisonous.

Japanese rivers and lakes are the habitation of several—seven or eight—species of fresh-water crab (kani), which live in holes on the shore and emerge in the daytime, often moving to considerable distances from their homes. Shrimps (kawa-ebi) also are found in the rivers and rice-fields. These shrimps as well as a large species of crab—mokuzō-gani—serve the people as an article of food, but the small crabs which live in holes have no recognized raison d’être. In Japan, as elsewhere, the principal crustacea are found in the sea. Flocks of lupa and other species swim in the wake of the tropical fishes which move towards Japan at certain seasons. Naturally these migratory crabs are not limited to Japanese waters. Milne Edwards has identified ten species which occur in Australian seas also, and Rein mentions, as belonging to the same category, the “helmet-crab” or “horse-shoe crab” (kabuto-gani; Limulus longispina Hoeven). Very remarkable is the giant Taka-ashi—long legs (Macrocheirus Kaempferi), which has legs 1½ metres long and is found in the seas of Japan and the Malay archipelago. There is no lobster on the coasts of Japan, but there are various species of crayfish (Palinurus and Scyllarus) the principal of which, under the names of ise-ebi (Palinurus japonicus) and kuruma-ebi (Penaeus canaliculatus) are greatly prized as an article of diet.

Already in 1882, Dunker in his Index Molluscorum Maris Japonici enumerated nearly 1200 species of marine molluscs found in the Japanese archipelago, and several others have since then been added to the list. As for the land and fresh-water molluscs, some 200 of which are known, they are mainly kindred with those of China and Siberia, tropical and Indian forms being exceptional. There are 57 species of Helix (maimaitsuburi, dedemushi, katatsumuri or kwagyū) and 25 of Clausilia (kiseru-gai or pipe-snail), including the two largest snails in Japan, namely the Cl. Martensi and the Cl. Yoko-hamensis, which attain to a length of 58 mm. and 44 mm. respectively. The mussel (i-no-kai) is well represented by the species numa-gai (marsh-mussel), karasu-gai (raven-mussel), kamisori-gai (razor-mussel), shijimi-no-kai (Corbicula), of which there are nine species, &c. Unlike the land-molluscs, the great majority of Japanese sea-molluscs are akin to those of the Indian Ocean and the Malay archipelago. Some of them extend westward as far as the Red Sea. The best known and most frequent forms are the asari (Tapes philippinarum), the hamaguri (Meretrix lusoria), the baka (Mactra sulcataria), the aka-gai (Scapharca inflata), the kaki (oyster), the awabi (Haliotis japonica), the sazae (Turbo cornutus), the hora-gai (Tritonium tritonius), &c. Among the cephalopods several are of great value as articles of food, e.g. the surume (Onychotheuthis Banksii), the tako (octopus), the shidako (Eledone), the ika (Sepia) and the tako-fune (Argonauta).

Greeff enumerates, as denizens of Japanese seas, 26 kinds of sea-urchins (gaze or uni) and 12 of starfish (hitode or tako-no-makura). These, like the mollusca, indicate the influence of the Kuro Shiwo and the south-west monsoon, for they have close affinity with species found in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. For edible purposes the most valuable of the Japanese echinoderms is the sea-slug or bêche de mer (namako), which is greatly appreciated and forms an important staple of export to China. Rein writes: “Very remarkable in connexion with the starfishes is the occurrence of Asterias rubens on the Japanese coast. This creature displays an almost unexampled frequency and extent of distribution in the whole North Sea, in the western parts of the Baltic, near the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and the English coasts, so that it may be regarded as a characteristic North Sea echinoderm form. Towards the south this starfish disappears, it seems, completely; for it is not yet known with certainty to exist either in the Mediterranean or in the southern parts of the Atlantic Ocean. In others also Asterias rubens is not known—and then it suddenly reappears in Japan. Archaster typicus has a pretty wide distribution over the Indian Ocean; other Asteridae of Japan, on the other hand, appear to be confined to its shores.”

Japan is not rich in corals and sponges. Her most interesting contributions are crust-corals (Gorgonidae, Corallium, Isis, &c.), and especially flint-sponges, called by the Japanese hoshi-gai and known as “glass-coral” (Hyalonema sieboldi). These last have not been found anywhere except at the entrance of the Bay of Tōkyō at a depth of some 200 fathoms.

II.—The People

Population.—The population was as follows on the 31st of December 1907:—

Population. Males. Females. Totals. Population
per
sq. m.

Japan proper 24,601,658 24,172,627 48,774,285 330

Formosa (Taiwan) 1,640,778 1,476,137 3,116,915 224

Sakhalin 7,175 3,631 10,806 0.1

Totals 26,249,611 25,652,395 51,902,006

The following table shows the rate of increase in the four quadrennial periods between 1891 and 1907 in Japan proper:—

Year. Males. Females. Totals. Average
increase
per cent. Population
per
sq. m.

1891 20,563,416 20,155,261 40,718,677 1.09 272

1895 21,345,750 20,904,870 42,270,620 1.09 286

1899 22,330,112 21,930,540 44,260,652 1.14 299

1903 23,601,640 23,131,236 46,732,876 1.54 316

1907 24,601,658 24,172,627 48,774,285 1.13 330

The population of Formosa (Taiwan) during the ten-year period 1898-1907 grew as follows:—

Year. Males. Females. Totals. Average
increase
per cent. Population
per
sq. m.

1898 1,307,428 1,157,539 2,464,967 — 182

1902 1,513,280 1,312,067 2,825,347 2.70 209

1907 1,640,778 1,476,137 3,116,915 2.37 224

According to quasi-historical records, the population of the empire in the year A.D. 610 was 4,988,842, and in 736 it had grown to 8,631,770. It is impossible to say how much reliance may be placed on these figures, but from the 18th century, when the name of every subject had to be inscribed on the roll of a temple as a measure against his adoption of Christianity, a tolerably trustworthy census could always be taken. The returns thus obtained show that from the year 1723 until 1846 the population remained almost stationary, the figure in the former year being 26,065,422, and that in the latter year 26,907,625. There had, indeed, been five periods of declining population in that interval of 124 years, namely, the periods 1738-1744, 1759-1762, 1773-1774, 1791-1792, and 1844-1846. But after 1872, when the census showed a total of 33,110,825, the population grew steadily, its increment between 1872 and 1898 inclusive, a period of 27 years, being 10,649,990. Such a rate of increase invests the question of subsistence with great importance. In former times the area of land under cultivation increased in a marked degree. Returns prepared at the beginning of the 10th century showed 2½ million acres under crops, whereas the figure in 1834 was over 8 million acres. But the development of means of subsistence has been outstripped by the growth of population in recent years. Thus, during the period between 1899 and 1907 the population received an increment of 11.6% whereas the food-producing area increased by only 4.4%. This discrepancy caused anxiety at one time, but large fields suitable for colonization have been opened in Sakhalin, Korea, Manchuria and Formosa, so that the problem of subsistence has ceased to be troublesome. The birth-rate, taking the average of the decennial period ended 1907, is 3.05% of the population, and the death-rate is 2.05. Males exceed females in the ratio of 2% approximately. But this rule does not hold after the age of 65, where for every 100 females only 83 males are found. The Japanese are of low stature as compared with the inhabitants of Western Europe: about 16% of the adult males are below 5 ft. But there are evidences of steady improvement in this respect. Thus, during the period of ten years between 1893 and 1902, it was found that the percentage of recruits of 5 ft. 5 in. and upward grew from 10.09 to 12.67, the rate of increase having been remarkably steady; and the percentage of those under 5 ft. declined from 20.21 to 16.20.

Towns.—There are in Japan 23 towns having a population of over 50,000, and there are 76 having a population of over 20,000. The larger towns, their populations and the growth of the latter during the five-year period commencing with 1898 were as follow:—

Urban Populations

1898. 1903.

Tōkyō 1,440,121 1,795,128

Osaka 821,235 988,200

Kiōto 353,139 379,404

Nagoya 244,145 284,829

Kobe 215,780 283,839

Yokohama 193,762 324,776

Hiroshima 122,306 113,545

Nagasaki 107,422 151,727

Kanazawa 83,595 97,548

Sendai 83,325 93,773

Hakodate 78,040 84,746

Fukuoka 66,190 70,107

Wakayama 63,667 67,908

Tokushima 61,501 62,998

Kumamoto 61,463 55,277

Toyama 59,558 86,276

Okayama 58,025 80,140

Otaru 56,961 79,746

Kagoshima 53,481 58,384

Niigata 53,366 58,821

Sakai 50,203 ———

Sapporo ——— 55,304

Kure ——— 62,825

Sasebo ——— 52,607

The growth of Kure and Sasebo is attributable to the fact that they have become the sites of large ship-building yards, the property of the state.

The number of houses in Japan at the end of 1903, when the census was last taken, was 8,725,544, the average number of inmates in each house being thus 5.5.

Physical Characteristics.—The best authorities are agreed that the Japanese people do not differ physically from their Korean and Chinese neighbours as much as the inhabitants of northern Europe differ from those of southern Europe. It is true that the Japanese are shorter in stature than either the Chinese or the Koreans. Thus the average height of the Japanese male is only 5 ft. 3½ in., and that of the female 4 ft. 10½ in., whereas in the case of the Koreans and the northern Chinese the corresponding figures for males are 5 ft. 5¾ in. and 5 ft. 7 in. respectively. Yet in other physical characteristics the Japanese, the Koreans and the Chinese resemble each other so closely that, under similar conditions as to costume and coiffure, no appreciable difference is apparent. Thus since it has become the fashion for Chinese students to flock to the schools and colleges of Japan, there adopting, as do their Japanese fellow-students, Occidental garments and methods of hairdressing, the distinction of nationality ceases to be perceptible. The most exhaustive anthropological study of the Japanese has been made by Dr E. Baelz (emeritus professor of medicine in the Imperial University of Tōkyō), who enumerates the following sub-divisions of the race inhabiting the Japanese islands. The first and most important is the Manchu-Korean type; that is to say, the type which prevails in north China and in Korea. This is seen specially among the upper classes in Japan. Its characteristics are exceptional tallness combined with slenderness and elegance of figure; a face somewhat long, without any special prominence of the cheekbones but having more or less oblique eyes; an aquiline nose; a slightly receding chin; largish upper teeth; a long neck; a narrow chest; a long trunk, and delicately shaped, small hands with long, slender fingers. The most plausible hypothesis is that men of this type are descendants of Korean colonists who, in prehistoric times, settled in the province of Izumo, on the west coast of Japan, having made their way thither from the Korean peninsula by the island of Oki, being carried by the cold current which flows along the eastern coast of Korea. The second type is the Mongol. It is not very frequently found in Japan, perhaps because, under favourable social conditions, it tends to pass into the Manchu-Korean type. Its representative has a broad face, with prominent cheekbones, oblique eyes, a nose more or less flat and a wide mouth. The figure is strongly and squarely built, but this last characteristic can scarcely be called typical. There is no satisfactory theory as to the route by which the Mongols reached Japan, but it is scarcely possible to doubt that they found their way thither at one time. More important than either of these types as an element of the Japanese nation is the Malay. Small in stature, with a well-knit frame, the cheekbones prominent, the face generally round, the nose and neck short, a marked tendency to prognathism, the chest broad and well developed, the trunk long, the hands small and delicate—this Malay type is found in nearly all the islands along the east coast of the Asiatic continent as well as in southern China and in the extreme south-west of Korean peninsula. Carried northward by the warm current known as the Kuro Shiwo, the Malays seem to have landed in Kiūshiū—the most southerly of the main Japanese islands—whence they ultimately pushed northward and conquered their Manchu-Korean predecessors, the Izumo colonists. None of the above three, however, can be regarded as the earliest settlers in Japan. Before them all was a tribe of immigrants who appear to have crossed from north-eastern Asia at an epoch when the sea had not yet dug broad channels between the continent and the adjacent islands. These people—the Ainu—are usually spoken of as the aborigines of Japan. They once occupied the whole country, but were gradually driven northward by the Manchu-Koreans and the Malays, until only a mere handful of them survived in the northern island of Yezo. Like the Malay and the Mongol types they are short and thickly built, but unlike either they have prominent brows, bushy locks, round deep-set eyes, long divergent lashes, straight noses and much hair on the face and the body. In short, the Ainu suggest much closer affinity with Europeans than does any other of the types that go to make up the population of Japan. It is not to be supposed, however, that these traces of different elements indicate any lack of homogeneity in the Japanese race. Amalgamation has been completely effected in the course of long centuries, and even the Ainu, though the small surviving remnant of them now live apart, have left a trace upon their conquerors.

The typical Japanese of the present day has certain marked physical peculiarities. In the first place, the ratio of the height of his head to the length of his body is greater than it is in Europeans. The Englishman’s head is often one-eighth of the length of his body or even less, and in continental Europeans, as a rule, the ratio does not amount to one-seventh; but in the Japanese it exceeds the latter figure. In all nations men of short stature have relatively large heads, but in the case of the Japanese there appears to be some racial reason for the phenomenon. Another striking feature is shortness of legs relatively to length of trunk. In northern Europeans the leg is usually much more than one-half of the body’s length, but in Japanese the ratio is one-half or even less; so that whereas the Japanese, when seated, looks almost as tall as a European, there may be a great difference between their statures when both are standing. This special feature has been attributed to the Japanese habit of kneeling instead of sitting, but investigation shows that it is equally marked in the working classes who pass most of their time standing. In Europe the same physical traits—relative length of head and shortness of legs—distinguish the central race (Alpine) from the Teutonic, and seem to indicate an affinity between the former and the Mongols. It is in the face, however, that we find specially distinctive traits, namely, in the eyes, the eye-lashes, the cheekbones and the beard. Not that the eyeball itself differs from that of an Occidental. The difference consists in the fact that “the socket of the eye is comparatively small and shallow, and the osseous ridges at the brows being little marked, the eye is less deeply set than in the European. In fact, seen in profile, forehead and upper lip often form an unbroken line.” Then, again, the shape of the eye, as modelled by the lids, shows a striking peculiarity. For whereas the open eye is almost invariably horizontal in the European, it is often oblique in the Japanese on account of the higher level of the upper corner. “But even apart from obliqueness, the shape of the corners is peculiar in the Mongolian eye. The inner corner is partly or entirely covered by a fold of the upper lid continuing more or less into the lower lid. This fold often covers also the whole free rim of the upper lid, so that the insertion of the eye-lashes is hidden” and the opening between the lids is so narrowed as to disappear altogether at the moment of laughter. As for the eye-lashes, not only are they comparatively short and sparse, but also they converge instead of diverging, so that whereas in a European the free ends of the lashes are further distant from each other than their roots, in a Japanese they are nearer together. Prominence of cheekbones is another special feature, but it is much commoner in the lower than in the upper classes, where elongated faces may almost be said to be the rule. Finally, there is marked paucity of hair on the face of the average Japanese—apart from the Ainu—and what hair there is is nearly always straight. It is not to be supposed, however, that because the Japanese is short of stature and often finely moulded, he lacks either strength or endurance. On the contrary, he possesses both in a marked degree, and his deftness of finger is not less remarkable than the suppleness and activity of his body.

