308 
THE VOYAGE OF TPIE VEGA. 
[chap. 
words, and got some words in reply. After leaving the 
imperial chamber, we were entertained in the anteroom with 
Japanese tea and cigars. The two princes who had taken 
part in the entertainment of the 15th came and talked a 
little with us, as did the minister of foreign affairs. The 
Emperor Mutsuhito, in whose name reforms have been 
carried out in Japan to an extent to which history can 
scarcely show anything equal, was born the 3rd November, 
1850. He is considered the 121st Mikado of the race of 
Jimmu Tenno, the members of which have reigned uninter¬ 
ruptedly in Japan for nearly two thousand years, with varying 
fates and with varying power—-now as wise lawgivers and mighty 
warriors, now for long periods as weak and effeminate rulers, 
emperors only in seeming, to whom almost divine homage was 
paid, but who were carefully freed from the burden of govern¬ 
ment and from all actual power. In comparison with this race, 
whose first ancestor lived during the first century after the 
foundation of Home, all the royal houses now reigning in 
Europe are children of yesterday. Its present representative 
does not look to be very strong. During the whole audience 
he stood so motionless that he might have been taken for a 
wax figure, if he had not himself read his speech. Prince 
Kita-Shira-Kava has the appearance of a young lieutenant of 
hussars. Most of the ministers have sharply marked features,^ 
which remind one of the many furious storms they have sur¬ 
vived, and the many personal dangers to which they have beeii 
exposed, partly in honourable conflict, partly through murderers’ 
plots. For, unfortunately, a political murder is not yet con¬ 
sidered in Japan an infamous crime, but the murderer openly 
acknowledges his deed and takes the consequences. Repeated 
1 At first it strikes a European as if all the Japanese had about tlie 
same appearance, but when one has got accustomed to the colour of the 
skin and the traits of tlie race, the features of the Japanese appear as 
various in form and expression as those of Europeans. 
