MURDER OF THE REGENT. 
Chap. V. 
however, showed that the wall which apparently 
crowned their summits had its foundation far below, 
and that the banks themselves had been formed in 
front of the wall. On many of these green banks 
there are groups of juniper and pine trees, while 
inside the wall itself tall specimens of the same 
trees rear their lofty heads high above the ram- 
parts. No embrasures or places for guns were 
observed in these walls, although one would imagine 
they had been erected for the purposes of defence. 
Kaempfer, however, assigns another reason ; he 
says, “ Yedo is not enclosed with a wall, no more 
than other towns in Japan, but cut through by 
many broad canals, with ramparts raised on both 
sides, and planted at the top with rows of trees, not 
so much for defence as to prevent the fires — which 
happen here too frequently — from making too great 
a havoc.” 
A few months previous to the time of my visit, 
the Gotiro, or Regent of the Empire, had been 
waylaid and murdered in open day, as he was 
proceeding from his residence to his office in the 
inner quarter. The scene of this tragedy was 
pointed out to me. A writer in the ‘ Edinburgh 
Review’ gives the following graphic account of 
this horrid murder : — 
“ Within the second moated circle facing the 
bay, the causeway leads over a gentle acclivity, 
near the summit of which, lying a little back- 
ward, is an imposing gateway, flanked on either 
side with a range of buildings, which form the 