Moral Characteristics.—The most prominent trait of Japanese disposition is gaiety of heart. Emphatically of a laughter-loving nature, the Japanese passes through the world with a smile on his lips. The petty ills of life do not disturb his equanimity. He takes them as part of the day’s work, and though he sometimes grumbles, rarely, if ever, does he repine. Exceptional to this general rule, however, is a mood of pessimism which sometimes overtakes youths on the threshold of manhood. Finding the problem of life insolvable, they abandon the attempt to solve it and take refuge in the grave. It seems as though there were always a number of young men hovering on the brink of such suicidal despair. An example alone is needed finally to destroy the equilibrium. Some one throws himself over a cataract or leaps into the crater of a volcano, and immediately a score or two follow. Apparently the more picturesquely awful the manner of the demise, the greater its attractive force. The thing is not a product of insanity, as the term is usually interpreted; letters always left behind by the victims prove them to have been in full possession of their reasoning faculties up to the last moment. Some observers lay the blame at the door of Buddhism, a creed which promotes pessimism by begetting the anchorite, the ascetic and the shuddering believer in seven hells. But Buddhism did not formerly produce such incidents, and, for the rest, the faith of Shaka has little sway over the student mind in Japan. The phenomenon is modern: it is not an outcome of Japanese nature nor yet of Buddhist teaching, but is due to the stress of endeavouring to reach the standards of Western acquirement with grievously inadequate equipment, opportunities and resources. In order to support himself and pay his academic fees many a Japanese has to fall into the ranks of the physical labourer during a part of each day or night. Ill-nourished, over-worked and, it may be, disappointed, he finds the struggle intolerable and so passes out into the darkness. But he is not a normal type. The normal type is light-hearted and buoyant. One naturally expects to find, and one does find, that this moral sunshine is associated with good temper. The Japanese is exceptionally serene. Irascibility is regarded as permissible in sickly children only: grown people are supposed to be superior to displays of impatience. But there is a limit of imperturbability, and when that limit is reached, the subsequent passion is desperately vehement. It has been said that these traits go to make the Japanese soldier what he is. The hardships of a campaign cause him little suffering since he never frets over them, but the hour of combat finds him forgetful of everything save victory. In the case of the military class—and prior to the Restoration of 1867 the term “military class” was synonymous with “educated class”—this spirit of stoicism was built up by precept on a solid basis of heredity. The samurai (soldier) learned that his first characteristic must be to suppress all outward displays of emotion. Pain, pleasure, passion and peril must all find him unperturbed. The supreme test, satisfied so frequently as to be commonplace, was a shocking form of suicide performed with a placid mien. This capacity, coupled with readiness to sacrifice life at any moment on the altar of country, fief or honour, made a remarkably heroic character. On the other hand, some observers hold that the education of this stoicism was effected at the cost of the feelings it sought to conceal. In support of that theory it is pointed out that the average Japanese, man or woman, will recount a death or some other calamity in his own family with a perfectly calm, if not a smiling, face. Probably there is a measure of truth in the criticism. Feelings cannot be habitually hidden without being more or less blunted. But here another Japanese trait presents itself—politeness. There is no more polite nation in the world than the Japanese. Whether in real courtesy of heart they excel Occidentals may be open to doubt, but in all the forms of comity they are unrivalled. Now one of the cardinal rules of politeness is to avoid burdening a stranger with the weight of one’s own woes. Therefore a mother, passing from the chamber which has just witnessed her paroxysms of grief, will describe calmly to a stranger—especially a foreigner—the death of her only child. The same suppression of emotional display in public is observed in all the affairs of life. Youths and maidens maintain towards each other a demeanour of reserve and even indifference, from which it has been confidently affirmed that love does not exist in Japan. The truth is that in no other country do so many dual suicides occur—suicides of a man and woman who, unable to be united in this world, go to a union beyond the grave. It is true, nevertheless, that love as a prelude to marriage finds only a small place in Japanese ethics. Marriages in the great majority of cases are arranged with little reference to the feelings of the parties concerned. It might be supposed that conjugal fidelity must suffer from such a custom. It does suffer seriously in the case of the husband, but emphatically not in the case of the wife. Even though she be cognisant—as she often is—of her husband’s extra-marital relations, she abates nothing of the duty which she has been taught to regard as the first canon of female ethics. From many points of view, indeed, there is no more beautiful type of character than that of the Japanese woman. She is entirely unselfish; exquisitely modest without being anything of a prude; abounding in intelligence which is never obscured by egoism; patient in the hour of suffering; strong in time of affliction; a faithful wife; a loving mother; a good daughter; and capable, as history shows, of heroism rivalling that of the stronger sex. As to the question of sexual virtue and morality in Japan, grounds for a conclusive verdict are hard to find. In the interests of hygiene prostitution is licensed, and that fact is by many critics construed as proof of tolerance. But licensing is associated with strict segregation, and it results that the great cities are conspicuously free from evidences of vice, and that the streets may be traversed by women at all hours of the day and night with perfect impunity and without fear of encountering offensive spectacles. The ratio of marriages is approximately 8.46 per thousand units of the population, and the ratio of divorces is 1.36 per thousand. There are thus about 16 divorces for every hundred marriages. Divorces take place chiefly among the lower orders, who frequently treat marriage merely as a test of a couple’s suitability to be helpmates in the struggles of life. If experience develops incompatibility of temper or some other mutually repellent characteristic, separation follows as a matter of course. On the other hand, divorces among persons of the upper classes are comparatively rare, and divorces on account of a wife’s unfaithfulness are almost unknown.

Concerning the virtues of truth and probity, extremely conflicting opinions have been expressed. The Japanese samurai always prided himself on having “no second word.” He never drew his sword without using it; he never gave his word without keeping it. Yet it may be doubted whether the value attached in Japan to the abstract quality, truth, is as high as the value attached to it in England, or whether the consciousness of having told a falsehood weighs as heavily on the heart. Much depends upon the motive. Whatever may be said of the upper class, it is probably true that the average Japanese will not sacrifice expediency on the altar of truth. He will be veracious only so long as the consequences are not seriously injurious. Perhaps no more can be affirmed of any nation. The “white lie” of the Anglo-Saxon and the hōben no uso of the Japanese are twins. In the matter of probity, however, it is possible to speak with more assurance. There is undoubtedly in the lower ranks of Japanese tradesmen a comparatively large fringe of persons whose standard of commercial morality is defective. They are descendants of feudal days when the mercantile element, being counted as the dregs of the population, lost its self-respect. Against this blemish—which is in process of gradual correction—the fact has to be set that the better class of merchants, the whole of the artisans and the labouring classes in general, obey canons of probity fully on a level with the best to be found elsewhere. For the rest, frugality, industry and patience characterize all the bread-winners; courage and burning patriotism are attributes of the whole nation.

There are five qualities possessed by the Japanese in a marked degree. The first is frugality. From time immemorial the great mass of the people have lived in absolute ignorance of luxury in any form and in the perpetual presence of a necessity to economize. Amid these circumstances there has emerged capacity to make a little go a long way and to be content with the most meagre fare. The second quality is endurance. It is born of causes cognate with those which have begotten frugality. The average Japanese may be said to live without artificial heat; his paper doors admit the light but do not exclude the cold. His brazier barely suffices to warm his hands and his face. Equally is he a stranger to methods of artificial cooling. He takes the frost that winter inflicts and the fever that summer brings as unavoidable visitors. The third quality is obedience; the offspring of eight centuries passed under the shadow of military autocracy. Whatever he is authoritatively bidden to do, that the Japanese will do. The fourth quality is altruism. In the upper classes the welfare of the family has been set above the interests of each member. The fifth quality is a genius for detail. Probably this is the outcome of an extraordinarily elaborate system of social etiquette. Each generation has added something to the canons of its predecessor, and for every ten points preserved not more than one has been discarded. An instinctive respect for minutiae has thus been inculcated, and has gradually extended to all the affairs of life. That this accuracy may sometimes degenerate into triviality, and that such absorption in trifles may occasionally hide the broad horizon, is conceivable. But the only hitherto apparent evidence of such defects is an excessive clinging to the letter of the law; a marked reluctance to exercise discretion; and that, perhaps, is attributable rather to the habit of obedience. Certainly the Japanese have proved themselves capable of great things, and their achievements seem to have been helped rather than retarded by their attention to detail.

III.—Language and Literature

Language.—Since the year 1820, when Klaproth concluded that the Japanese language had sprung from the Ural-Altaic stock, philologists have busied themselves in tracing its affinities. If the theories hitherto held with regard to the origin of the Japanese people be correct, close relationship should exist between the Japanese and the Korean tongues, and possibly between the Japanese and the Chinese. Aston devoted much study to the former question, but although he proved that in construction the two have a striking similarity, he could not find any corresponding likeness in their vocabularies. As far back as the beginning of the Christian era the Japanese and the Koreans could not hold intercourse without the aid of interpreters. If then the languages of Korea and Japan had a common stock, they must have branched off from it at a date exceedingly remote. As for the languages of Japan and China, they have remained essentially different throughout some twenty centuries in spite of the fact that Japan adopted Chinese calligraphy and assimilated Chinese literature. Mr K. Hirai has done much to establish his theory that Japanese and Aryan had a common parent. But nothing has yet been substantiated. Meanwhile an inquirer is confronted by the strange fact that of three neighbouring countries between which frequent communication existed, one (China) never deviated from an ideographic script; another (Korea) invented an alphabet, and the third (Japan) devised a syllabary. Antiquaries have sought to show that Japan possessed some form of script before her first contact with either Korea or China. But such traces of prehistoric letters as are supposed to have been found seem to be corruptions of the Korean alphabet rather than independent symbols. It is commonly believed that the two Japanese syllabaries—which, though distinct in form, have identical sounds—were invented by Kukai (790) and Kibi Daijin (760) respectively. But the evidence of old documents seems to show that these syllabaries had a gradual evolution and that neither was the outcome of a single scholar’s inventive genius.

The sequence of events appears to have been this:—Japan’s earliest contact with an over-sea people was with the Koreans, and she made some tentative efforts to adapt their alphabet to the expression of her own language. Traces of these efforts survived, and inspired the idea that the art of writing was practised by the Japanese before the opening of intercourse with their continental neighbours. Korea, however, had neither a literary nor an ethical message to deliver, and thus her script failed to attract much attention. Very different was the case when China presented her noble code of Confucian philosophy and the literature embodying it. The Japanese then recognized a lofty civilization and placed themselves as pupils at its feet, learning its script and deciphering its books. Their veneration extended to ideographs. At first they adapted them frankly to their own tongue. For example, the ideographs signifying rice or metal or water in Chinese were used to convey the same ideas in Japanese. Each ideograph thus came to have two sounds, one Japanese, the other Chinese—e.g. the ideograph for rice had for Japanese sound kome and for Chinese sound bei. Nor was this the whole story. There were two epochs in Japan’s study of the Chinese language: first, the epoch when she received Confucianism through Korea; and, secondly, the epoch when she began to study Buddhism direct from China. Whether the sounds that came by Korea were corrupt, or whether the interval separating these epochs had sufficed to produce a sensible difference of pronunciation in China itself, it would seem that the students of Buddhism who flocked from Japan to the Middle Kingdom during the Sui era (A.D. 589-619) insisted on the accuracy of the pronunciation acquired there, although it diverged perceptibly from the pronunciation already recognized in Japan. Thus, in fine, each word came to have three sounds—two Chinese, known as the kan and the go, and one Japanese, known as the kun. For example:—

“KAN”
SOUND. “GO”
SOUND. JAPANESE
SOUND. MEANING.

Sei Jo Koe Voice

Nen Zen Toshi Year

Jinkan Ningen Hito no aida Human being.

As to which of the first two methods of pronunciation had chronological precedence, the weight of opinion is that the kan came later than the go. Evidently this triplication of sounds had many disadvantages, but, on the other hand, the whole Chinese language may be said to have been grafted on the Japanese. Chinese has the widest capacity of any tongue ever invented. It consists of thousands of monosyllabic roots, each having a definite meaning. These monosyllables may be used singly or combined, two, three or four at a time, so that the resulting combinations convey almost any conceivable shades of meaning. Take, for example, the word “electricity.” The very idea conveyed was wholly novel in Japan. But scholars were immediately able to construct the following:—

Lightning. Den.

Exhalation. Ki.

Electricity. Denki.

Telegram. Dempō. Hō = tidings.

Electric light. Dentō. Tō = lamp.

Negative electricity. Indenki. In = the negative principle.

Positive electricity. Yodenki. Yo = the positive principle.

Thermo-electricity. Netsudenki. Netsu = heat.

Dynamic-electricity. Ryūdo-denki. Ryūdo = fluid.

Telephone. Denwa. Wa= conversation.

Every branch of learning can thus be equipped with a vocabulary. Potent, however, as such a vehicle is for expressing thought, its ideographic script constitutes a great obstacle to general acquisition, and the Japanese soon applied themselves to minimizing the difficulty by substituting a phonetic system. Analysis showed that all the required sounds could be conveyed with 47 syllables, and having selected the ideographs that corresponded to those sounds, they reduced them, first, to forms called hiragana, and, secondly, to still more simplified forms called katakana.

Such, in brief, is the story of the Japanese language. When we come to dissect it, we find several striking characteristics. First, the construction is unlike that of any European tongue: all qualifiers precede the words they qualify, except prepositions which become postpositions. Thus instead of saying “the house of Mr Smith is in that street,” a Japanese says “Smith Mr of house that street in is.” Then there is no relative pronoun, and the resulting complication seems great to an English-speaking person, as the following illustration will show:—

Japanese. English.

Zenaku wo saiban suru tame no
Virtue vice-judging sake of
mochiitaru yūitsu no hyojun wa
used unique standard
jiai no kōi tada
benevolence of conduct only
kore nomi.
this alone.

The unique standard which is used for judging virtue or vice is benevolent conduct solely.

It will be observed that in the above sentence there are two untranslated words, wo and wa. These belong to a group of four auxiliary particles called te ni wo ha (or wa), which serve to mark the cases of nouns, te (or de) being the sign of the instrumental ablative; ni that of the dative; wo that of the objective, and wa that of the nominative. These exist in the Korean language also, but not in any other tongue. There are also polite and ordinary forms of expression, often so different as to constitute distinct languages; and there are a number of honorifics which frequently discharge the duty of pronouns. Another marked peculiarity is that active agency is never attributed to neuter nouns. A Japanese does not say “the poison killed him” but “he died on account of the poison;” nor does he say “the war has caused commodities to appreciate,” but “commodities have appreciated in consequence of the war.” That the language loses much force owing to this limitation cannot be denied: metaphor and allegory are almost completely banished.

The difficulties that confront an Occidental who attempts to learn Japanese are enormous. There are three languages to be acquired: first, the ordinary colloquial; second, the polite colloquial; and, third, the written. The ordinary colloquial differs materially from its polite form, and both are as unlike the written form as modern Italian is unlike ancient Latin. “Add to this,” writes Professor B. H. Chamberlain, “the necessity of committing to memory two syllabaries, one of which has many variant forms, and at least two or three thousand Chinese ideographs, in forms standard and cursive—ideographs, too, most of which are susceptible of three or four different readings according to circumstance,—add, further, that all these kinds of written symbols are apt to be encountered pell mell on the same page, and the task of mastering Japanese becomes almost Herculean.” In view of all this there is a strong movement in favour of romanizing the Japanese script: that is to say, abolishing the ideograph and adopting in its place the Roman alphabet. But while every one appreciates the magnitude of the relief that would thus be afforded, there has as yet been little substantial progress. A language which has been adapted from its infancy to ideographic transmission cannot easily be fitted to phonetic uses.

Dictionaries.—F. Brinkley, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary (Tōkyō, 1896); Y. Shimada, English-Japanese Dictionary, (Tōkyō, 1897); Webster’s Dictionary, trans. into Japanese, (Tōkyō, 1899); J. H. Gubbins, Dictionary of Chinese-Japanese Words (3 vols., London, 1889); J. C. Hepburn, Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary (London, 1903); E. M. Satow and I. Masakata, English-Japanese Dictionary (London, 1904).

Literature.—From the neighbouring continent the Japanese derived the art of transmitting ideas to paper. But as to the date of that acquisition there is doubt. An authenticated work compiled A.D. 720 speaks of historiographers having been appointed to collect local records for the first time in 403, from which it is to be inferred that such officials had already existed at the court. There is also a tradition that some kind of general history was compiled in 620 but destroyed by fire in 645. At all events, the earliest book now extant dates from 712. Its origin is described in its preface. When the emperor Temmu (673-686) ascended the throne, he found that there did not exist any revised collection of the fragmentary annals of the chief families. He therefore caused these annals to be collated. There happened to be among the court ladies one Hiyeda no Are, who was gifted with an extraordinary memory. Measures were taken to instruct her in the genuine traditions and the old language of former ages, the intention being to have the whole ultimately dictated to a competent scribe. But the emperor died before the project could be consummated, and for twenty-five years Are’s memory remained the sole depository of the collected annals. Then, under the auspices of the empress Gemmyō, the original plan was carried out in 712, Yasumaro being the scribe. The work that resulted is known as the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters). It has been accurately translated by Professor B. H. Chamberlain (Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. x.), who, in a preface justly regarded by students of Japan as an exegetical classic, makes the pertinent comment: “Taking the word Altaïc in its usual acceptation, viz. as the generic name of all the languages belonging to the Manchu, Mongolian, Turkish and Finnish groups, not only the archaic, but the classical, literature of Japan carries us back several centuries beyond the earliest extant documents of any other Altaïc tongue.” By the term “archaic” is to be understood the pure Japanese language of earliest times, and by the term “classical” the quasi-Chinese language which came into use for literary purposes when Japan appropriated the civilization of her great neighbours. The Kojiki is written in the archaic form: that is to say, the language is the language of old Japan, the script, although ideographic, is used phonetically only, and the case-indicators are represented by Chinese characters having the same sounds. It is a species of saga, setting forth not only the heavenly beginnings of the Japanese race, but also the story of creation, the succession of the various sovereigns and the salient events of their reigns, the whole interspersed with songs, many of which may be attributed to the 6th century, while some doubtless date from the fourth or even the third. This Kojiki marks the parting of the ways. Already by the time of its compilation the influence of Chinese civilization and Chinese literature had prevailed so greatly in Japan that the next authentic work, composed only eight years later, was completely Chinese in style and embodied Chinese traditions and Chinese philosophical doctrines, not distinguishing them from their Japanese context. This volume was called the Nihongi (Chronicles of Japan). It may be said to have wholly supplanted its predecessor in popular favour, for the classic style—that is to say, the Chinese—had now come to be regarded as the only erudite script. The Chronicles re-traversed much of the ground already gone over by the Record, preserving many of the songs in occasionally changed form, omitting some portions, supplementing others, and imparting to the whole such an exotic character as almost to disqualify the work for a place in Japanese literature. Yet this was the style which thenceforth prevailed among the litterati of Japan. “Standard Chinese soon became easier to understand than archaic Japanese, as the former alone was taught in the schools, and the native language changed rapidly during the century or two that followed the diffusion of the foreign tongue and civilization” (Chamberlain). The neglect into which the Kojiki fell lasted until the 17th century. Almost simultaneously with its appearance in type (1644) and its consequent accessibility, there arose a galaxy of scholars under whose influence the archaic style and the ancient Japanese traditions entered a period of renaissance. The story of this period and of its products has been admirably told by Sir Ernest Satow (“Revival of Pure Shintō,” Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. iii.), whose essay, together with Professor Chamberlain’s Kojiki, the same author’s introduction to The Classical Poetry of the Japanese, and Mr W. G. Aston’s Nihongi, are essential to every student of Japanese literature. To understand this 17th century renaissance, knowledge of one fact is necessary, namely, that about the year A. D. 810, a celebrated Buddhist priest, Kūkai, who had spent several years studying in China, compounded out of Buddhism, Confucianism and Shintō a system of doctrine called Ryōbu Shintō (Dual Shintō), the prominent tenet of which was that the Shintō deities were merely transmigrations of Buddhist divinities. By this device Japanese conservatism was effectually conciliated, and Buddhism became in fact the creed of the nation, its positive and practical precepts entirely eclipsing the agnostic intuitionalism of Shintō. Against this hybrid faith several Japanese scholars arrayed themselves in the 17th and 18th centuries, the greatest of them being Mabuchi and Motoori. The latter’s magnum opus, Kojikiden (Exposition of the Record of Ancient Matters), declared by Chamberlain to be “perhaps the most admirable work of which Japanese erudition can boast,” consists of 44 large volumes, devoted to elucidating the Kojiki and resuscitating the Shintō cult as it existed in the earliest days. This great work of reconstruction was only one feature of the literary activity which marked the 17th and 18th centuries, when, under Tokugawa rule, the blessing of long-unknown peace came to the nation. Iyeyasu himself devoted the last years of his life to collecting ancient manuscripts. In his country retreat at Shizuoka he formed one of the richest libraries ever brought together in Japan, and by will he bequeathed the Japanese section of it to his eighth son, the feudal chief of Owari, and the Chinese section to his ninth son, the prince of Kishū, with the result that under the former feudatory’s auspices two works of considerable merit were produced treating of ancient ceremonials and supplementing the Nihongi. Much more memorable, however, was a library formed by Iyeyasu’s grandson the feudal chief of Mito (1662-1700), who not only collected a vast quantity of books hitherto scattered among Shintō and Buddhist monasteries and private houses, but also employed a number of scholars to compile a history unprecedented in magnitude, the Dai-Nihon-shi. It consisted of 240 volumes, and it became at once the standard in its own branch of literature. Still more comprehensive was a book emanating from the same source and treating of court ceremonials. It ran to more than 500 volumes, and the emperor honoured the work by bestowing on it the title Reigi Ruiten (Rules of Ceremonials). These compilations together with the Nihon Gwaishi (History of Japan Outside the Court), written by Rai Sanyo and published in 1827, constituted the chief sources of historical knowledge before the Meiji era. Rai Sanyo devoted twenty years to the preparation of his 22 volumes and took his materials from 259 Japanese and Chinese works. But neither he nor his predecessors recognized in history anything more than a vehicle for recording the mere sequence of events and their relations, together with some account of the personages concerned. Their volumes make profoundly dry reading. Vicarious interest, however, attaches to the productions of the Mito School on account of the political influence they exercised in rehabilitating the nation’s respect for the throne by unveiling the picture of an epoch prior to the usurpations of military feudalism. The struggles of the great rival clans, replete with episodes of the most tragic and stirring character, inspired quasi-historical narrations of a more popular character, which often took the form of illuminated scrolls. But it was not until the Meiji era that history, in the modern sense of the term, began to be written. During recent times many students have turned their attention to this branch of literature. Works of wide scope and clear insight have been produced, and the Historiographers’ section in the Imperial University of Tōkyō has been for several years engaged in collecting and collating materials for a history which will probably rank with anything of the kind in existence.

