348 



EXPEDITION TO JAPAN. 



not improve, for it caused him, in his efforts at seeing, to give a very wry distortion to a 

 countenance naturally not very handsome.* 



Moryama Yenoske was the princii)al interpreter who officiated on the occasion ; the same man 

 who figured so conspicuously during the visit of Captain Glynn in the Preble. As soon as the 

 commissioners had taken their seats, Yenoske took his position on his knees, at the feet of 

 Hayashi, the chief, and humbly awaited his orders. The Japanese are never forgetful of the 

 respect which they think due to rank, and graduate their obeisance according to its degrees. 

 From the Emperor to the lowest subject in the realm there is a constant succession of 

 prostrations. The former, in want of a human being superior to himself in rank, bows humbly 

 to some Pagan idol, and every one of his subjects, from prince to jieasant, has some person 

 before whom he is bound to cringe and crouch in the dirt. One is reminded, as he looks upon a 

 luiiversal nation on their knees, " in sujipliance bent," of a favorite amusement of childhood, 

 where a number of blocks are placed on end in a row, one shoves the other, and the first being 

 knocked down, topples over the second, and so on in succession until all are tumbled upon the 

 ground. The crouching jjosition in which an inferior places himself, when in the presence of 

 his superior in rank, seems very easy to a Japanese, but would be very difficult and painful for 

 one to assume who had not been accustomed to it. The ordinary mode pursued is to drop on 



* It may not be without interest to the reader to present the heraldic devices of the Emperor and commissioners, as well as 

 that of Lew Chew. 



£M PtR R 



ilATH CUMMISiS 



Li£W CHEW 



