Japan and the Japanese

420 JAPAN. A. D. 1773 177G.
presents exchanged for some years, down at least to the publication
of his travels.
According to Thunberg, the personages composing the imperial
court were in his time so little known that very few people in the
whole empire were acquainted with their names. M. Feith, the
director whom he accompanied to Jedo, and who had been on the
same embassy four times before, and had lived in Japan fourteen
years, was obliged to confess at table, after their return to Batavia,
being inquired of as to the name of the reigning emperor, that he
did not know it, and never had heard it.* It was only through the
friendship of his medical pupils at Jedo, and of the chief interpre-
ter, that he obtained a knowledge of it, and also a list of the empe-
rors since Kampfer's time, which he gives as follows :
CHIN NA YOS (reigning when Kiimpfer left Japan, and for twelve
or thirteen years previously.)
1709, YE NOB KOO.
1713, YE Tsu KU KOO.
1717, Yosi MCNE KOO.
1752, YE SIEGE KOO.
1762, YE Fun KOO,| who continued to reign at the time of
Thunberg's departure, being the forty-first in succession from Jori-
tomo, and ninth from Jesi Jas, otherwise Daisu-Sama and Ogoshu-
Sama, or, as he was called after his death, Gongin-Sama, by whom
the reigning dynasty had been established.
The weather
Thunberg left Jedo on his return the 25th of May.
being rainy they were a good deal molested by gnats, against which
they had to protect themselves by gauze curtains. The Japanese
* The emperors are seldom or never spoken of, in the Jesuit letters and other
contemporary memorials, by their personal or family names, but only by
Borne title, as Kubo-Sama ; Kambucundono, or, as Klaproth would write it,
Kwanbaku-dono theKwanbak (or bonnet- keeper) being a high dignitary
in the court of the Dairi, regent in case of a minority or a female Dairi ;
Taiko-Sama, mighty lord ; Xogun-Sama, which is only, as has been already
noted, Siogun-Sama, &c. &c.
t The above names are written by Titsingh, as corrected by Klaproth,
thus : Tsuna yosi, Ye-Nobu, Yei tsubo, Yosi-Mune, Ye-Sige (whose ac-
cession he places in 174")), Ye-Faru (succeeds in 1760). He gives as suc-
cessor in 1786, Yeye-Nari. Koo (which Titsingh writes kio) he represents
as a title merely.