In their poetry above everything the Japanese have remained impervious to alien influences. It owes this conservation to its prosody. Without rhyme, without variety of metre, without elasticity of dimensions, it is also without known counterpart. To alter it in any way would be to deprive it of all distinguishing characteristics. At some remote date a Japanese maker of songs seems to have discovered that a peculiar and very fascinating rhythm is produced by lines containing 5 syllables and 7 syllables alternately. That is Japanese poetry (uta or tanka). There are generally five lines: the first and third consisting of 5 syllables, the second, fourth and fifth of 7, making a total of 31 in all. The number of lines is not compulsory: sometimes they may reach to thirty, forty or even more, but the alternation of 5 and 7 syllables is compulsory. The most attenuated form of all is the hokku (or haikai) which consists of only three lines, namely, 17 syllables. Necessarily the ideas embodied in such a narrow vehicle must be fragmentary. Thus it results that Japanese poems are, for the most part, impressionist; they suggest a great deal more than they actually express. Here is an example:—

Momiji-ha wo
Kaze ni makasete
Miru yori mo
Hakanaki mono wa
Inochi nari keri More fleeting than the glint of
withered leaf wind-blown, the
thing called life.

There is no English metre with this peculiar cadence.

It is not to be inferred that the writers of Japan, enamoured as they were of Chinese ideographs and Chinese style, deliberately excluded everything Chinese from the realm of poetry. On the contrary, many of them took pleasure in composing versicles to which Chinese words were admitted and which showed something of the “parallelism” peculiar to Chinese poetry, since the first ideograph of the last line was required to be identical with the final ideograph. But rhyme was not attempted, and the syllabic metre of Japan was preserved, the alternation of 5 and 7 being, however, dispensed with. Such couplets were called shi to distinguish them from the pure Japanese uta or tanka. The two greatest masters of Japanese poetry were Hitomaro and Akahito, both of the early 8th century, and next to them stands Tsurayuki, who flourished at the beginning of the 10th century, and is not supposed to have transmitted his mantle to any successor. The choicest productions of the former two with those of many other poets were brought together in 756 and embodied in a book called the Manyōshū (Collection of a Myriad Leaves). The volume remained unique until the beginning of the 10th century, when (A.D. 905) Tsurayuki and three coadjutors compiled the Kokinshū (Collection of Odes Ancient and Modern), the first of twenty-one similar anthologies between the 11th and the 15th centuries, which constitute the Niju-ichi Dai-shū (Anthologies of the One-and-Twenty Reigns). If to these we add the Hyaku-ninshū (Hundred Odes by a Hundred Poets) brought together by Teika Kyō in the 13th century, we have all the classics of Japanese poetry. For the composition of the uta gradually deteriorated from the end of the 9th century, when a game called uta-awase became a fashionable pastime, and aristocratic men and women tried to string together versicles of 31 syllables, careful of the form and careless of the thought. The uta-awase, in its later developments, may not unjustly be compared to the Occidental game of bouts-rimés. The poetry of the nation remained immovable in the ancient groove until very modern times, when, either by direct access to the originals or through the medium of very defective translations, the nation became acquainted with the masters of Occidental song. A small coterie of authors, headed by Professor Toyama, then attempted to revolutionize Japanese poetry by recasting it on European lines. But the project failed signally, and indeed it may well be doubted whether the Japanese language can be adapted to such uses.

It was under the auspices of an empress (Suiko) that the first historical manuscript is said to have been compiled in 620. It was under the auspices of an empress (Gemmyō) that the Record of Ancient Matters was transcribed (712) from the lips of a court lady. And it was under the auspices of an empress that the Chronicles of Japan were composed (720). To women, indeed, from the 8th century onwards may be said to have been entrusted the guardianship of the pure Japanese language, the classical, or Chinese, form being adopted by men. The distinction continued throughout the ages. To this day the spoken language of Japanese women is appreciably simpler and softer than that of the men, and to this day while the educated woman uses the hiragana syllabary in writing, eschews Chinese words and rarely pens an ideograph, the educated man employs the ideograph entirely, and translates his thoughts as far as possible into the mispronounced Chinese words without recourse to which it would be impossible for him to discuss any scientific subject, or even to refer to the details of his daily business. Japan was thus enriched with two works of very high merit, the Genji Monogatari (c. 1004) and the Makura no Zōshi (about the same date). The former, by Murasaki no Shikibu—probably a pseudonym—was the first novel composed in Japan. Before her time there had been many monogatari (narratives), but all consisted merely of short stories, mythical or quasi-historical, whereas Murasaki no Shikibu did for Japan what Fielding and Richardson did for England. Her work was “a prose epic of real life,” the life of her hero, Genji. Her language is graceful and natural, her sentiments are refined and sober; and, as Mr Aston well says, her “story flows on easily from one scene of real life to another, giving us a varied and minutely detailed picture of life and society in Kiōto, such as we possess for no other country at the same period.” The Makura no Zōshi (Pillow Sketches), like the Genji Monogatari, was by a noble lady—Sei Shōnagon—but it is simply a record of daily events and fugitive thoughts, though not in the form of a diary. The book is one of the most natural and unaffected compositions ever written. Undesignedly it conveys a wonderfully realistic picture of aristocratic life and social ethics in Kiōto at the beginning of the 11th century. “If we compare it with anything that Europe has to show at this period, it must be admitted that it is indeed a remarkable work. What a revelation it would be if we had the court life of Alfred’s or Canute’s reign depicted to us in a similar way?”

The period from the early part of the 14th century to the opening of the 17th is generally regarded as the dark age of Japanese literature. The constant wars of the time left their impress upon everything. To them is due the fact that the two principal works compiled during this epoch were, one political, the other quasi-historical. In the former, Jinkōshōtō-ki (History of the True Succession of the Divine Monarchs), Kitabatake Chikafusa (1340) undertook to prove that of the two sovereigns then disputing for supremacy in Japan, Go-Daigo was the rightful monarch; in the latter, Taihei-ki (History of Great Peace), Kojima (1370) devoted his pages to describing the events of contemporaneous history. Neither work can be said to possess signal literary merit, but both had memorable consequences. For the Jinkōshōtō-ki, by its strong advocacy of the mikado’s administrative rights as against the usurpations of military feudalism, may be said to have sowed the seeds of Japan’s modern polity; and the Taihei-ki, by its erudite diction, skilful rhetoric, simplification of old grammatical constructions and copious interpolation of Chinese words, furnished a model for many imitators and laid the foundations of Japan’s 19th-century style. The Taihei-ki produced another notable effect; it inspired public readers who soon developed into historical raconteurs; a class of professionals who are almost as much in vogue to-day as they were 500 years ago. Belonging to about the same period as the Jinkōshōtō-ki, another classic occupies a leading place in Japanese esteem. It is the Tsure-zure-gusa (Materials for Dispelling Ennui), by Kenkō-bōshi, described by Mr Aston as “one of the most delightful oases in Japanese literature; a collection of short sketches, anecdotes and essays on all imaginable subjects, something in the manner of Selden’s Table Talk.”

The so-called dark age of Japanese literature was not entirely unproductive: it gave the drama (Nō) to Japan. Tradition ascribes the origin of the drama to a religious dance of a pantomimic character, called Kagura and associated with Shintō ceremonials. The Nō, however, owed its development mainly to Buddhist influence. During the medieval era of internecine strife the Buddhist priests were the sole depositaries of literary talent, and seeing that, from the close of the 14th century, the Shintō mime (Kagura) was largely employed by the military class to invoke or acknowledge the assistance of the gods, the monks of Buddha set themselves to compose librettos for this mime, and the performance, thus modified, received the name of Nō. Briefly speaking, the Nō was a dance of the most stately character, adapted to the incidents of dramas “which embrace within their scope a world of legendary lore, of quaint fancies and of religious sentiment.” Their motives were chiefly confined to such themes as the law of retribution to which all human beings are subjected, the transitoriness of life and the advisability of shaking off from one’s feet the dust of this sinful world. But some were of a purely martial nature. This difference is probably explained by the fact that the idea of thus modifying the Kagura had its origin in musical recitations from the semi-romantic semi-historical narratives of the 14th century. Such recitations were given by itinerant Bonzes, and it is easy to understand the connexion between them and the Nō. Very soon the Nō came to occupy in the estimation of the military class a position similar to that held by the tanka as a literary pursuit, and the gagaku as a musical, in the Imperial court. All the great aristocrats not only patronized the Nō but were themselves ready to take part in it. Costumes of the utmost magnificence were worn, and the chiselling of masks for the use of the performers occupied scores of artists and ranked as a high glyptic accomplishment. There are 335 classical dramas of this kind in a compendium called the Yōkyoka Tsūge, and many of them are inseparably connected with the names of Kwanami Kiyotsugu (1406) and his son Motokiyo (1455), who are counted the fathers of the art. For a moment, when the tide of Western civilization swept over Japan, the Nō seemed likely to be permanently submerged. But the renaissance of nationalism (kokusui hoson) saved the venerable drama, and owing to the exertions of Prince Iwakura, the artist Hōsho Kuro and Umewaka Minoru, it stands as high as ever in popular favour. Concerning the five schools into which the Nō is divided, their characteristics and their differences—these are matters of interest to the initiated alone.

The Japanese are essentially a laughter-loving people. They are highly susceptible of tragic emotions, but they turn gladly to the brighter phases of life. Hence a need was soon felt of something to dispel the pessimism of the Nō, and that something took the form of comedies played in the interludes of the Nō and called Kyōgen (mad words). The Kyōgen needs no elaborate description: it is a pure farce, never immodest or vulgar.

The classic drama Nō and its companion the Kyōgen had two children, the Jōruri and the Kabuki. They were born at the close of the 16th century and they owed their origin to the growing influence of the commercial class, who asserted a right to be amused but were excluded from enjoyment of the aristocratic Nō and the Kyōgen. The Jōruri is a dramatic ballad, sung or recited to the accompaniment of the samisen and in unison with the movements of puppets. It came into existence in Kiōto and was thence transferred to Yedo (Tōkyō), where the greatest of Japanese playwrights, Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724), and a musician of exceptional talent, Takemoto Gidayū, collaborated to render this puppet drama a highly popular entertainment. It flourished for nearly 200 years in Yedo, and is still occasionally performed in Osaka. Like the Nō the Jōruri dealt always with sombre themes, and was supplemented by the Kabuki (farce). This last owed its inception to a priestess who, having abandoned her holy vocation at the call of love, espoused dancing as a means of livelihood and trained a number of girls for the purpose. The law presently interdicted these female comedians (onna-kabuki) in the interests of public morality, and they were succeeded by “boy comedians” (wakashu-kabuki) who simulated women’s ways and were vetoed in their turn, giving place to yaro-kabuki (comedians with queues). Gradually the Kabuki developed the features of a genuine theatre; the actor and the playwright were discriminated, and, the performances taking the form of domestic drama (Wagoto and Sewamono) or historical drama (Aragoto or Jidaimono), actors of perpetual fame sprang up, as Sakata Tōjurō and Ichikawa Danjinrō (1660-1704). Mimetic posture-dances (Shosagoto) were always introduced as interludes; past and present indiscriminately contributed to the playwright’s subjects; realism was carried to extremes; a revolving stage and all mechanical accessories were supplied; female parts were invariably taken by males, who attained almost incredible skill in these simulations; a chorus—relic of the Nō—chanted expositions of profound sentiments or thrilling incidents; and histrionic talent of the very highest order was often displayed. But the Kabuki-za and its yakusha (actors) remained always a plebeian institution. No samurai frequented the former or associated with the latter. With the introduction of Western civilization in modern times, however, the theatre ceased to be tabooed by the aristocracy. Men and women of all ranks began to visit it; the emperor himself consented (1887) to witness a performance by the great stars of the stage at the private residence of Marquis Inouye; a dramatic reform association was organized by a number of prominent noblemen and scholars; drastic efforts were made to purge the old historical dramas of anachronisms and inconsistencies, and at length a theatre (the Yuraku-za) was built on purely European lines, where instead of sitting from morning to night witnessing one long-drawn-out drama with interludes of whole farces, a visitor may devote only a few evening-hours to the pastime. The Shosagoto has not been abolished, nor is there any reason why it should be. It has graces and beauties of its own. There remains to be noted the incursion of amateurs into the histrionic realm. In former times the actor’s profession was absolutely exclusive in Japan. Children were trained to wear their fathers’ mantles, and the idea that a non-professional could tread the hallowed ground of the stage did not enter any imagination. But with the advent of the new regimen in Meiji days there arose a desire for social plays depicting the life of the modern generation, and as these “croppy dramas” (zampatsu-mono)—so called in allusion to the European method of cutting the hair close—were not included in the repertoire of the orthodox theatre, amateur troupes (known as sōshi-yakusha) were organized to fill the void. Even Shakespeare has been played by these amateurs, and the abundant wit of the Japanese is on the way to enrich the stage with modern farces of unquestionable merit.

The Tokugawa era (1603-1867), which popularized the drama, had other memorable effects upon Japanese literature. Yedo, the shōgun’s capital, displaced Kiōto as the centre of literary activity. Its population of more than a million, including all sorts and conditions of men—notably wealthy merchants and mechanics—constituted a new audience to which authors had to address themselves; and an unparalleled development of mental activity necessitated wholesale drafts upon the Chinese vocabulary. To this may be attributed the appearance of a group of men known as kangakusha (Chinese scholars). The most celebrated among them were: Fujiwara Seikwa (1560-1619), who introduced his countrymen to the philosophy of Chu-Hi; Hayashi Rasan (1583-1657), who wrote 170 treatises on scholastic and moral subjects; Kaibara Ekken (1630-1714), teacher of a fine system of ethics; Arai Hakuseki (1657-1725), historian, philosopher, statesman and financier: and Muro Kiusō, the second great exponent of Chu-Hi’s philosophy. “Japan owes a profound debt of gratitude to the kangakusha of that time. For their day and country they were emphatically the salt of earth.” But naturally not all were believers in the same philosophy. The fervour of the followers of Chu-Hi (the orthodox school) could not fail to provoke opposition. Thus some arose who declared allegiance to the idealistic intuitionalism of Wang Yang-ming, and others advocated direct study of the works of Confucius and Mencius. Connected with this rejection of Chu-Hi were such eminent names as those of Itō Junsai (1627-1718), Itō Tōgai (1617-1736), Ogyu Sōrai (1666-1728) and Dazai Shuntai (1679-1747). These Chinese scholars made no secret of their contempt for Buddhism, and in their turn they were held in aversion by the Buddhists and the Japanese scholars (wagakusha), so that the second half of the 18th century was a time of perpetual wrangling and controversy. The worshippers at the shrine of Chinese philosophy evoked a reactionary spirit of nationalism, just as the excessive worship of Occidental civilization was destined to do in the 19th century.

