1889.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 87 



various sources of information which have come to hand 

 during the past fifteen years. The fanciful mythologic 

 period which extended from " the beginning," through ages 

 during which the gods alone existed, to the creation and 

 peopling of Japan by them, followed by a national chronol- 

 ogy, whereby the present dynasty of rulers antedates the 

 Christian era six hundred and sixty years ; the imbibition of 

 Chinese literature and civilization, which began about three 

 centuries after Christ, and the introduction of Buddhism 

 two hundred and fifty years later; the dual empire of 

 the Mikado and Taikun, which existed for nearly seven cen- 

 turies preceding the reign of the present emperor ; the 

 early concession of commercial privileges to Europeans, 

 especially the Dutch and Portugese ; and the labors of the 

 Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 

 terminating in the wholesale persecution and extirpation 

 of foreigners and their converts ; the system of rigorous 

 feudalism, and the closely drawn lines of class distinction 

 among both nobility and people, which characterized the 

 whole of her historic period ; the exaction of treaty rela- 

 tions by the United States in 1854, followed by similar con- 

 cessions to the European powers ; the overthrow of the 

 Shogunate or Taikun's power, and the restoration of the 

 Mikado to sole civil and military supremacy in 1868 ; and 

 the new departure of the government in its ardent pursuit 

 of modern arts and sciences,. — these are the leading points 

 of her history, and have become a part of the general 

 information. 



With this topical review, therefore, of the past, I shall 

 assume that you are prepared to appreciate the significance 

 of such random sketches of the social, industrial and politi- 

 cal life of her people as I am able to recall from the three 

 or four years of busy life which I spent among them. 



The true origin of the Japanese race is a problem which 

 still awaits solution. To the Malayan, Mongolian, the 

 African, and even the Caucasian or Indo-European families, 

 either singly or by combination, their origin has been attrib- 

 uted by difierent writers. That, as GrifEs claims, they owe 

 anything to the blood of their historic aborigines, the Ainos, 

 who show some evidence of Caucasian origin, seems to me 



