Japan and the Japanese

426 JAPAN. - A. D. 17791791.
his translations, the one to which Titsingh
ascribed the
greatest importance was that of the Nipon o dai ifsi Ran, an abridged
Japanese chronicle, from A. c. 600 to A. D. 1611, compiled in the
year 1652, and printed
at Miako. Having been carefully compared
by Klaproth with the original
a task, as he says, from the manifold
defects of Titsingh's version, almost equivalent to a new trans-
lation and having been enriched with an introduction, a supple-
ment and notes, this work was published in 1834, in French, at
the expense of the Oriental Translation Fund, under the title of
" Antiales des Enpereurs du Japan."
Though highly valuable as a specimen of what Japanese histories
are, and though Klaproth's introduction and notes contain some
curious information, this performance is, on the whole, exceedingly
dry, while it adds but little to the abstract given by Kampfer of
thirf or some other similar work. A criticism which Titsingh him-
self makes upon it, in a letter to the prince of Tamba, to whom he
had intended to dedicate his translation, is worthy of notice, as
going to show how little, with all its formal precision of years and
months, the earlier Japanese chronology
respect.
" Must we not suppose," asks
"
Titsingh, that the Japan-
is entitled to historical
ese, so jealous of their neighbors, the Chinese, have, in writing
their own history, endeavored to fill up many gaps in it by prolonging
the reigns of their earlier Dairi ? There is in your history a
period of one thousand and sixty-one years occupied by the reigns
of only sixteen Daivi. The duration of the life of Syn-mu, of the
reigns of Ko-a?i, of Sei-sum, and the life of O-sin, appear altogether
improbable. The first died at the age of one hundred and twentyseven
years. The second reigned one hundred and two years, the
third ninety-nine years. The last lived one hundred and ten years.
These statements are too extraordinary to be blindly believed
Grant, even, that a chaste and frugal way of living may have
secured for these princes a very advanced age, but how does it
happen that, after Nin-tok-ten-o [the seventeenth Dairi], none exceeded
the ordinary limit of human life ? "
The Japanese still cling with tenacity to the formal recognition
of the absolute rights of the Dairi. With as much warmth as a
loyal Englishman would exhibit in maintaining
eignty of Queen Victoria, they insisted to Titsingh
the actual sover-
and the saou