Apart from philosophical researches and the development of the drama, as above related, the Tokugawa era is remarkable for folk-lore, moral discourses, fiction and a peculiar form of poetry. This last does not demand much attention. Its principal variety is the haikai, which is nothing more than a tanka shorn of its concluding fourteen syllables, and therefore virtually identical with the hokku, already described. The name of Bashō is immemorially associated with this kind of lilliputian versicle, which reached the extreme of impressionism. A more important addition to Japanese literature was made in the 17th century in the form of children’s tales (Otogibanashi). They are charmingly simple and graceful, and they have been rendered into English again and again since the beginning of the Meiji era. But whether they are to be regarded as genuine folk-lore or merely as a branch of the fiction of the age when they first appeared in book form, remains uncertain. Of fiction proper there was an abundance. The pioneer of this kind of literature is considered to have been Saikaku (1641-1693), who wrote sketches of everyday life as he saw it, short tales of some merit and novels which deal with the most disreputable phases of human existence. His notable successors in the same line were two men of Kiōto, named Jishō (1675-1745) and Kiseki (1666-1716). They had their own publishing house, and its name Hachimonji-ya (figure-of-eight store) came to be indelibly associated with this kind of literature. But these men did little more than pave the way for the true romantic novel, which first took shape under the hand of Santō Kyōden (1761-1816), and culminated in the works of Bakin, Tanehiko, Samba, Ikku, Shunsui and their successors. Of nearly all the books in this class it may be said that they deal largely in sensationalism and pornography, though it does not follow that their language is either coarse or licentious. The life of the virtuous Japanese woman being essentially uneventful, these romancists not unnaturally sought their female types among dancing-girls and courtesans. The books were profusely illustrated with woodcuts and chromoxylographs from pictures of the ukiyoe masters, who, like the playwright, the actor and the romancer, ministered to the pleasure of the “man in the street.” Brief mention must also be made of two other kinds of books belonging to this epoch; namely, the Shingaku-sho (ethical essays) and the Jitsuroku-mono (true records). The latter were often little more than historical novels founded on facts; and the former, though nominally intended to engraft the doctrines of Buddhism and Shintō upon the philosophy of China, were really of rationalistic tendency.

Although the incursions made into Chinese philosophy and the revival of Japanese traditions during the Tokugawa Epoch contributed materially to the overthrow of feudalism and the restoration of the Throne’s administrative power, the immediate tendency of the last two events was to divert the nation’s attention wholly from the study of either Confucianism or the Record of Ancient Matters. A universal thirst set in for Occidental science and literature, so that students occupied themselves everywhere with readers and grammars modelled on European lines rather than with the Analects or the Kojiki. English at once became the language of learning. Thus the three colleges which formed the nucleus of the Imperial University of Tōkyō were presided over by a graduate of Michigan College (Professor Toyama), a member of the English bar (Professor Hōzumi) and a graduate of Cambridge (Baron Kikuchi). If Japan was eminently fortunate in the men who directed her political career at that time, she was equally favoured in those that presided over her literary culture. Fukuzawa Yukichi, founder of the Keiō Gijuku, now one of Japan’s four universities, did more than any of his contemporaries by writing and speaking to spread a knowledge of the West, its ways and its thoughts, and Nakamura Keiu laboured in the same cause by translating Smiles’s Self-help and Mill’s Representative Government. A universal geography (by Uchida Masao); a history of nations (by Mitsukuri Rinshō); a translation of Chambers’s Encyclopaedia by the department of education; Japanese renderings of Herbert Spencer and of Guizot and Buckle—all these made their appearance during the first fourteen years of the epoch. The influence of politics may be strongly traced in the literature of that time, for the first romances produced by the new school were all of a political character: Keikoku Bidan (Model for Statesmen, with Epaminondas for hero) by Yano Fumio; Setchūbai (Plum-blossoms in snow) and Kwakwan-ō (Nightingale Among Flowers) by Suyehiro. This idea of subserving literature to political ends is said to have been suggested by Nakae Tokusuke’s translation of Rousseau’s Contrat social. The year 1882 saw Julius Caesar in a Japanese dress. The translator was Tsubouchi Shōyō, one of the greatest writers of the Meiji era. His Shōsetsu Shinsui (Essentials of a Novel) was an eloquent plea for realism as contrasted with the artificiality of the characters depicted by Bakin, and his own works illustrative of this theory took the public by storm. He also brought out the first literary periodical published in Japan, namely, the Waseda Bungaku, so called because Tsubouchi was professor of literature in the Waseda University, an institution founded by Count Okuma, whose name cannot be omitted from any history of Meiji literature, not as an author but as a patron. As illustrating the rapid development of familiarity with foreign authors, a Japanese retrospect of the Meiji era notes that whereas Macaulay’s Essays were in the curriculum of the Imperial University in 1881-1882, they were studied, five or six years later, in secondary schools, and pupils of the latter were able to read with understanding the works of Goldsmith, Tennyson and Thackeray. Up to Tsubouchi’s time the Meiji literature was all in the literary language, but there was then formed a society calling itself Kenyūsha, some of whose associates—as Bimyōsai—used the colloquial language in their works, while others—as Kōyō, Rōhan, &c.—went back to the classical diction of the Genroku era (1655-1703). Rōhan is one of the most renowned of Japan’s modern authors, and some of his historical romances have had wide vogue. Meanwhile the business of translating went on apace. Great numbers of European and American authors were rendered into Japanese—Calderon, Lytton, Disraeli, Byron, Shakespeare, Milton, Turgueniev, Carlyle, Daudet, Emerson, Hugo, Heine, De Quincey, Dickens, Körner, Goethe—their name is legion and their influence upon Japanese literature is conspicuous. In 1888 a special course of German literature was inaugurated at the Imperial University, and with it is associated the name of Mori Ogai, Japan’s most faithful interpreter of German thought and speech. Virtually every literary magnate of the Occident has found one or more interpreters in modern Japan. Accurate reviewers of the era have divided it into periods of two or three years each, according to the various groups of foreign authors that were in vogue, and every year sees a large addition to the number of Japanese who study the masterpieces of Western literature in the original.

Newspapers, as the term is understood in the West, did not exist in old Japan, though block-printed leaflets were occasionally issued to describe some specially stirring event. Yet the Japanese were not entirely unacquainted with journalism. During the last decades of the factory at Deshima the Dutch traders made it a yearly custom to submit to the governor of Nagasaki selected extracts from newspapers arriving from Batavia, and these extracts, having been translated into Japanese, were forwarded to the court in Yedo together with their originals. To such compilations the name of Oranda fusetsu-sho (Dutch Reports) was given. Immediately after the conclusion of the first treaty in 1857, the Yedo authorities instructed the office for studying foreign books (Bunsho torishirabe-dokoro) to translate excerpts from European and American journals. Occasionally these translations were copied for circulation among officials, but the bulk of the people knew nothing of them. Thus the first real newspaper did not see the light until 1861, when a Yedo publisher brought out the Batavia News, a compilation of items from foreign newspapers, printed on Japanese paper from wooden blocks. Entirely devoid of local interest, this journal did not survive for more than a few months. It was followed, in 1864, by the Shimbun-shi (News), which was published in Yokohama, with Kishida Ginkō for editor and John Hiko for sub-editor. The latter had been cast away, many years previously, on the coast of the United States and had become a naturalized American citizen. He retained a knowledge of spoken Japanese, but the ideographic script was a sealed book to him, and his editorial part was limited to oral translations from American journals which the editor committed to writing. The Shimbun-shi essayed to collect domestic news as well as foreign. It was published twice a month and might possibly have created a demand for its wares had not the editor and sub-editor left for America after the issue of the 10th number. The example, however, had now been set. During the three years that separated the death of the Shimbun-shi from the birth of the Meiji era (October 1867) no less than ten quasi-journals made their appearance. They were in fact nothing better than inferior magazines, printed from wood-blocks, issued weekly or monthly, and giving little evidence of enterprise or intellect, though connected with them were the names of men destined to become famous in the world of literature, as Fukuchi Genichiro, Tsūji Shinji (afterwards Baron Tsūji) and Suzuki Yuichi. These publications attracted little interest and exercised no influence. Journalism was regarded as a mere pastime. The first evidence of its potentialities was furnished by the Kōko Shimbun (The World) under the editorship of Fukuchi Genichiro and Sasano Dempei. To many Japanese observers it seemed that the restoration of 1867 had merely transferred the administrative authority from the Tokugawa Shōgun to the clans of Satsuma and Chōshū. The Kōko Shimbun severely attacked the two clans as specious usurpers. It was not in the mood of Japanese officialdom at that time to brook such assaults. The Kōko Shimbun was suppressed; Fukuchi was thrust into prison, and all journals or periodicals except those having official sanction were vetoed. At the beginning of 1868 only two newspapers remained in the field. Very soon, however, the enlightened makers of modern Japan appreciated the importance of journalism, and in 1871 the Shimbun Zasshi (News Periodical) was started under the auspices of the illustrious Kido. Shortly afterwards there appeared in Yokohama—whence it was subsequently transferred to Tōkyō—the Mainichi Shimbun (Daily News), the first veritable daily and also the first journal printed with movable types and foreign presses. Its editors were Numa Morikage, Shimada Saburo and Koizuka Ryū, all destined to become celebrated not only in the field of journalism but also in that of politics. It has often been said of the Japanese that they are slow in forming a decision but very quick to act upon it. This was illustrated in the case of journalism. In 1870 the country possessed only two quasi-journals, both under official auspices. In 1875 it possessed over 100 periodicals and daily newspapers. The most conspicuous were the Nichi Nichi Shimbun (Daily News), the Yūbin Hōchi (Postal Intelligence), the Chōya Shimbun (Government and People News), the Akebono Shimbun (The Dawn), and the Mainichi Shimbun (Daily News). These were called “the five great journals.” The Nichi Nichi Shimbun had an editor of conspicuous literary ability in Fukuchi Genichirō, and the Hōchi Shimbun, its chief rival, received assistance from such men as Yano Fumio, Fujita Makichi, Inukai Ki and Minoura Katsundo. Japan had not yet any political parties, but the ferment that preceded their birth was abroad. The newspaper press being almost entirely in the hands of men whose interests suggested wider opening of the door to official preferment, nearly all editorial pens were directed against the government. So strenuous did this campaign become that, in 1875, a press law was enacted empowering the minister of home affairs and the police to suspend or suppress a journal and to fine or imprison its editor without public trial. Many suffered under this law, but the ultimate effect was to invest the press with new popularity, and very soon the newspapers conceived a device which effectually protected their literary staff, for they employed “dummy editors” whose sole function was to go to prison in lieu of the true editor.

Japanese journalistic writing in these early years of Meiji was marred by extreme and pedantic classicism. There had not yet been any real escape from the tradition which assigned the crown of scholarship to whatever author drew most largely upon the resources of the Chinese language and learning. The example set by the Imperial court, and still set by it, did not tend to correct this style. The sovereign, whether speaking by rescript or by ordinance, never addressed the bulk of his subjects. His words were taken from sources so classical as to be intelligible to only the highly educated minority. The newspapers sacrificed their audience to their erudition and preferred classicism to circulation. Their columns were thus a sealed book to the whole of the lower middle classes and to the entire female population. The Yomiuri Shimbun (Buy and Read News) was the first to break away from this pernicious fashion. Established in 1875, it adopted a style midway between the classical and the colloquial, and it appended the syllabic characters to each ideograph, so that its columns became intelligible to every reader of ordinary education. It was followed by the Yeiri Shimbun (Pictorial Newspaper), the first to insert illustrations and to publish feuilleton romances. Both of these journals devoted space to social news, a radical departure from the austere restrictions observed by their aristocratic contemporaries.

The year 1881 saw the nation divided into political parties and within measured distance of constitutional government. Thenceforth the great majority of the newspapers and periodicals ranged themselves under the flag of this or that party. An era of embittered polemics ensued. The journals, while fighting continuously against each other’s principles, agreed in attacking the ministry, and the latter found it necessary to establish organs of its own which preached the German system of state autocracy. Editors seemed to be incapable of rising above the dead level of political strife, and their utterances were not relieved even by a semblance of fairness. Readers turned away in disgust, and journal after journal passed out of existence. The situation was saved by a newspaper which from the outset of its career obeyed the best canons of journalism. Born in 1882, the Jiji Shimpō (Times) enjoyed the immense advantage of having its policy controlled by one of the greatest thinkers of modern Japan, Fukuzawa Yukichi. Its basic principle was liberty of the individual, liberty of the family and liberty of the nation; it was always found on the side of broad-minded justice, and it derived its materials from economic, social and scientific sources. Other newspapers of greatly improved character followed the Jiji Shimpō, especially notable among them being the Kokumin Shimbun.

In the meanwhile Osaka, always pioneer in matters of commercial enterprise, had set the example of applying the force of capital to journalistic development. Tōkyō journals were all on a literary or political basis, but the Osaka Asahi Shimbun (Osaka Rising Sun News) was purely a business undertaking. Its proprietor, Maruyama Ryūhei, spared no expense to obtain news from all quarters of the world, and for the first time the Japanese public learned what stores of information may be found in the columns of a really enterprising journal. Very soon the Asahi had a keen competitor in the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun (Osaka Daily News) and these papers ultimately crushed all rivals in Osaka. In 1888 Maruyama established another Asahi in Tōkyō, and thither he was quickly followed by his Osaka rival, which in Tōkyō took the name of Mainichi Dempō (Daily Telegraph). These two newspapers now stand alone as purveyors of copious telegraphic news, and in the next rank, not greatly lower, comes the Jiji Shimpō.

With the opening of the diet in 1890, politics again obtruded themselves into newspaper columns, but as practical living issues now occupied attention, readers were no longer wearied by the abstract homilies of former days. Moreover, freedom of the press was at length secured. Already (1887) the government had voluntarily made a great step in advance by divesting itself of the right to imprison or fine editors by executive order. But it reserved the power of suppressing or suspending a newspaper, and against that reservation a majority of the lower house voted, session after session, only to see the bill rejected by the peers, who shared the government’s opinion that to grant a larger measure of liberty would certainly encourage licence. Not until 1897 was this opposition fully overcome. A new law, passed by both houses and confirmed by the emperor, took from the executive all power over journals, except in cases of lèse majesté, and nothing now remains of the former arbitrary system except that any periodical having a political complexion is required to deposit security varying from 175 to 1000 yen. The result has falsified all sinister forebodings. A much more moderate tone pervades the writings of the press since restrictions were entirely removed, and although there are now 1775 journals and periodicals published throughout the empire, with a total annual circulation of some 700 million copies, intemperance of language, such as in former times would have provoked official interference, is practically unknown to-day. Moreover, the best Japanese editors have caught with remarkable aptitude the spirit of modern journalism. But a few years ago they used to compile laborious essays, in which the inspiration was drawn from Occidental textbooks, and the alien character of the source was hidden under a veneer of Chinese aphorisms. To-day they write terse, succinct, closely-reasoned articles, seldom diffuse, often witty; and generally free from extravagance of thought or diction. Incidentally they are hastening the assimilation of the written and the spoken languages (genbun itchi) which may possibly prelude a still greater reform, abolition of the ideographic script. Yet, with few exceptions, the profession of journalism is not remunerative. Very low rates of subscription, and almost prohibitory charges for advertising, are chiefly to blame. The vicissitudes of the enterprise may be gathered from the fact that, whereas 2767 journals and periodicals were started between 1889 and 1894 (inclusive), no less than 2465 ceased publishing. The largest circulation recorded in 1908 was about 150,000 copies daily, and the honour of attaining that exceptional figure belonged to the Osaka Asahi Shimbun.

(F. By.)

IV.—Japanese Art

Painting and Engraving.—In Japanese art the impressionist element is predominant. Pictures, as the term is understood in Europe, can scarcely be said to have existed at any time in Japan. The artist did not depict emotion: he depicted the subjects that produce emotion. Therefore he took his motives from nature rather than from history; or, if he borrowed from the latter, what he selected was a scene, not the pains or the passions of its actors. Moreover, he never exhausted his subject, but was always careful to leave a wide margin for the imagination of the spectator. This latter consideration sometimes impelled him to represent things which, to European eyes, seem trivial or insignificant, but which really convey hints of deep significance. In short, Japanese pictures are like Japanese poetry: they do not supply thought but only awaken it. Often their methods show conventionalism, but it is conventionalism so perfect and free in its allurements that nature seems to suggest both the motive and the treatment. Thus though neither botanically nor ornithologically correct, their flowers and their birds show a truth to nature, and a habit of minute observation in the artist, which cannot be too much admired. Every blade of grass, each leaf and feather, has been the object of loving and patient study.

It has been rashly assumed by some writers that the Japanese do not study from nature. All their work is an emphatic protest against this supposition. It can in fact be shown conclusively that the Japanese have derived all their fundamental ideas of symmetry, so different from ours, from a close study of nature and her processes in the attainment of endless variety. A special feature of their art is that, while often closely and minutely imitating natural objects, such as birds, flowers and fishes, the especial objects of their predilection and study, they frequently combine the facts of external nature with a conventional mode of treatment better suited to their purpose. During the long apprenticeship that educated Japanese serve to acquire the power of writing with the brush the complicated characters borrowed from Chinese, they unconsciously cultivate the habit of minute observation and the power of accurate imitation, and with these the delicacy of touch and freedom of hand which only long practice can give. A hair’s-breadth deviation in a line is fatal to good calligraphy, both among the Chinese and the Japanese. When they come to use the pencil in drawing, they already possess accuracy of eye and free command of the brush. Whether a Japanese art-worker sets himself to copy what he sees before him or to give play to his fancy in combining what he has seen with some ideal in his mind, the result shows perfect facility of execution and easy grace in all the lines.

