THE EMPEROR BECOMES ALARMED. 
22^ 
‘^getting up” was concerned; but we valued them as 
specimens of the art, nevertheless. "VVe had heard much 
of the accuracy of the Japanese pencil and brush ; but 
their lithographs did not argue any great beauty in the 
originals. They generally referred to Fu-si-ya-ma, (their 
sacred mountain,) to scenes from city and country life, 
to their various games, to distorted male and female 
figures, or to public buildings. These latter were appa- 
rently truthful; but all of the others partook more of 
the nature of caricatures than of natural appearances, 
and were undoubtedly calculated to impart an exagge- 
rated and distorted idea of most of the subjects to which 
they referred; as, for instance : — 
There was one scene of a trial of strength heriveen 
two wrestlers, in which they must have weighed (com- 
paring them with the figures of the audience) from seven 
to eight hundred pounds each, while their surplus fat 
hung about their huge necks and shonlders like the folds 
of tlie skin of the rhinoceros. These fellows were 
wrestling on the ^^sawdusted” pit of an immense amphi- 
theatre, the seats of which were crowded with an ad- 
miring audience, while the referees stood oft' in two 
separate parties. 
While we were looking at these lithographs, orders 
came from Ycddo to stop the sale of them; and this, of 
course, only made us more anxious to buy. The shop- 
men, however, would no longer sell, and, upon our apply- 
ing to Tatz-nosky, he replied that the emperor thought 
they would give too good an idea of what was going on 
in Japan, and had ordered that they be all returned to 
Yeddo. Upon hearing this, we at once went through the 
