Japan and the Japanese

364 JAPAN. A. D. 1C91.
times a convenient and sufficient light.
The chief apartments have
each its particular name. Such arc, for instance, the waiting-
room, where all persons that are to be admitted to an audience,
either of the emperor or his prime ministers of state, wait till they
are introduced ; the council-chamber, where the ministers of state
and privy councillors meet upon business; the hall of thousand
mats, where the emperor receives the homage and usual presents
of the princes of the empire and ambassadors of foreign powers;
several halls of audience ; the apartments for the emperor's house-
hold, and others. The structure of all these several apartments is
exquisitely fine, according to the architecture of the country. The
ceilings, beams, and pillars, are of cedar, or camphor, or jeseriwood,
the grain of which naturally runs into flowers and other curious
figures, and is, therefore, in some apartments, covered only
with a
thin, transparent, layer of varnish, in others japanned, or curiously
carved with birds and branched work, neatly gilt. The floor is
covered with the finest white mats, bordered with gold fringes or
bands; and this is all the furniture to be seen in the palaces of the
emperor and princes of the empire."
The 29th of March, the last of the second Japanese month,
was appointed for the reception of the Dutch Maki/io Bitiyo, the
emperor's principal counsellor and favorite, being in a hurry to get
rid of them, because on the fifth of the ensuing month he was to
have the honor to treat the emperor at dinner, a favor which re-
quires a good deal of time and vast preparations. "This Bingo,"
says Kiimpfer, " tutor to the reigning monarch before he came to
the crown, is now his chief favorite, and the only person whom he
absolutely confides in. At our audience it is he that receives the
emperor's words and commands from his own mouth, and addresses
the same to us. He is near seventy years of age,
a tall but lean
man, with a long face, a manly and German-like countenance, slow
in his actions, and very civil in his whole behavior, lie hath the
character of a just and prudent man, no ways given to ambition,
nor inclined to revenge, nor bent upon heaping up immoderate
riches in short, of being altogether worthy of the great confidence
nd trust tV>o r>n< ->">". ,^ ; n Ulnr. "