The beauties of the human form never appealed to the Japanese artist. Associating the nude solely with the performance of menial tasks, he deemed it worse than a solecism to transfer such subjects to his canvas, and thus a wide field of motive was closed to him. On the other hand, the draped figure received admirable treatment from his brush, and the naturalistic school of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries reached a high level of skill in depicting men, women and children in motion. Nor has there ever been a Japanese Landseer. Sosen’s monkeys and badgers constitute the one possible exception, but the horses, oxen, deer, tigers, dogs, bears, foxes and even cats of the best Japanese artists were ill drawn and badly modelled. In the field of landscape the Japanese painter fully reached the eminence on which his great Chinese masters stood. He did not obey the laws of linear perspective as they are formulated in the Occident, nor did he show cast shadows, but his aerial perspective and his foreshortening left nothing to be desired. It has been suggested that he deliberately eschewed chiaroscuro because his pictures, destined invariably to hang in an alcove, were required to be equally effective from every aspect and had also to form part of a decorative scheme. But the more credible explanation is that he merely followed Chinese example in this matter, as he did also in linear perspective, accepting without question the curious canon that lines converge as they approach the spectator.

It is in the realm of decorative art that the world has chiefly benefited by contact with Japan. Her influence is second only to that of Greece. Most Japanese decorative designs consist of natural objects, treated sometimes in a more or less conventional manner, but always distinguished by delicacy of touch, graceful freedom of conception and delightfully harmonized tints. Perhaps the admiration which the Japanese artist has won in this field is due not more to his wealth of fancy and skilful adaptation of natural forms, than to his individuality of character in treating his subjects. There is complete absence of uniformity and monotony. Repetition without any variation is abhorrent to every Japanese. He will not tolerate the stagnation and tedium of a dull uniformity by mechanical reproduction. His temperament will not let him endure the labour of always producing the same pattern. Hence the repetition of two articles exactly like each other, and, generally, the division of any space into equal parts are instinctively avoided, as nature avoids the production of any two plants, or even any two leaves of the same tree, which in all points shall be exactly alike.

PAINTING

(These illustrations are reproduced by permission of the Kokka Company, Tokyo, Japan.)

PAINTING

The application of this principle in the same free spirit is the secret of much of the originality and the excellence of the decorative art of Japan. Her artists and artisans alike aim at symmetry, not by an equal division of parts, as we do, but rather by a certain balance of corresponding parts, each different from the other, and not numerically even, with an effect of variety and freedom from formality. They seek it, in fact, as nature attains the same end. If we take for instance the skins of animals that are striped or spotted, we have the best possible illustration of nature’s methods in this direction. Examining the tiger or the leopard, in all the beauty of their symmetrical adornment, we do not see in any one example an exact repetition of the same stripes or spots on each side of the mesial line. They seem to be alike, and yet are all different. The line of division along the spine, it will be observed, is not perfectly continuous or defined, but in part suggested; and each radiating stripe on either side is full of variety in size, direction, and to some extent in colour and depth of shade. Thus nature works, and so, following in her footsteps, works the Japanese artist. The same law prevailing in all nature’s creation, in the plumage of birds, the painting of butterflies’ wings, the marking of shells, and in all the infinite variety and beauty of the floral kingdom, the lesson is constantly renewed to the observant eye. Among flowers the orchids, with all their fantastic extravagance and mimic imitations of birds and insects, are especially prolific in examples of symmetrical effects without any repetition of similar parts or divisions into even numbers.

The orchids may be taken as offering fair types of the Japanese artist’s ideal in all art work. And thus, close student of nature’s processes, methods, and effects as the Japanese art workman is, he ever seeks to produce humble replicas from his only art master. Thus he proceeds in all his decorative work, avoiding studiously the exact repetition of any lines and spaces, and all diametrical divisions, or, if these be forced upon him by the shape of the object, exercising the utmost ingenuity to disguise the fact, and train away the eye from observing the weak point, as nature does in like circumstances. Thus if a lacquer box in the form of a parallelogram is the object, Japanese artists will not divide it in two equal parts by a perpendicular line, but by a diagonal, as offering a more pleasing line and division. If the box be round, they will seek to lead the eye away from the naked regularity of the circle by a pattern distracting attention, as, for example, by a zigzag breaking the circular outline, and supported by other ornaments. A similar feeling is shown by them as colourists, and, though sometimes eccentric and daring in their contrasts, they never produce discords in their chromatic scale. They have undoubtedly a fine sense of colour, and a similarly delicate and subtle feeling for harmonious blending of brilliant and sober hues. As a rule they prefer a quiet and refined style, using full but low-toned colours. They know the value of bright colours, however, and how best to utilize them, both supporting and contrasting them with their secondaries and complementaries.

The development of Japanese painting may be divided into the following six periods, each signalized by a wave of progress. (1) From the middle of the 6th to the middle of the 9th century: the naturalization of Chinese and Chino-Buddhist art. (2) From the middle of the 9th to the middle of the 15th century: the establishment of great native schools under Kosé no Kanaoka and his descendants and followers, the pure Chinese school gradually falling into neglect. (3) From the middle of the 15th to the latter part of the 17th century: the revival of the Chinese style. (4) From the latter part of the 17th to the latter part of the 18th century: the establishment of a popular school. (5) From the latter part of the 18th to the latter part of the 19th century: the foundation of a naturalistic school, and the first introduction of European influence into Japanese painting; the acme and decline of the popular school. (6) From about 1875 to the present time: a period of transition.

Tradition refers to the advent of a Chinese artist named Nanriu, invited to Japan in the 5th century as a painter of the Imperial banners, but of the labours and influence of this man and of his descendants we have no record. The real beginnings of the study of painting and sculpture in their higher branches must be dated from the introduction of Buddhism from China in the middle of the 6th century, and for three centuries after this event there is evidence that the practice of the arts was carried on mainly by or under the instruction of Korean and Chinese immigrants.

The paintings of which we have any mention were almost limited to representations of Buddhist masters of the Tang dynasty (618-905), notably Wu Tao-zu (8th century), of whose genius romantic stories are related. The oldest existing work of this period is a mural decoration in the hall of the temple of Horyū-ji, Nara, attributed to a Korean priest named Donchô, who lived in Japan in the 6th century; and this painting, in spite of the destructive effects of time and exposure, shows traces of the same power of line, colour and composition that stamps the best of the later examples of Buddhist art.

The native artist who crested the first great wave of Japanese painting was a court noble named Kosé no Kanaoka, living under the patronage of the emperor Seiwa (850-859) and his successors down to about the end of the 9th century, in the midst of a period of peace and culture. Of his own work few, if any, examples have reached us; and those attributed with more or less probability to his hand are all representations of Buddhist divinities, showing a somewhat formal and conventional design, with a masterly calligraphic touch and perfect harmony of colouring. Tradition credits him with an especial genius for the delineation of animals and landscape, and commemorates his skill by a curious anecdote of a painted horse which left its frame to ravage the fields, and was reduced to pictorial stability only by the sacrifice of its eyes. He left a line of descendants extending far into the 15th century, all famous for Buddhist pictures, and some engaged in establishing a native style, the Wa-gwa-ryū.

At the end of the 9th century there were two exotic styles of painting, Chinese and Buddhist, and the beginning of a native style founded upon these. All three were practised by the same artists, and it was not until a later period that each became the badge of a school.

The Chinese style (Kara-ryū), the fundamental essence of all Japanese art, has a fairly distinct history, dating back to the introduction of Buddhism into China (A.D. 62), and it is said to have been chiefly from the works of Wu Tao-zu, the master of the 8th century, that Kanaoka drew his inspiration. This early Chinese manner, which lasted in the parent country down to the end of the 13th century, was characterized by a virile grace of line, a grave dignity of composition, striking simplicity of technique, and a strong but incomplete naturalistic ideal. The colouring, harmonious but subdued in tone, held a place altogether secondary to that of the outline, and was frequently omitted altogether, even in the most famous works. Shadows and reflections were ignored, and perspective, approximately correct for landscape distances, was isometrical for near objects, while the introduction of a symbolic sun or moon lent the sole distinction between a day and a night scene. The art was one of imperfect evolution, but for thirteen centuries it was the only living pictorial art in the world, and the Chinese deserve the honour of having created landscape painting. The materials used were water-colours, brushes, usually of deer-hair, and a surface of unsized paper, translucid silk or wooden panel. The chief motives were landscapes of a peculiarly wild and romantic type, animal life, trees and flowers, and figure compositions drawn from Chinese and Buddhist history and Taoist legend; and these, together with the grand aims and strange shortcomings of its principles and the limited range of its methods, were adopted almost without change by Japan. It was a noble art, but unfortunately the rivalry of the Buddhist and later native styles permitted it to fall into comparative neglect, and it was left for a few of the faithful, the most famous of whom was a priest of the 14th century named Kawo, to preserve it from inanition till the great Chinese renaissance that lent its stamp to the next period. The reputed founder of Japanese caricature may also be added to the list. He was a priest named Kakuyū, but better known as the abbot of Toba, who lived in the 12th century. An accomplished artist in the Chinese manner, he amused himself and his friends by burlesque sketches, marked by a grace and humour that his imitators never equalled. Later, the motive of the Toba pictures, as such caricatures were called, tended to degenerate, and the elegant figures of Kakuyū were replaced by scrawls that often substituted indecency and ugliness for art and wit. Some of the old masters of the Yamato school were, however, admirable in their rendering of the burlesque, and in modern times Kyōsai, the last of the Hokusai school, outdid all his predecessors in the riotous originality of his weird and comic fancies. A new phase of the art now lives in the pages of the newspaper press.

The Buddhist style was probably even more ancient than the Chinese, for the scheme of colouring distinctive of the Buddhist picture was almost certainly of Indian origin; brilliant and decorative, and heightened by a lavish use of gold, it was essential to the effect of a picture destined for the dim light of the Buddhist temple. The style was applied only to the representations of sacred personages and scenes, and as the traditional forms and attributes of the Brahmanic and Buddhist divinities were mutable only within narrow limits, the subjects seldom afforded scope for originality of design or observation of nature. The principal Buddhist painters down to the 14th century were members of the Kosé, Takuma and Kasuga lines, the first descended from Kanaoka, the second from Takuma Taméuji (ending 10th century), and the third from Fujiwara no Motomitsu (11th century). The last and greatest master of the school was a priest named Meicho, better known as Chō Densu, the Japanese Fra Angelico. It is to him that Japan owes the possession of some of the most stately and most original works in her art, sublime in conception, line and colour, and deeply instinct with the religious spirit. He died in 1427, at the age of seventy-six, in the seclusion of the temple where he had passed the whole of his days.

The native style, Yamato or Wa-gwa-ryū, was an adaptation of Chinese art canons to motives drawn from the court life, poetry and stories of old Japan. It was undoubtedly practised by the Kose line, and perhaps by their predecessors, but it did not take shape as a school until the beginning of the 11th century under Fujiwara no Motomitsu, who was a pupil of Kose no Kinmochi; it then became known as Yamato-ryū, a title which two centuries later was changed to that of Tosa, on the occasion of one of its masters, Fujiwara no Tsunetaka, assuming that appellation as a family name. The Yamato-Tosa artists painted in all styles, but that which was the speciality of the school, to be found in nearly all the historical rolls bequeathed to us by their leaders, was a lightly-touched outline filled in with flat and bright body-colours, in which verdigris-green played a great part. The originality of the motive did not prevent the adoption of all the Chinese conventions, and of some new ones of the artist’s own. The curious expedient of spiriting away the roof of any building of which the artist wished to show the interior was one of the most remarkable of these. Amongst the foremost names of the school are those of Montomitsu (11th century), Nobuzane (13th century), Tsunetaka (13th century), Mitsunobu (15th and 16th centuries), his son Mitsushige, and Mitsuōki (17th century). The struggle between the Taira and Minamoto clans for the power that had long been practically abandoned by the Imperial line lasted through the 11th and the greater part of the 12th centuries, ending only with the rise of Yoritomo to the shōgunate in 1185. These internecine disturbances had been unfavourable to any new departure in art, except in matters appertaining to arms and armour, and the strife between two puppet emperors for a shadow of authority in the 14th century brought another distracting element. It was not until the triumph of the northern dynasty was achieved through the prowess of an interested champion of the Ashikaga clan that the culture of ancient Japan revived. The palace of the Ashikaga shōguns then replaced the Imperial court as the centre of patronage of art and literature and established a new era in art history.

Towards the close of the Ashikaga shōgunate painting entered on a new phase. Talented representatives of the Kose, Takuma and Tosa lines maintained the reputation of the native and Buddhist schools, and the long-neglected Chinese school was destined to undergo a vigorous revival. The initiation of the new movement is attributed to a priest named Jôsetsu, who lived in the early part of the 15th century, and of whom little else is known. It is not even certain whether he was of Chinese or Japanese birth; he is, however, believed by some authorities to have been the teacher of three great artists—Shūbun, Sesshū and Kano Masanobu—who became the leaders of three schools: Shūbun, that of the pure Chinese art of the Sung and Yuan dynasties (10th and 13th centuries); Sesshū, that of a modified school bearing his name; and Masanobu, of the great Kano school, which has reached to the present day. The qualities of the new Chinese schools were essentially those of the older dynasties: breadth, simplicity, a daringly calligraphic play of brush that strongly recalled the accomplishments of the famous scribes, and a colouring that varied between sparing washes of flat local tints and a strength and brilliancy of decorative effort that rivalled even that of the Buddhist pictures. The motives remained almost identical with those of the Chinese masters, and so imbued with the foreign spirit were many of the Japanese disciples that it is said they found it difficult to avoid introducing Chinese accessories even into pictures of native scenery.

Sesshū (1421-1507) was a priest who visited China and studied painting there for several years, at length returning in 1469, disappointed with the living Chinese artists, and resolved to strike out a style of his own, based upon that of the old masters. He was the boldest and most original of Japanese landscape artists, leaving powerful and poetic records of the scenery of his own land as well as that of China, and trusting more to the sure and sweeping stroke of the brush than to colour. Shūbun was an artist of little less power, but he followed more closely his exemplars, the Chinese masters of the 12th and 13th centuries; while Kano Masanobū (1424-1520), trained in the love of Chinese art, departed little from the canons he had learned from Jōsetsu or Oguri Sōtan. It was left to his more famous son, Motonobu, to establish the school which bears the family name. Kano Motonobu (1477-1559) was one of the greatest Japanese painters, an eclectic of genius, who excelled in every style and every branch of his art. His variety was inexhaustible, and he remains to this day a model whom the most distinguished artists are proud to imitate. The names of the celebrated members of this long line are too many to quote here, but the most accomplished of his descendants was Tanyū, who died in 1674, at the age of seventy-three. The close of this long period brought a new style of art, that of the Kōrin school. Ogata Kōrin (1653-1716) is claimed by both the Tosa and Kano schools, but his work bears more resemblance to that of an erratic offshoot of the Kano line named Sōtatsu than to the typical work of the academies. He was an artist of eccentric originality, who achieved wonders in bold decorative effects in spite of a studied contempt for detail. As a lacquer painter he left a strong mark upon the work of his contemporaries and successors. His brother and pupil, Kenzan, adopted his style, and left a reputation as a decorator of pottery hardly less brilliant than Kōrin’s in that of lacquer; and a later follower, Hōitsu (1762-1828), greatly excelled the master in delicacy and refinement, although inferior to him in vigour and invention. Down to the end of this era painting was entirely in the hands of a patrician caste—courtiers, priests, feudal nobles and their military retainers, all men of high education and gentle birth, living in a polished circle. It was practised more as a phase of aesthetic culture than with any utilitarian views. It was a labour of loving service, untouched by the spirit of material gain, conferring upon the work of the older masters a dignity and poetic feeling which we vainly seek in much of the later work. Unhappily, but almost inevitably, over-culture led to a gradual falling-off from the old virility. The strength of Meichō, Sesshū, Motonobu and Tanyū gave place to a more or less slavish imitation of the old Japanese painters and their Chinese exemplars, till the heirs to the splendid traditions of the great masters preserved little more than their conventions and shortcomings. It was time for a new departure, but there seemed to be no sufficient strength left within the charmed circle of the orthodox schools, and the new movement was fated to come from the masses, whose voice had hitherto been silent in the art world.

A new era in art began in the latter half of the 17th century with the establishment of a popular school under an embroiderer’s draughtsman named Hishigawa Moronobu (c. 1646-1713). Perhaps no great change is ever entirely a novelty. The old painters of the Yamato-Tosa line had frequently shown something of the daily life around them, and one of the later scions of the school, named Iwasa Matahei, had even made a specialty of this class of motive; but so little is known of Matahei and his work that even his period is a matter of dispute, and the few pictures attributed to his pencil are open to question on grounds of authenticity. He probably worked some two generations before the time of Moronobu, but there is no reason to believe that his labours had any material share in determining the creation and trend of the new school.

