Japan and the Japanese

JAPAN. A. l>. 18111813.
t-hut up, the passages and other spaces being occupied ty tb
guards.* Their food was much worse than on the journey (probably
Japanese prison fare), boiled rice, soup of warm water and
grated radish, a handful of finely-chopped young onions with boiled
beans, and one or two pickled cucumbers or radishes. Instead of
the radish-soup, puddings of bean-meal and rancid fish-oil were
sometimes served. Very rarely they had half a fish, with soy. Their
drink was warm water, and occasionally bad tea.
Their only means of communicating with the Japanese had been,
at first, a Kuiile, one of the prisoners, who knew a little Russian,
and probably about as much Japanese. At Ilakodade another
interpreter presented himself; but he, a man of fifty, naturally
stupid, and knowing nothing of any European language, except a
little Russian, did not prove much better.
The second day they were conducted through the streets, by a
guard of soldiers (the prisoners each with a rope round his waist
held by a Japanese), to a fort or castle, which was surrounded
by palisades and an earthen wall. Within was a court-yard, in tho
centre of which was a brass cannon on a badly-constructed carriage.
From this court-yard Golownin, and after him each of the others,
was conducted through a wide gate, which was immediately shut
behind them, into a large hall, of which half had a pavement of
small stones. The other half had a floor, or platform, raised three
feet from the ground, and covered with curiously-wrought mats.
The hall was fifty or sixty feet long, of equal breadth, eighteen feet
high, and divided by movable screens, neatly painted, from other
adjoining rooms. There were two or three apertures for windows,
with paper instead of glass, admitting an obscure, gloomy light.
The goveAor sat on the floor, in the middle of the elevated platform,
with two secretaries behind him. On his left (the Japanese placo
of honor) was the next in command; on his right, another officer,
on each side of these, other officers of inferior rank. They all sat,
in the Japanese fashion, with their legs folded under them, two
paces apart, clothed in black dresses, their short swords in their
girdles, and their longer ones lying
at their left. The new inter-
* The description of this prison corresponds Tery well to Kampfcr's de-
crip t ion of the one at Nagasaki.