Japan and the Japanese

JAPANESE ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST EUROPEANS. 35
Ve had no means to resist, until about sunset, when the junk began
fc> open at every seam. Then the captain and all of us, seeing the
miserable condition in which we were, betook ourselves for succor
to an image of our Lady, whom we besought with tears and groans
to intercede for us with her blessed Son to forgive our sins."
The night having passed in this manner, about dawn the junk
struck a shoal and went to pieces, most of the crew being drowned.
A few, however, escaped to the shore of what proved to be the
Lew Chew islands, now first made known to the Portuguese. Here
happened many new dangers and adventures ;
but at last, by female
aid, always a great resource with Pinto, he found his way back in
a Chinese junk to Liampo, whence, after various other adventures,
he again reached Malacca.
To these Portuguese accounts of the European discovery of
Japan, may be added the following, which Siebold gives
as an
extract from a Japanese book of annals : " Under the Mikado
Konaru, and the Ziogouu Yosi-hao, in the twelfth year of the Nengo
Tinbun,*on the twenty-second day of the
eighth month [Oct. 1543],
a
strange ship made the island Tanegozima, near Koura, in the
* The Japanese date by the years of the reign of the Dairi, or Mikado (of
*hom more hereafter), and they also, for ordinary purposes, employ the
Chinese device of nengos.^ These are periods, or eras, of arbitrary length,
from one year to many, appointed at the pleasure of the reigning Dairi,
named by him, and lasting till the establishment of a new nengo. For con-
venience, every new nengo, and also every new reign, begins chronologically
with the new year, the old nengo and old reign being protracted to the end
of the year in which it closes.
The Japanese month is alternately twenty-nine and thirty days, of which
every year has twelve, with a repetition of one of the months, in seven years
out of every nineteen, so as to bring this reckoning by lunar months into cor-
respondency with the course of the earth round the sun ; this method being
based on a knowledge of the correspondency of two hundred and thirty-five
lunations with nineteen solar years. According to Titsingh, everv thirty-
third month is repeated, so as to make up the necessary number of inter-
calary months, the number of days in these intercalary months being fixed
by the almanacs issued at Miako. The commencement of the Japanese year
is generally in February. The months are divided into two distinct portions,
of fifteen days, each having a distinct name, and the first day of each of which
serves as a Sunday, or holiday. This regulation of the Japanese calendar is
borrowed from tne Chinese, as also the use of the period of sixty years corre?
spending to our century.