Moronobu was a consummate artist, with all the delicacy and calligraphic force of the best of the Tosa masters, whom he undoubtedly strove to emulate in style; and his pictures are not only the most beautiful but also the most trustworthy records of the life of his time. It was not to his paintings, however, that he owed his greatest influence, but to the powerful impulse he gave to the illustration of books and broadsides by wood-engravings. It is true that illustrated books were known as early as 1608, if not before, but they were few and unattractive, and did little to inaugurate the great stream of ehon, or picture books, that were to take so large a share in the education of his own class. It is to Moronobu that Japan owes the popularization of artistic wood-engravings, for nothing before his series of xylographic albums approached his best work in strength and beauty, and nothing since has surpassed it. Later there came abundant aid to the cause of popular art, partly from pupils of the Kano and Tosa schools, but mainly from the artisan class. Most of these artists were designers for books and broadsides by calling, painters only on occasion, but a few of them did nothing for the engravers. Throughout the whole of this period, embracing about a hundred years, there still continued to work, altogether apart from the men who were making the success of popular art, a large number of able painters of the Kano, Tosa and Chinese schools, who multiplied pictures that had every merit except that of originality. These men, living in the past, paid little attention to the great popular movement, which seemed to be quite outside their social and artistic sphere and scarcely worthy of cultured criticism. It was in the middle of the 18th century that the decorative, but relatively feeble, Chinese art of the later Ming period found favour in Japan and a clever exponent in a painter named Ryūrikyō. It must be regarded as a sad decadence from the old Chinese ideals, which was further hastened, from about 1765, by the popularity of the southern Chinese style. This was a weak affectation that found its chief votaries amongst literary men ambitious of an easily earned artistic reputation. The principal Japanese supporter of this school was Taigadō (1722-1775), but the volume of copies of his sketches, Taigadō sansui juseki, published about 1870, is one of the least attractive albums ever printed in Japan.

The fifth period was introduced by a movement as momentous as that which stamped its predecessor—the foundation of a naturalistic school under a group of men outside the orthodox academical circles. The naturalistic principle was by no means a new one; some of the old Chinese masters were naturalistic in a broad and noble manner, and their Japanese followers could be admirably and minutely accurate when they pleased; but too many of the latter were content to construct their pictures out of fragmentary reminiscences of ancient Chinese masterpieces, not presuming to see a rock, a tree, an ox, or a human figure, except through Chinese spectacles. It was a farmer’s son named Okyō, trained in his youth to paint in the Chinese manner, who was first bold enough to adopt as a canon what his predecessors had only admitted under rare exceptions, the principle of an exact imitation of nature. Unfortunately, even he had not all the courage of his creed, and while he would paint a bird or a fish with perfect realism, he no more dared to trust his eyes in larger motives than did the most devout follower of Shūbun or Motonobu. He was essentially a painter of the classical schools, with the speciality of elaborate reproduction of detail in certain sections of animal life, but fortunately this partial concession to truth, emphasized as it was by a rare sense of beauty, did large service.

Okyō rose into notice about 1775, and a number of pupils flocked to his studio in Shijō Street, Kiōto (whence Shijō school). Amongst these the most famous were Goshun (1742-1811), who is sometimes regarded as one of the founders of the school; Sosen (1757-1821), an animal painter of remarkable power, but especially celebrated for pictures of monkey life; Shūhō, the younger brother of the last, also an animal painter; Rōsetsu (1755-1799), the best landscape painter of his school; Keibun, a younger brother of Goshun, and some later followers of scarcely less fame, notably Hoyen, a pupil of Keibun; Tessan, an adopted son of Sosen; Ippō and Yōsai (1788-1878), well known for a remarkable set of volumes, the Zenken kojitsu, containing a long series of portraits of ancient Japanese celebrities. Ozui and Ojyu, the sons of Okyō, painted in the style of their father, but failed to attain great eminence. Lastly, amongst the associates of the Shijō master was the celebrated Ganku (1798-1837), who developed a special style of his own, and is sometimes regarded as the founder of a distinct school. He was, however, greatly influenced by Okyō’s example, and his sons, Gantai, Ganryo, and Gantoku or Renzan, drifted into a manner almost indistinguishable from that of the Shijō school.

It remains only to allude to the European school, if school it can be called, founded by Kokan and Denkichi, two contemporaries of Okyō. These artists, at first educated in one of the native schools, obtained from a Hollander in Nagasaki some training in the methods and principles of European painting, and left a few oil paintings in which the laws of light and shade and perspective were correctly observed. They were not, however, of sufficient capacity to render the adopted manner more than a subject of curiosity, except to a few followers who have reached down to the present generation. It is possible that the essays in perspective found in the pictures of Hokusai, Hiroshige, and some of the popular artists of the 19th century, were suggested by Kokan’s drawings and writings.

The sixth period began about 1875, when an Italian artist was engaged by the government as a professor of painting in the Engineering College at Tōkyō. Since that time some distinguished European artists have visited Japan, and several Japanese students have made a pilgrimage to Europe to see for themselves what lessons may be gained from Western art. These students, confronted by a strong reaction in favour of pure Japanese art, have fought manfully to win public sympathy, and though their success is not yet crowned, it is not impossible that an Occidental school may ultimately be established. Thus far the great obstacle has been that pictures painted in accordance with Western canons are not suited to Japanese interiors and do not appeal to the taste of the most renowned Japanese connoisseurs. Somewhat more successful has been an attempt—inaugurated by Hashimoto Gahō and Kawabata Gyokusho—to combine the art of the West with that of Japan by adding to the latter the chiaroscuro and the linear perspective of the former. If the disciples of this school could shake off the Sesshū tradition of strong outlines and adopt the Kano Motonobu revelation of modelling by mass only, their work would stand on a high place. But they, too, receive little encouragement. The tendency of the time is conservative in art matters.

A series of magnificent publications has popularized art and its best products in a manner such as could never have been anticipated. The Kokka, a monthly magazine richly and beautifully illustrated and edited by Japanese students, has reached its 223rd number; the Shimbi Daikan, a colossal album containing chromoxylographic facsimiles of celebrated examples in every branch of art, has been completed in 20 volumes; the masterpieces of Kōrin and Motonobu have been reproduced in similar albums; the masterpieces of the Ukiyo-e are in process of publication, and it seems certain that the Japanese nation will ultimately be educated to such a knowledge of its own art as will make for permanent appreciation. Meanwhile the intrepid group of painters in oil plod along unflinchingly, having formed themselves into an association (the hakuba-kai) which gives periodical exhibitions, and there are, in Tōkyō and Kiōto, well-organized and flourishing art schools which receive a substantial measure of state aid, as well as a private academy founded by Okakura with a band of seceders from the hybrid fashions of the Gahō system. Altogether the nation seems to be growing more and more convinced that its art future should not wander far from the lines of the past.

(W. An.; F. By.)

Although a little engraving on copper has been practised in Japan of late years, it is of no artistic value, and the only branch of the art which calls for recognition is the cutting of wood-blocks for use either with colours or without. This, however, is of supreme importance, and as its technique differs in most respects from the European practice, it demands a somewhat detailed description.

The wood used is generally that of the cherry-tree, sakura, which has a grain of peculiar evenness and hardness. It is worked plankwise to a surface parallel with the grain, and not across it. A design is drawn by the artist, to whom the whole credit of the production generally belongs, with a brush on thin paper, which is then pasted face downwards on the block. The engraver, who is very rarely the designer, then cuts the outlines into the block with a knife, afterwards removing the superfluous wood with gouges and chisels. Great skill is shown in this operation, which achieves perhaps the finest facsimile reproduction of drawings ever known without the aid of photographic processes. A peculiar but highly artistic device is that of gradually rounding off the surfaces where necessary, in order to obtain in printing a soft and graduated mass of colour which does not terminate too abruptly. In printing with colours a separate block is made in this manner for each tint, the first containing as a rule the mere lines of the composition, and the others providing for the masses of tint to be applied. In all printing the paper is laid on the upper surface of the block, and the impression rubbed off with a circular pad, composed of twisted cord within a covering of paper cloth and bamboo-leaf, and called the baren. In colour-printing, the colours, which are much the same as those in use in Europe, are mixed, with rice-paste as a medium, on the block for each operation, and the power of regulating the result given by this custom to an intelligent craftsman (who, again, is neither the artist nor the engraver) was productive in the best period of very beautiful and artistic effects, such as could never have been obtained by any mechanical device. A wonderfully accurate register, or successive superposition of each block, is got mainly by the skill of the printer, who is assisted only by a mark defining one corner and another mark showing the opposite side limit.

The origins of this method of colour-printing are obscure. It has been practised to some extent in China and Korea, but there is no evidence of its antiquity in these countries. It appears to be one of the few indigenous arts of Japan. But before accepting this conclusion as final, one must not lose sight of the fact that the so-called chiaroscuro engraving was at the height of its use in Italy at the same time that embassies from the Christians in Japan visited Rome, and that it is thus possible that the suggestion at least may have been derived from Europe. The fact that no traces of it have been discovered in Japan would be easily accounted for, when it is remembered that the examples taken home would almost certainly have been religious pictures, would have been preserved in well-known and accessible places, and would thus have been entirely destroyed in the terrible and minute extermination of Christianity by Hideyoshi at the beginning of the 17th century. Japanese tradition ascribes the invention of colour-printing to Idzumiya Gonshirō, who, about the end of the 17th century, first made use of a second block to apply a tint of red (beni) to his prints. Sir Ernest Satow states more definitely that “Sakakibara attributes its origin to the year 1695, when portraits of the actor Ichikawa Danjiuro, coloured by this process, were sold in the streets of Yedo for five cash apiece.” The credit of the invention is also given to Torii Kiyonobu, who worked at about this time, and, indeed, is said to have made the prints above mentioned. But authentic examples of his work now remaining, printed in three colours, seem to show a technique too complete for an origin quite so recent. However, he is the first artist of importance to have produced the broadsheets—for many years chiefly portraits of notable actors, historical characters and famous courtesans—which are the leading and characteristic use to which the art was applied. Pupils, the chief of whom were Kiyomasa, Kiyotsume, Kiyomitsu, Kiyonaga and Kiyomine, carried on his tradition until the end of the 18th century, the three earlier using but few colours, while the works of the two last named show a technical mastery of all the capabilities of the process.

The next artist of importance is Suzuki Harunobu (worked c. 1760-1780), to whom the Japanese sometimes ascribe the invention of the process, probably on the grounds of an improvement in his technique, and the fact that he seems to have been one of the first of the colour-print makers to attain great popularity. Katsukawa Shunshō (d. 1792) must next be mentioned, not only for the beauty of his own work, but because he was the first master of Hokusai; then Yeishi (worked c. 1781-1800), the founder of the Hosoda school; Utamaro (1754-1806), whose prints of beautiful women were collected by Dutchmen while he was still alive, and have had in our own day a vogue greater, perhaps, than those of any other of his fellows; and Toyokuni I. (1768-1825), who especially devoted himself to broadsheet portraits of actors and dramatic scenes. The greatest of all the artists of the popular school was, however, Hokusai (1760-1849). His most famous series of broadsheets is the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (1823-1829), which, in spite of the conventional title, includes at least forty-six. His work is catalogued in detail by E. de Goncourt. At the beginning of the 19th century the process was technically at its greatest height, and in the hands of the great landscape artist, Hiroshige I., as well as the pupils of Toyokuni I.—Kunisada and Kuniyoshi—and those of Hokusai, it at first kept up an excellent level. But an undue increase in the number of blocks used, combined with the inferiority of the imported colours and carelessness or loss of skill in printing, brought about a rapid decline soon after 1840. This continued until the old traditions were well-nigh exhausted, but since 1880 there has been a distinct revival. The prints of the present day are cut with great skill, and the designs are excellent, though both these branches seem to lack the vigour of conception and breadth of execution of the older masters. The colours now used are almost invariably of cheap German origin, and though they have a certain prettiness—ephemeral, it is to be feared—they again can not compare with the old native productions. Among workers in this style, Yoshitoshi (d. c. 1898) was perhaps the best. Living artists in 1908 included Toshihide, Miyagawa Shuntei, Yoshiu Chikanobu—one of the elder generation—Tomisuka Yeishu, Toshikata and Gekko. Formerly the colour-print artist was of mean extraction and low social position, but he now has some recognition at the hands of the professors of more esteemed branches of art. This change is doubtless due in part to Occidental appreciation of the products of his art, which were formerly held in little honour by his own countrymen, the place assigned to them being scarcely higher than that accorded to magazine illustrations in Europe and America. But it is also largely due to his displays of unsurpassed skill in preparing xylographs for the beautiful art publications issued by the Shimbi Shōin and the Kokka company. These xylographs prove that the Japanese art-artisan of the present day was not surpassed by the greatest of his predecessors in this line.

(E. F. S.; F. By.)

The history of the illustrated book in Japan may be said to begin with the Ise monogatari, a romance first published in the 10th century, of which an edition adorned with woodcuts appeared in 1608. In the course of the 17th century many other works of the same nature were issued, including some in which the cuts were roughly coloured by hand; but the execution of these is not as good as contemporary European work. The date of the first use of colour-printing in Japanese book illustration is uncertain. In 1667 a collection of designs for kimono (garments) appeared, in which inks of several colours were made use of; but these were only employed in turn for single printings, and in no case were two of them used on the same print. It is certain, however, that the mere use of coloured inks must soon have suggested the combination of two or more of them, and it is probable that examples of this will be discovered much earlier in date than those known at present.

About the year 1680 Hishigawa Moronobu achieved a great popularity for woodcut illustration, and laid the foundations of the splendid school which followed. The names of the engravers who cut his designs are not known, and in fact the reputation of these craftsmen is curiously subordinated to that of the designers in all Japanese work of the kind. With Moronobu must be associated Okumura Masanobu, a little later perhaps in date, whose work is also of considerable value. During the ensuing thirty years numerous illustrated books appeared, including the earliest yet known which are illustrated by colour-printing. Nishikawa Sukenobu (1671-1751) illustrated a very large number of books, many of which were not published until after his death. With him may be associated Ichiō Shumboku (d. c. 1773) and Tsukioka Tange (1717-1786), the latter of whom made the drawings for many of the meishō or guide-books which form so interesting and distinctive a branch of Japanese illustration. The work of Tachibana Morikuni (1670-1748) is also of great importance. The books illustrated by the men of this school were mainly collections of useful information, guide-books, romances and historical and religious compilations; but much of the best of their work is to be found in the collections of pictorial designs, very often taken from Chinese sources, which were produced for the use of workers in lacquer, pottery and similar crafts. These, both for design and for skill of cutting, hold their own with the best work of European wood-cutting of any period. The development of the art of Japanese colour-printing naturally had its effect on book-illustration, and the later years of the 18th and the earlier of the 19th century saw a vast increase of books illustrated by this process. The subjects also now include a new series of landscapes and views drawn as seen by the designers, and not reproductions of the work of other men; and also sketches of scenes and characters of everyday life and of the folk-lore in which Japan is so rich. Among the artists of this period, as of all others in Japan, Hokusai (1760-1849) is absolutely pre-eminent. His greatest production in book-illustration was the Mangwa, a collection of sketches which cover the whole ground of Japanese life and legend, art and handicraft. It consists of fifteen volumes, which appeared at intervals from 1812 to 1875, twelve being published during his life and the others from material left by him. Among his many other works may be mentioned the Azuma Asobi (Walks round Yedo, 1799). Of his pupils, Hokkei (1780-1856) and Kyōsai were the greatest. Most of the artists, whose main work was the designing of broadsheets, produced elaborately illustrated books; and this series includes specimens of printing in colours from wood-blocks, which for technique have never been excelled. Among them should be mentioned Shunshō (Seirō bijin awase kagami, 1776); Utamaro (Seirō nenjyū gyoji, 1804); Toyokuni I. (Yakusha kono teikishiwa, 1801); as well as Harunobu Yeishi (Onna sanjyu rokkasen, 1798), Kitao Masanobu and Tachibana Minko, each of whom produced beautiful work of the same nature. In the period next following, the chief artists were Keisai Yeisen (Keisai so-gwa, 1832) and Kikuchi Yōsai (Zenken kojitsu), the latter of whom ranks perhaps as highly as any of the artists who confined their work to black and white. The books produced in the period 1880-1908 in Japan are still of high technical excellence. The colours are, unfortunately, of cheap European manufacture; and the design, although quite characteristic and often beautiful, is as a rule merely pretty. The engraving is as good as ever. Among the book-illustrators of our own generation must be again mentioned Kyōsai; Kōno Bairei (d. 1895), whose books of birds—the Bairei hyakucho gwafu (1881 and 1884) and Yūaka-no-tsuki (1889)—are unequalled of their kind; Imao Keinen, who also issued a beautiful set of illustrations of birds and flowers (Keinen kwachō gwafu), engraved by Tanaka Jirokichi and printed by Miki Nisaburō (1891-1892); and Watanabe Seitei, whose studies of similar subjects have appeared in Seitei kwachō gwafu (1890-1891) and the Bijutsu sekai (1894), engraved by Gotō Tokujirō. Mention should also be made of several charming series of fairy tales, of which that published in English by the Kobunsha in Tōkyō in 1885 is perhaps the best. In their adaptation of modern processes of illustration the Japanese are entirely abreast of Western nations, the chromo-lithographs and other reproductions in the Kokka, a periodical record of Japanese works of art (begun in 1889), in the superb albums of the Shimbi Shōin, and in the publications of Ogawa being of quite a high order of merit.

(E. F. S.; F. By.)

PAINTING

PAINTING

Sculpture and Carving.—Sculpture in wood and metal is of ancient date in Japan. Its antiquity is not, indeed, comparable to that of ancient Egypt or Greece, but no country besides Japan can boast a living and highly developed art that has numbered upwards of twelve centuries of unbroken and brilliant productiveness. Setting aside rude prehistoric essays in stone and metal, which have special interest for the antiquary, we have examples of sculpture in wood and metal, magnificent in conception and technique, dating from the earliest periods of what we may term historical Japan; that is, from near the beginning of the great Buddhist propaganda under the emperor Kimmei (540-571) and the princely hierarch, Shōtoku Taishi (573-621). Stone has never been in favour in Japan as a material for the higher expression of the sculptor’s art.

The first historical period of glyptic art in Japan reaches from the end of the 6th to the end of the 12th century, culminating in the work of the great Nara sculptors, Unkei and his pupil Kwaikei. Happily, there are still preserved in the great temples of Japan, chiefly in the ancient capital of Nara, many noble relics of this period.

