118 
INTEMPERANCE OF THE PEOPLE. Chap. Vn. 
of the vices of the Japanese. In this respect, if 
we can trust Thunberg, the Swedish physician, 
they must have degenerated sadly during the last 
hundred years. Amongst a long catalogue of 
their virtues, Thunberg says, they have “ no play 
or coffee-houses, no taverns nor alehouses, and 
consequently no consumption of coffee, chocolate, 
brandy, wine, or punch ; no privileged soil, no 
waste lands, and not a single meadow ; no national 
debt, no paper currency, no course of exchange, and 
no bankers (!).” It may have been so in Thun- 
berg’s time, although I confess to some doubts 
upon the subject ; but it will be seen, from what 
came under my own observation, that things are 
very different now. 
In these days it is a common saying that “ all 
Yedo gets drunk after sunset ! ” This is, of course, 
an exaggeration ; but, no doubt, drunkenness pre- 
vails to a degree happily unknown in other 
countries at the present day. Even before the 
evening closes in, the faces of those one meets in 
the streets are suspiciously red, showing plainly 
enough that saki has been imbibed pretty freely. 
Nor is it in the capital city only that such a state 
of things exists. We learn from Dr. Pompe, the 
Dutch physician at Nagasaki, that one-half of 
the whole adult population are more or less in- 
ebriated with saki by nine o’clock every evening ! 
When I state that a great proportion of these 
drunken people in the capital are armed with two 
rather sharp swords, and that in this condition they 
