Japan and the Japanese

842 JAPAN.- -A. D. 1C90 1G92.
six Japanese feet long and throe broad. The houses themselves, and
their several rooms, are built proportionably according to a certain
number of mats, more or less. There is commonly a curious garden
behind the house, such as I have described elsewhere. 13ehiud the
garden is the bathing-stove, and sometimes a vault, or rather a small
room, with strong walls of clay and lime, to preserve, in case of
fire, the richest household goods and furniture.
" Osaka is extremely populous, and, if we believe what the boasting
Japanese tell us, can raise an army of eighty thousand men
from among its inhabitants. It is the best trading town in Japan,
being extraordinarily well situated for carrying on a commerce both
by land and water. This is the reason it why is so well inhabited
by rich merchants, artificers and nunufacturers. Provisions are
cheap, notwithstanding the city is so well peopled. Whatever tends
to promote luxury, and to all
gratify sensual pleasures, may be had
at as easy a rate here as anywhere, and for this reason the Jap-
anese call Osaka the universal theatre of pleasures and diversions.
Plays are to be seen daily, both in public and in private houses.
Mountebanks, jugglers, who can show some artful tricks, and all the
raree-show people who have either some uncommon, or monstrous
animal to exhibit, or animals taught to play tricks, resort thither
from all parts of the empire, being sure to get a better penny here
than anywhere else.* Hence it is no wonder that numbers of
strangers and travellers daily resort thither, chiefly rich people, as
to a place where they can spend their time and money with much
greater satisfaction than perhaps anywhere else in the empire. The
western princes and lords on this side Osaka all have houses in this
city, and people to attend them in their passage through, and yet
they are not permitted to stay longer than a night, besides that
* " Some years ago," says Kampfcr, " our East Iii'lia Company sent over
from Biitavia a Casuar (a large East India bird, who would swallow stones
and hot coals), as a present to the ernperor. This bird having had the ill
luck not to please our rigid censors, the governors of Nagasaki, and we hav-
ing thereupon been ordered to send him back to B.itavia, a rich Japanese
assured us that if he could have obtained leave to buy him, he would have
willingly given a thousand tads for him, as being sure within a year's time
to get double th;;t money only by showing him at Os/.a." The mermaid*
exhibited in Europe and Ameiica, to the great profit of enterprising show
men, have been of Japanese manufacture.