The place of honour may perhaps be conferred upon sculptures in wood, representing the Indian Buddhists, Asangha and Vasabandhu, preserved in the Golden Hall of Kofuku-ji, Nara. These are attributed to a Kamakura sculptor of the 8th or 9th century, and in simple and realistic dignity of pose and grand lines of composition are worthy of comparison with the works of ancient Greece. With these may be named the demon lantern-bearers, so perfect in the grotesque treatment of the diabolical heads and the accurate anatomical forms of the sturdy body and limbs; the colossal temple guardians of the great gate of Tōdai-ji, by Unkei and Kwaikei (11th century), somewhat conventionalized, but still bearing evidence of direct study from nature, and inspired with intense energy of action; and the smaller but more accurately modelled temple guardians in the Saikondo, Nara, which almost compare with the “fighting gladiator” in their realization of menacing strength. The “goddess of art” of Akishino-dera, Nara, attributed to the 8th century, is the most graceful and least conventional of female sculptures in Japan, but infinitely remote from the feminine conception of the Greeks. The wooden portrait of Vimalakirtti, attributed to Unkei, at Kofuku-ji, has some of the qualities of the images of the two Indian Buddhists. The sculptures attributed to Jōchō, the founder of the Nara school, although powerful in pose and masterly in execution, lack the truth of observation seen in some of the earlier and later masterpieces.

The most perfect of the ancient bronzes is the great image of Bhaicha-djyaguru in the temple of Yakushi-ji, Nara, attributed to a Korean monk of the 7th century, named Giōgi. The bronze image of the same divinity at Hōryū-ji, said to have been cast at the beginning of the 7th century by Tori Busshi, the grandson of a Chinese immigrant, is of good technical quality, but much inferior in design to the former. The colossal Nara Daibutsu (Vairocana) at Tōdai-ji, cast in 749 by a workman of Korean descent, is the largest of the great bronzes in Japan, but ranks far below the Yakushi-ji image in artistic qualities. The present head, however, is a later substitute for the original, which was destroyed by fire.

The great Nara school of sculpture in wood was founded in the early part of the 11th century by a sculptor of Imperial descent named Jōchō, who is said to have modelled his style upon that of the Chinese wood-carvers of the Tang dynasty; his traditions were maintained by descendants and followers down to the beginning of the 13th century. All the artists of this period were men of aristocratic rank and origin, and were held distinct from the carpenter-architects of the imposing temples which were to contain their works.

Sacred images were not the only specimens of glyptic art produced in these six centuries; reliquaries, bells, vases, incense-burners, candlesticks, lanterns, decorated arms and armour, and many other objects, showing no less mastery of design and execution, have reached us. Gold and silver had been applied to the adornment of helmets and breastplates from the 7th century, but it was in the 12th century that the decoration reached the high degree of elaboration shown us in the armour of the Japanese Bayard, Yoshitsunē, which is still preserved at Kasuga, Nara.

Wooden masks employed in the ancient theatrical performances were made from the 7th century, and offer a distinct and often grotesque phase of wood-carving. Several families of experts have been associated with this class of sculpture, and their designs have been carefully preserved and imitated down to the present day.

The second period in Japanese glyptic art extends from the beginning of the 13th to the early part of the 17th century. The great struggle between the Taira and Minamoto clans had ended, but the militant spirit was still strong, and brought work for the artists who made and ornamented arms and armour. The Miyōchins, a line that claimed ancestry from the 7th century, were at the head of their calling, and their work in iron breastplates and helmets, chiefly in repoussé, is still unrivalled. It was not until the latter half of the 15th century that there came into vogue the elaborate decoration of the sword, a fashion that was to last four hundred years.

The metal guard (tsuba), made of iron or precious alloy, was adorned with engraved designs, often inlaid with gold and silver. The free end of the hilt was crowned with a metallic cap or pommel (kashira), the other extremity next the tsuba was embraced by an oval ring (fuchi), and in the middle was affixed on each side a special ornament called the menuki, all adapted in material and workmanship to harmonize with the guard. The kodzuka, or handle of a little knife implanted into the sheath of the short sword or dagger, was also of metal and engraved with like care. The founder of the first great line of tsuba and menuki artists was Gotō Yūjō (1440-1512), a friend of the painter Kano Motonobu, whose designs he adopted. Many families of sword artists sprang up at a later period, furnishing treasures for the collector even down to the present day, and their labours reached a level of technical mastery and refined artistic judgment almost without parallel in the art industries of Europe. Buddhist sculpture was by no means neglected during this period, but there are few works that call for special notice. The most noteworthy effort was the casting by Ono Goroyémon in 1252 of the well-known bronze image, the Kamakura Daibutsu.

The third period includes the 17th, 18th and the greater part of the 19th centuries. It was the era of the artisan artist. The makers of Buddhist images and of sword ornaments carried on their work with undiminished industry and success, and some famous schools of the latter arose during this period. The Buddhist sculptors, however, tended to grow more conventional and the metal-workers more naturalistic as the 18th century began to wane. It was in connexion with architecture that the great artisan movement began. The initiator was Hidari Jingoro (1594-1652), at first a simple carpenter, afterwards one of the most famous sculptors in the land of great artists. The gorgeous decoration of the mausoleum of Iyeyasu at Nikkō, and of the gateway of the Nishi Hongwan temple at Kiōto, are the most striking instances of his handiwork or direction.

The pillars, architraves, ceilings, panels, and almost every available part of the structure, are covered with arabesques and sculptured figures of dragons, lions, tigers, birds, flowers, and even pictorial compositions with landscapes and figures, deeply carved in solid or open work—the wood sometimes plain, sometimes overlaid with pigment and gilding, as in the panelled ceiling of the chapel of Iyeyasu in Tōkyō. The designs for these decorations, like those of the sword ornaments, were adopted from the great schools of painting, but the invention of the sculptor was by no means idle. From this time the temple carvers, although still attached to the carpenters’ guild, took a place apart from the rest of their craft, and the genius of Hidari Jingoro secured for one important section of the artisan world a recognition like that which Hishigawa Moronobu, the painter and book-illustrator, afterwards won for another.

A little later arose another art industry, also emanating from the masses. The use of tobacco, which became prevalent in the 17th century, necessitated the pouch. In order to suspend this from the girdle there was employed a kind of button or toggle—the netsuke. The metallic bowl and mouthpiece of the pipe offered a tempting surface for embellishment, as well as the clasp of the pouch; and the netsuke, being made of wood, ivory or other material susceptible of carving, also gave occasion for art and ingenuity.

The engravers of pipes, pouch clasps, and the metallic discs (kagami-buta) attached to certain netsuke, sprang from the same class and were not less original. They worked, too, with a skill little inferior to that of the Gotōs, Naras, and other aristocratic sculptors of sword ornaments, and often with a refinement which their relative disadvantages in education and associations render especially remarkable. The netsuke and the pipe, with all that pertained to it, were for the commoners what the sword-hilt and guard were for the gentry. Neither class cared to bestow jewels upon their persons, but neither spared thought or expense in the embellishment of the object they most loved. The final manifestation of popular glyptic art was the okimono, an ornament pure and simple, in which utility was altogether secondary in intention to decorative effect. Its manufacture as a special branch of art work dates from the rise of the naturalistic school of painting and the great expansion of the popular school under the Katsugawa, but the okimono formed an occasional amusement of the older glyptic artists. Some of the most exquisite and most ingenious of these earlier productions, such as the magnificent iron eagle in the South Kensington Museum, the wonderful articulated models of crayfish, dragons, serpents, birds, that are found in many European collections, came from the studios of the Miyōchins; but these were the play of giants, and were not made as articles of commerce. The new artisan makers of the okimono struck out a line for themselves, one influenced more by the naturalistic and popular schools than by the classical art, and the quails of Kamejo, the tortoises of Seimin, the dragons of Tōun and Tōryū, and in recent years the falcons and the peacocks of Suzuki Chokichi, are the joy of the European collector. The best of these are exquisite in workmanship, graceful in design, often strikingly original in conception, and usually naturalistic in ideal. They constitute a phase of art in which Japan has few rivals.

The present generation is more systematically commercial in its glyptic produce than any previous age. Millions of commercial articles in metal-work, wood and ivory flood the European markets, and may be bought in any street in Europe at a small price, but they offer a variety of design and an excellence of workmanship which place them almost beyond Western competition. Above all this, however, the Japanese sculptor is a force in art. He is nearly as thorough as his forefathers, and maintains the same love of all things beautiful; and if he cannot show any epoch-making novelty, he is at any rate doing his best to support unsurpassed the decorative traditions of the past.

History has been eminently careful to preserve the names and records of the men who chiselled sword furniture. The sword being regarded as the soul of the samurai, every one who contributed to its manufacture, whether as forger of the blade or sculptor of the furniture, was held in high repute. The Gotō family worked steadily during 14 generations, and its 19th century representative—Gotō Ichijō—will always be remembered as one of the family’s greatest experts. But there were many others whose productions fully equalled and often excelled the best efforts of the Gotō. The following list gives the names and periods of the most renowned families:—

(It should be noted that the division by centuries indicates the time of a family’s origin. In a great majority of cases the representatives of each generation worked on through succeeding centuries).

15th and 16th Centuries.

Miyōchin; Gotō; Umetada; Muneta; Aoki; Sōami; Nakai.

17th Century.

Kuwamura; Mizuno; Koichi; Nagayoshi;

Kuninaga; Yoshishige; Katsugi; Tsuji;

Muneyoshi; Tadahira; Shōami; Hosono;

Yokoya; Nara; Okada; Okamoto; Kinai; Akao;

Yoshioka; Hirata; Nomura; Wakabayashi; Inouye;

Yasui; Chiyo; Kaneko; Uemura; Iwamoto.

18th Century.

Gorobei; Shōemon; Kikugawa; Yasuyama; Noda; Tamagawa; Fujita; Kikuoka; Kizaemon; Hamano; Ōmori; Okamoto; Kashiwaya; Kusakari; Shichibei; Itō.

19th Century.

Natsuo; Ishiguro; Yanagawa; Honjo; Tanaka; Okano; Kawarabayashi; Oda; and many masters of the Ōmori, Hamano and Iwamoto families, as well as the five experts, Shuraku, Temmin, Ryūmin, Minjō and Minkoku.

(W. An.; F. By.)

There is a radical difference between the points of view of the Japanese and the Western connoisseur in estimating the merits of sculpture in metal. The quality of the chiselling is the first feature to which the Japanese directs his attention; the decorative design is the prime object of the Occidental’s attention. With very rare exceptions, the decorative motives of Japanese sword furniture were always supplied by painters. Hence it is that the Japanese connoisseur draws a clear distinction between the decorative design and its technical execution, crediting the former to the pictorial artist and the latter to the sculptor. He detects in the stroke of a chisel and the lines of a graving tool subjective beauties which appear to be hidden from the great majority of Western dilettanti. He estimates the rank of a specimen by the quality of the chisel-work. The Japanese kinzoku-shi (metal sculptor) uses thirty-six principal classes of chisel, each with its distinctive name, and as most of these classes comprise from five to ten sub-varieties, his cutting and graving tools aggregate about two hundred and fifty.

Scarcely less important in Japanese eyes than the chiselling of the decorative design itself is the preparation of the field to which it is applied. There used to be a strict canon with reference to this in former times. Namako (fish-roe) grounds were essential for the mountings of swords worn on ceremonial occasions, the ishime (stone-pitting) or jimigaki (polished) styles being considered less aristocratic.

Namako is obtained by punching the whole surface—except the portion carrying the decorative design—into a texture of microscopic dots. The first makers of namako did not aim at regularity in the distribution of these dots; they were content to produce the effect of millet-seed sifted haphazard over the surface. But from the 15th century the punching of the dots in rigidly straight lines came to be considered essential, and the difficulty involved was so great that namako-making took its place among the highest technical achievements of the sculptor. When it is remembered that the punching tool was guided solely by the hand and eye, and that three or more blows of the mallet had to be struck for every dot, some conception may be formed of the patience and accuracy needed to produce these tiny protuberances in perfectly straight lines, at exactly equal intervals and of absolutely uniform size. Namako disposed in straight parallel lines originally ranked at the head of this kind of work. But a new kind was introduced in the 16th century. It was obtained by punching the dots in intersecting lines, so arranged that the dots fell uniformly into diamond-shaped groups of five each. This is called go-no-me-namako, because of its resemblance to the disposition of chequers in the Japanese game of go. A century later, the daimyō namako was invented, in which lines of dots alternated with lines of polished ground. Ishime may be briefly described as diapering. There is scarcely any limit to the ingenuity and skill of the Japanese expert in diapering a metal surface. It is not possible to enumerate here even the principal styles of ishime, but mention may be made of the zara-maki (broad-cast), in which the surface is finely but irregularly pitted after the manner of the face of a stone; the nashi-ji (pear-ground), in which we have a surface like the rind of a pear; the hari-ishime (needle ishime), where the indentations are so minute that they seem to have been made with the point of a needle; the gama-ishime, which is intended to imitate the skin of a toad; the tsuya-ishime, produced with a chisel sharpened so that its traces have a lustrous appearance; the ore-kuchi (broken-tool), a peculiar kind obtained with a jagged tool; and the gozamé, which resembles the plaited surface of a fine straw mat.

Great importance has always been attached by Japanese experts to the patina of metal used for artistic chiselling. It was mainly for the sake of their patina that value attached to the remarkable alloys shakudo (3 parts of gold to 97 of copper) and shibuichi (1 part of silver to 3 of copper). Neither metal, when it emerges from the furnace, has any beauty, shakudo being simply dark-coloured copper and shibuichi pale gun-metal. But after proper treatment the former develops a glossy black patina with violet sheen, and the latter shows beautiful shades of grey with silvery lustre. Both these compounds afford delicate, unobtrusive and effective grounds for inlaying with gold, silver and other metals, as well as for sculpture, whether incised or in relief. Copper, too, by patina-producing treatment, is made to show not merely a rich golden sheen with pleasing limpidity, but also red of various hues, from deep coral to light vermilion, several shades of grey, and browns of numerous tones from dead-leaf to chocolate. Even greater value has always been set upon the patina of iron, and many secret recipes were preserved in artist families for producing the fine, satin-like texture so much admired by all connoisseurs.

In Japan, as in Europe, three varieties of relief carving are distinguished—alto (taka-bori), mezzo (chūniku-bori) and basso (usuniku-bori). In the opinion of the Japanese expert, these styles hold the same respective rank as that occupied by the three kinds of ideographic script in caligraphy. High relief carving corresponds to the kaisho, or most classical form of writing; medium relief to the gyōsho, or semi-cursive style; and low relief to the sōsho or grass character. With regard to incised chiselling, the commonest form is kebori (hair-carving), which may be called engraving, the lines being of uniform thickness and depth. Very beautiful results are obtained by the kebori method, but incomparably the finest work in the incised class is that known as kata-kiri-bori. In this kind of chiselling the Japanese artist can claim to be unique as well as unrivalled. Evidently the idea of the great Yokoya experts, the originators of the style, was to break away from the somewhat formal monotony of ordinary engraving, where each line performs exactly the same function, and to convert the chisel into an artist’s brush instead of using it as a common cutting tool. They succeeded admirably. In the kata-kiri-bori every line has its proper value in the pictorial design, and strength and directness become cardinal elements in the strokes of the burin just as they do in the brushwork of the picture-painter. The same fundamental rule applied, too, whether the field of the decoration was silk, paper or metal. The artist’s tool, be it brush or burin, must perform its task by one effort. There must be no appearance of subsequent deepening, or extending, or re-cutting or finishing. Kata-kiri-bori by a great expert is a delight. One is lost in astonishment at the nervous yet perfectly regulated force and the unerring fidelity of every trace of the chisel. Another variety of carving much affected by artists of the 17th century, and now largely used, is called shishi-ai-bori or niku-ai-bori. In this style the surface of the design is not raised above the general plane of the field, but an effect of projection is obtained either by recessing the whole space immediately surrounding the design, or by enclosing the latter in a scarped frame. Yet another and very favourite method, giving beautiful results, is to model the design on both faces of the metal so as to give a sculpture in the round. The fashion is always accompanied by chiselling à jour (sukashi-bori), so that the sculptured portions stand out in their entirety.

Inlaying with gold or silver was among the early forms of decoration in Japan. The skill developed in modern times is at least equal to anything which the past can show, and the results produced are much more imposing. There are two principal kinds of inlaying: the first called hon-zōgan (true inlaying), the second nunome-zōgan (linen-mesh inlaying). As to the former, the Japanese method does not differ from that seen in the beautiful iron censers and vases inlaid with gold which the Chinese produced from the Süen-tē era (1426-1436). In the surface of the metal the workman cuts grooves wider at the base than at the top, and then hammers into them gold or silver wire. Such a process presents no remarkable features, except that it has been carried by the Japanese to an extraordinary degree of elaborateness. The nunome-zōgan is more interesting. Suppose, for example, that the artist desires to produce an inlaid diaper. His first business is to chisel the surface in lines forming the basic pattern of the design. Thus, for a diamond-petal diaper the chisel is carried across the face of the metal horizontally, tracing a number of parallel bands divided at fixed intervals by ribs which are obtained by merely straightening the chisel and striking it a heavy blow. The same process is then repeated in another direction, so that the new bands cross the old at an angle adapted to the nature of the design. Several independent chisellings may be necessary before the lines of the diaper emerge clearly, but throughout the whole operation no measurement of any kind is taken, the artist being guided entirely by his hand and eye. The metal is then heated, not to redness, but sufficiently to develop a certain degree of softness, and the workman, taking a very thin sheet of gold (or silver), hammers portions of it into the salient points of the design. In ordinary cases this is the sixth process. The seventh is to hammer gold into the outlines of the diaper; the eighth, to hammer it into the pattern filling the spaces between the lines, and the ninth and tenth to complete the details. Of course the more intricate the design the more numerous the processes. It is scarcely possible to imagine a higher effort of hand and eye than this nunome-zōgan displays, for while intricacy and elaborateness are carried to the very extreme, absolute mechanical accuracy is obtained. Sometimes in the same design we see gold of three different hues, obtained by varying the alloy. A third kind of inlaying, peculiar to Japan, is sumi-zōgan (ink-inlaying), so called because the inlaid design gives the impression of having been painted with Indian ink beneath the transparent surface of the metal. The difference between this process and ordinary inlaying is that for sumi-zōgan the design to be inlaid is fully chiselled out of an independent block of metal with sides sloping so as to be broader at the base than at the top. The object which is to receive the decoration is then channelled in dimensions corresponding to those of the design block, and the latter having been fixed in the channels, the surface is ground and polished until an intimate union is obtained between the inlaid design and the metal forming its field. Very beautiful effects are thus produced, for the design seems to have grown up to the surface of the metal field rather than to have been planted in it. Shibuichi inlaid with shakudo used to be the commonest combination of metals in this class of decoration, and the objects usually depicted were bamboos, crows, wild-fowl under the moon, peony sprays and so forth.

