190 
NATURE 
[ Dec. 16, 1869 
THE ¥APANESE 
APAN is a country of which the outer barbarian world 
as yet knows little. By slow degrees, however, the 
great wave of progress is making inroads even in that 
jealously guarded group of islands; but as yet it is but in 
three places, not in themselves of much importance, that 
the country is open to foreign commerce. The capital is 
only accessible to diplomatic agents, and the excursions 
which have been made into the interior have been of an 
imperfect kind. 
Yeddo, with the great volcanic cone of Fusiyama pro- 
minent in all the views of the city ; Yokohama, Kanagawa, 
Kagosima, the Central Sea,—these names bring before us 
almost all that we really know about Japan. There are 
maps of the empire to be found, which show the divisions 
and towns of the great island of Nippon, and also of the 
smaller islands of the group; but we know little of them, 
except their names and their relative position. The day 
is yet to come when the physical geography of this fine 
group of islands will be laid bare to the researches of 
Western men of science. The latitude of the islands, 
together with the influence of that warm ocean current 
which may be called the Pacific Gulf Stream, ensures for 
them a mild climate; and rice, cotton, and silk are among 
the varied productions of this favoured country. At the 
same time, it must not be forgotten that earthquakes are 
not unusual, that the volcanic fires are not yet extinct in 
Japan, and that the shores are sometimes visited by the 
fierce typhoons which desolate the neighbouring seas. 
The people themselves, however, their religion and 
government, their houses, their manners and customs, 
have been subject to observation in the different 
towns open to foreigners; and several accounts have 
been laid before the public. Of these, none is more 
interesting than the narrative of his life in Japan which 
has been given to the world by M. Aimé Humbert,* the 
Swiss minister in Japan, who arrived there in the year 
1863, and who has prepared a narrative of his sojourn in 
Yokohama and Yeddo, and his excursions in the neigh- 
bourhood of these places, which is extremely lively and 
interesting. M. Humbert’s observations are chiefly upon 
the people ; and his remarks, and the number of illustra- 
tions with which the descriptions in his two magnificent 
volumes are enriched, bring before us the Japanese, at least 
of the cities, with very great vividness. They live and 
move before our eyes: we see them in their temples, in 
their court dresses, in their everyday life, in their amuse- 
ments, in the pursuit of their trades and professions, in the 
exercise of justice, in the celebration of their annual fétes. 
The Japanese, M. Humbert thinks, are of diverse 
origin. Some possibly came from China, some were 
Mongols from the neighbouring Corea ; but doubtless 
many derive their descent from ancestors whose frail 
boats were drifted from the Malaysian Archipelago far to 
the south. The Japanese are not a tall race; the head 
and chest are generally large, the legs short, the hands 
small and often beautiful, the hair long, smooth, and 
black, the nose well-defined, the eyes more prominent 
than those of Europeans, the dominant colour of the skin 
an olive brown, though the colour varies from an almost 
copper brown to a dull white. The women are lighter in 
colour than the men, and in the higher classes they are 
often perfectly white. 
In their domestic relations the Japanese are kindly, 
especially to their children, for whom they have intense 
affection, and for whose pleasure they will make any 
sacrifice. The Japanese takes but one wife ; but he has 
it in his power to take secondary spouses, and not unfre- 
quently avails himself of the privilege. The Japanese 
women are in a state of extreme subjection to their lords. 
The religion of the vast mass of the people is Buddhism, 
* Le Japon illustré, par Aimé Humbert, ancien_plénipotentiaire de la 
Confédération suisse. 2 vols. 4to. L. Hachette ct Ci‘, Paris. 
with a vast array of bonzes or priests, and great temples, 
colossal idols, and a complicated system of worship. One 
of the grandest of the idols is well described by M. Hum- 
bert ; it is the image of Diaboudhs, the great Buddha :— 
“The road to the temple is distant from a'l habitations ; 
it winds between tall hedges, then a straight road mounts 
up between foliage and flowers, then a sudden turn follows, 
and all at once, at the end of an avenue, is seen a gigantic 
divinity of copper, seated in a squatting attitude, with the 
hands joined and in the attitude of contemplative ecstasy.” 
The acceptance of the Buddhist doctrine of the ultimate 
passing of man into annihilation produces, it is said, in 
the Japanese, that wonderful disregard of human life 
which is one of their most remarkable characteristics. 
But besides the Buddhist theology, there is also a wor- 
ship of the Kamis, or ancestral divinities, which pre- 
yails in Japan. The Kamis are not always the ances- 
tors of separate families; the greatest of them, indeed, 
are the fabled ancestors of the whole Japanese race. But 
the belief in these ancestral deities leads to a vast amount 
of reverence being paid to the memory of the dead, and 
to annual visits to the tombs of the departed. These 
visits to the hills of the dead which surround the towns 
are distinguished by much illumination of torches, and 
terminate with a setting afloat of little boats, each with 
lights, which drift down the river at night, and of which 
the lights are one by one extinguished. ‘There is, besides, 
a belief in a number of tutelary deities, some of whom are 
half-mystic heroes—gods who preside over the events of 
life, whose /é¢es are occasions of much national rejoicing, 
and whose influence contributes to counteract the sombre 
effects which an exclusively Buddhist belief would produce. 
Of one of these, Hotei, the accompanying illustration 
gives a representation, the fac-simile of a Japanese draw- 
ing. Hotei is the personification of contentment in the 
midst of poverty. He is the sage who possesses no worldly 
goods—the Diogenes of the great Nippon. His sole be- 
longings are a scrap of coarse hempen cloth, a wallet, and 
a fan. When his wallet is empty he only laughs at it, and 
lends it to the children in the street, who use it for their 
games. For his part, he converts it by turns into a 
mattrass, a pillow, a mosquito-net : he seats himself on it 
as on an inflated skin to cross a current of water. Hotei 
leads a somewhat vagabond life. He is sometimes 
met mounted on the buffalo belonging to a cultivator 
