Japan and the Japanese

CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS.
on a level with Kiirapfer, and in advance of Thunberg, as a contrib-
utor to our knowledge of Japan.
The memoirs of the Djogouns, made up of detached fragments, in
general very jejune, contain, however, a few anecdotes, which
serve to illustrate the ideas and manners of the Japanese. The
Kubo-Sama reigning in Kiimpfer's time is stated to have been
stabbed, in 1709, by his wife, a daughter of the Dairi, because,
being childless, he persisted in selecting as his successor a person
very disagreeable to all the princes an act which causes her
memory to be held in high honor.
One of the longest of these fragments relates to an alleged con-
spiracy, in the year 1707, against the reigning Siogun, for which a
number of persons suffered death. There is, also, an account of an
extensive volcanic eruption, which took place in September, 1783,
in the interior of the island of Nipon, in the province of Sinano,
north-west of Jedo, and north of Osaka. The mountain Asama vom-
ited sand, ashes, and pumice-stones ;
the rivers flowing from it were
heated boiling-hot, and their dammed-up waters inundated the
country. Twenty-seven villages were swallowed up, and many peo-
ple perished.
The councillor of state, Tonoma-yamossin, was assassinated the
next year (17 84),
in the emperor's palace ; but of this event, and of
others connected with it, Titsingh gives a fuller explanation
in his
Introduction to the Japanese Marriage Ceremonies. He there in-
forms us that " though many Japanese of the highest distinction,
and intimately acquainted with matters of government, still con-
sider Japan as the first empire of the world, and care but little
for what passes out of it, yet such persons are denominated by the
more enlightened Inoetzi-no-Kajoru that is, 'Frogs in a well'
a metaphorical expression, which signifies that when they look up
they can see no more of the sky than what the small circumference
of the well allows them to perceive." Of this more enlightened
party was the extraordinary councillor, Matsdaira Tm, who pro-
posed, in 1769, the building of ships and junks suitable for
foicign
but this plan was put a stop to by his death.
voyages ;
Tanyo-no-kami, the governor of Nagasaki,
one of this more
liberal party, with whom Titsingh, while director, kept up a secret
intercourse, proposed to him, in 1783, to
bring carpenters from Ba