A variety of decoration much practised by early experts, and carried to a high degree of excellence in modern times, is mokume-ji (wood-grained ground). The process in this case is to take a thin plate of metal and beat it into another plate of similar metal, so that the two, though welded together, retain their separate forms. The mass, while still hot, is coated with hena-tsuchi (a kind of marl) and rolled in straw ash, in which state it is roasted over a charcoal fire raised to glowing heat with the bellows. The clay having been removed, another plate of the same metal is beaten in, and the same process is repeated. This is done several times, the number depending on the quality of graining that the expert desires to produce. The manifold plate is then heavily punched from one side, so that the opposite face protrudes in broken blisters, which are then hammered down until each becomes a centre of wave propagation. In fine work the apex of the blister is ground off before the final hammering. Iron was the metal used exclusively for work of this kind down to the 16th century, but various metals began thenceforth to be combined. Perhaps the choicest variety is gold graining in a shakudo field. By repeated hammering and polishing the expert obtains such control of the wood-grain pattern that its sinuosities and eddies seem to have developed symmetry without losing anything of their fantastic grace. There are other methods of producing mokume-ji.

It has been frequently asserted by Western critics that the year (1876) which witnessed the abolition of sword-wearing in Japan, witnessed also the end of her artistic metal-work. That is a great mistake. The art has merely developed new phases in modern times. Not only are its masters as skilled now as they were in the days of the Gotō, the Nara, the Yokoya and the Yanagawa celebrities, but also their productions must be called greater in many respects and more interesting than those of their renowned predecessors. They no longer devote themselves to the manufacture of sword ornaments, but work rather at vases, censers, statuettes, plaques, boxes and other objects of a serviceable or ornamental nature. All the processes described above are practised by them with full success, and they have added others quite as remarkable.

Of these, one of the most interesting is called kiribame (insertion). The decorative design having been completely chiselled in the round, is then fixed in a field of a different metal, in which a design of exactly similar outline has been cut out. The result is that the picture has no blank reverse. For example, on the surface of a shibuichi box-lid we see the backs of a flock of geese chiselled in silver, and when the lid is opened, their breasts and the under-sides of their pinions appear. The difficulty of such work is plain. Microscopic accuracy has to be attained in cutting out the space for the insertion of the design, and while the latter must be soldered firmly in its place, not the slightest trace of solder or the least sign of junction must be discernible between the metal of the inserted picture and that of the field in which it is inserted. Suzuki Gensuke is the inventor of this method. He belongs to a class of experts called uchimono-shi (hammerers) who perform preparatory work for glyptic artists in metal. The skill of these men is often wonderful. Using the hammer only, some of them can beat out an intricate shape as truly and delicately as a sculptor could carve it with his chisels. Ōhori Masatoshi, an uchimono-shi of Aizu (d. 1897), made a silver cake-box in the form of a sixteen-petalled chrysanthemum. The shapes of the body and lid corresponded so intimately that, whereas the lid could be slipped on easily and smoothly without any attempt to adjust its curves to those of the body, it always fitted so closely that the box could be lifted by grasping the lid only. Another feat of his was to apply a lining of silver to a shakudo box by shaping and hammering only, the fit being so perfect that the lining clung like paper to every part of the box. Suzuki Gensuke and Hirata Sōkō are scarcely less expert. The latter once exhibited in Tōkyō a silver game-cock with soft plumage and surface modelling of the most delicate character. It had been made by means of the hammer only. Suzuki’s kiribame process is not to be confounded with the kiribame-zōgan (inserted inlaying) of Tōyoda Kokō, also a modern artist. The gist of the latter method is that a design chiselled à jour has its outlines veneered with other metal which serves to emphasize them. Thus, having pierced a spray of flowers in a thin sheet of shibuichi, the artist fits a slender rim of gold, silver or shakudo to the petals, leaves and stalks, so that an effect is produced of transparent blossoms outlined in gold, silver or purple. Another modern achievement—also due to Suzuki Gensuke—is maze-gane (mixed metals). It is a singular conception, and the results obtained depend largely on chance. Shibuichi and shakudo are melted separately, and when they have cooled just enough not to mingle too intimately, they are cast into a bar which is subsequently beaten flat. The plate thus obtained shows accidental clouding, or massing of dark tones, and these patches are taken as the basis of a pictorial design to which final character is given by inlaying with gold and silver, and by katā-kiri sculpture. Such pictures partake largely of the impressionist character, but they attain much beauty in the hands of the Japanese artist with his extensive répertoire of suggestive symbols. A process resembling maze-gane, but less fortuitous, is shibuichi-dōshi (combined shibuichi), which involves beating together two kinds of shibuichi and then adding a third variety, after which the details of the picture are worked in as in the case of maze-gane. The charm of these methods is that certain parts of the decorative design seem to float, not on the surface of the metal, but actually within it, an admirable effect of depth and atmosphere being thus produced. Mention must also be made of an extraordinarily elaborate and troublesome process invented by Kajima Ippu, a great artist of the present day. It is called togi-dashi-zōgan (ground-out inlaying). In this exquisite and ingenious kind of work the design appears to be growing up from the depths of the metal, and a delightful impression of atmosphere and water is obtained. All these processes, as well as that of repoussé, in which the Japanese have excelled from a remote period, are now practised with the greatest skill in Tokyo, Kiōto, Osaka and Kanazawa. At the art exhibitions held twice a year in the principal cities there may be seen specimens of statuettes, alcove ornaments, and household utensils which show that the Japanese worker in metals stands more indisputably than ever at the head of the world’s artists in that field. The Occident does not yet appear to have full realized the existence of such talent in Japan; partly perhaps because its displays in former times were limited chiefly to sword-furniture, possessing little interest for the average European or American; and partly because the Japanese have not yet learned to adapt their skill to foreign requirements. They confine themselves at present to decorating plaques, boxes and cases for cigars or cigarettes, and an occasional tea or coffee service; but the whole domain of salvers, dessert-services, race-cups and so on remains virtually unexplored. Only within the past few years have stores been established in the foreign settlements for the sale of silver utensils, and already the workmanship on these objects displays palpable signs of the deterioration which all branches of Japanese art have undergone in the attempt to cater for foreign taste. In a general sense the European or American connoisseur is much less exacting than the Japanese. Broad effects of richness and splendour captivate the former, whereas the latter looks for delicacy of finish, accuracy of detail and, above all, evidences of artistic competence. It is nothing to a Japanese that a vase should be covered with profuse decoration of flowers and foliage: he requires that every blossom and every leaf shall be instinct with vitality, and the comparative costliness of fine workmanship does not influence his choice. But if the Japanese sculptor adopted such standards in working for foreign patrons, his market would be reduced to very narrow dimensions. He therefore adapts himself to his circumstances, and, using the mould rather than the chisel, produces specimens which snow tawdry handsomeness and are attractively cheap. It must be admitted, however, that even though foreign appreciative faculty were sufficiently educated, the Japanese artist in metals would still labour under the great difficulty of devising shapes to take the place of those which Europe and America have learned to consider classical.

Bronze is called by the Japanese kara-kane, a term signifying “Chinese metal” and showing clearly the source from which knowledge of the alloy was obtained. It is a copper-lead-tin compound, the proportions of its constituents varying from 72 to 88% of copper, from 4 to 20% of lead and from 2 to 8% of tin. There are also present small quantities of arsenic and antimony, and zinc is found generally as a mere trace, but sometimes reaching to 6%. Gold is supposed to have found a place in ancient bronzes, but its presence has never been detected by analysis, and of silver not more than 2% seems to have been admitted at any time. Mr W. Gowland has shown that, whatever may have been the practice of Japanese bronze makers in ancient and medieval eras, their successors in later days deliberately introduced arsenic and antimony into the compound in order to harden the bronze without impairing its fusibility, so that it might take a sharper impression of the mould. Japanese bronze is well suited for castings, not only because of its low melting-point, great fluidity and capacity for taking sharp impressions, but also because it has a particularly smooth surface and readily develops a fine patina. One variety deserves special mention. It is a golden yellow bronze, called sentoku—this being the Japanese pronunciation of Suen-tē, the era of the Ming dynasty of China when this compound was invented. Copper, tin, lead and zinc, mixed in various proportions by different experts, are the ingredients, and the beautiful golden hues and glossy texture of the surface are obtained by patina-producing processes, in which branch of metal-work the Japanese show altogether unique skill.

From the time when they began to cast bronze statues, Japanese experts understood how to employ a hollow, removable core round which the metal was run in a skin just thick enough for strength without waste of material; and they also understood the use of wax for modelling purposes. In ordinary circumstances, a casting thus obtained took the form of a shell without any break of continuity. But for very large castings the process had to be modified. The great image of Lochana Buddha at Nara, for example, would measure 138 ft. in height were it standing erect, and its weight is about 550 tons. The colossal Amida at Kamakura has a height only 3 ft. less. It would have been scarcely possible to cast such statues in one piece in situ, or, if cast elsewhere, to transport them and elevate them on their pedestals. The plan pursued was to build them up gradually in their places by casting segment after segment. Thus, for the Nara Daibutsu, the mould was constructed in a series of steps ascending 12 in. at a time, until the head and neck were reached, which, of course, had to be cast in one shell, 12 ft. high.

The term “parlour bronzes” serves to designate objects for domestic use, as flower-vases, incense-burners and alcove ornaments. Bronze-casters began to turn their attention to these objects about the middle of the 17th century. The art of casting bronze reached its culmination in the hands of a group of great experts—Seimin, Tōun, Masatune, Teijō, Sōmin, Keisai, Takusai, Gido, Zenryūsai and Hotokusai—who flourished during the second half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th. Many brilliant specimens of these men’s work survive, their general features being that the motives are naturalistic, that the quality of the metal is exceptionally fine, that in addition to beautifully clear casting obtained by highly skilled use of the cera-perduta process, the chisel was employed to impart delicacy and finish to the design, and that modelling in high relief is most successfully introduced. But it is a mistake to assert, as many have asserted, that after the era of the above ten masters—the latest of whom, Sōmin, ceased to work in 1871—no bronzes comparable with theirs were cast. Between 1875 and 1879 some of the finest bronzes ever produced in Japan were turned out by a group of experts working under the business name of Sanseisha. Started by two brothers, Oshima Katsujiro (art-name Jōun) and Oshima Yasutaro (art-name Shōkaku), this association secured the services of a number of skilled chisellers of sword-furniture, who had lost their occupation by the abandonment of sword-wearing. Nothing could surpass the delicacy of the works executed at the Sanseisha’s atelier in Tōkyō, but unfortunately such productions were above the standard of the customers for whom they were intended. Foreign buyers, who alone stood in the market at that time, failed to distinguish the fine and costly bronzes of Jōun, Shōkaku and their colleagues from cheap imitations which soon began to compete with them, so that ultimately the Sanseisha had to be closed. This page in the modern history of Japan’s bronzes needs little alteration to be true of her applied art in general. Foreign demand has shown so little discrimination that experts, finding it impossible to obtain adequate remuneration for first-class work, have been obliged to abandon the field altogether, or to lower their standard to the level of general appreciation, or by forgery to cater for the perverted taste which attaches unreasoning value to age. Jōun has produced, and is thoroughly capable of producing, bronzes at least equal to the best of Seimin’s masterpieces, yet he has often been induced to put Seimin’s name on objects for the sake of attracting buyers who attach more value to cachet than to quality. If to the names of Jōun and his brilliant pupil Ryūki we add those of Suzuki Chōkichi, Okazaki Sessei, Hasegawa Kumazō, Kanaya Gorosaburō and Jomi Eisuke, we have a group of modern bronze-casters who unquestionably surpass the ten experts beginning with Seimin and ending with Sōmin. Okazaki Sessei has successfully achieved the casting of huge panels carrying designs in high relief; and whether there is question of patina or of workmanship, Jōmi Eisuke has never been surpassed.

Occidental influence has been felt, of course, in the field of modern bronze-casting. At a school of art officially established in Tōkyō in 1873 under the direction of Italian teachers—a school which owed its signal failure partly to the incompetence and intemperate behaviour of some of its foreign professors, and partly to a strong renaissance of pure Japanese classicism—one of the few accomplishments successfully taught was that of modelling in plaster and chiselling in marble after Occidental methods. Marble statues are out of place in the wooden buildings as well as in the parks of Japan, and even plaster busts or groups, though less incongruous perhaps, have not yet found favour. Hence the skill undoubtedly possessed by several graduates of the defunct art school has to be devoted chiefly to a subordinate purpose, namely, the fashioning of models for metal-casters. To this combination of modellers in European style and metal-workers of such force as Suzuki and Okazaki, Japan owes various memorial bronzes and effigies which are gradually finding a place in her parks, her museums, her shrines or her private houses. There is here little departure from the well-trodden paths of Europe. Studies in drapery, prancing steeds, ideal poses, heads with fragments of torsos attached (in extreme violation of true art), crouching beasts of prey—all the stereotyped styles are reproduced. The imitation is excellent.

Among the artists of early times it is often difficult to distinguish between the carver of wood and the caster of bronze. The latter sometimes made his own models in wax, sometimes chiselled them in wood, and sometimes had recourse to a specialist in wood-carving. The group of splendid sculptors in wood that graced the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries left names never to be forgotten, but undoubtedly many other artists of scarcely less force regarded bronze-casting as their principal business. Thus the story of wood-carving is very difficult to trace. Even in the field of architectural decoration for interiors, tradition tells us scarcely anything about the masters who carved such magnificent works as those seen in the Kiōto temples, the Tokugawa mausolea, and some of the old castles. There are, however, no modern developments of such work to be noted. The ability of former times exists and is exercised in the old way, though the field for its employment has been greatly narrowed.

SCULPTURE

METAL WORK AND LACQUER

When Japanese sculpture in wood or ivory is spoken of, the first idea that presents itself is connected with the netsuke, which, of all the art objects found in Japan, is perhaps the most essentially Japanese. If Japan had given us nothing but the netsuke, we should still have no difficulty in differentiating the bright versatility of her national genius from the comparatively sombre, mechanic and unimaginative temperament of the Chinese. But the netsuke may now be said to be a thing of the past. The inro (medicine-box), which it mainly served to fix in the girdle, has been driven out of fashion by the new civilization imported from the West, and artists who would have carved netsuke in former times now devote their chisels to statuettes and alcove ornaments. It is not to be inferred, however, though it is a favourite assertion of collectors, that no good netsuke have been made in modern times. That theory is based upon the fact that after the opening of the country to foreign intercourse in 1857, hundreds of inferior specimens of netsuke were chiselled by inexpert hands, purchased wholesale by treaty-port merchants, and sent to New York, London and Paris, where, though they brought profit to the exporter, they also disgusted the connoisseur and soon earned discredit for their whole class. But in fact the glyptic artists of Tōkyō, Osaka and Kiōto, though they now devote their chisels chiefly to works of more importance than the netsuke, are in no sense inferior to their predecessors of feudal days, and many beautiful netsuke bearing their signatures are in existence. As for the modern ivory statuette or alcove ornament, of which great numbers are now carved for the foreign market, it certainly stands on a plane much higher than the netsuke, since anatomical defects which escape notice in the latter owing to its diminutive size, become obtrusive in the former.

One of the most remarkable developments of figure sculpture in modern Japan was due to Matsumoto Kisaburo (1830-1869). He carved human figures with as much accuracy as though they were destined for purposes of surgical demonstration. Considering that this man had neither art education nor anatomical instruction, and that he never enjoyed an opportunity of studying from a model in a studio, his achievements were remarkable. He and the craftsmen of the school he established completely refute the theory that the anatomical solecisms commonly seen in the works of Japanese sculptors are due to faulty observation. Without scientific training of any kind Matsumoto and his followers produced works in which the eye of science cannot detect any error. But it is impossible to admit within the circle of high-art productions these wooden figures of everyday men and women, unrelieved by any subjective element, and owing their merit entirely to the fidelity with which their contours are shaped, their muscles modelled, and their anatomical proportions preserved. They have not even the attraction of being cleanly sculptured in wood, but are covered with thinly lacquered muslin, which, though doubtless a good preservative, accentuates their puppet-like character. Nevertheless, Matsumoto’s figures marked an epoch in Japanese wood sculpture. Their vivid realism appealed strongly to the taste of the average foreigner. A considerable school of carvers soon began to work in the Matsumoto style, and hundreds of their productions have gone to Europe and America, finding no market in Japan.