Japan and the Japanese

t>8 JAPAN. A. D. 1550.
second time from the same dishes, which, after each meal, were
carefully broken, for, should any other person attempt to dine
from them, he would infallibly perish by an inflammation of the
throat. Nor could any one who attempted to wear the Dairi's ca^t-
off garments, without his permission, escape a similar punishment.
The Dairi, as we are told, was, in ancient times, obliged
to seat
himself every morning on his throne, with the crown on his head,
and there to hold himself immovable for several hours like a statue.
This immobility, it was imagined, was an augury of the tranquillity
of the empire ; and if he happened to move ever so little, or even to
turn his eyes, war, famine, fire, or pestilence, was expected soon to
afflict the unhappy province toward which he had squinted. But as
the country was thus kept in a state of perpetual agitation, the
happy substitute was finally hit upon of placing the crown upon the
throne without the Dairi a more fixed immobility being thus
assured ; and, as Kiimpfer dryly observes, one doubtless producing
much the same good effects.
At the time of the arrival of Xavier in Japan the throne of the
Dairi was filled by Gonara, the hundred and sixth, according to
the Japanese chronicles, in the order of succession ;
while the throne
of the Kubo-Sama was occupied by Josi Far, who was succeeded, the
next year, by his son, Josi Tir, the twenty-fourth of these officers,
according to the Japanese, since their assumption of sovereign
power in the person of Joritomo, A. D. 1185.
The Japanese Annals, which are 'scarcely more than a .chronologi-
cal table of successions, cast little
light upon the causes and progress
of this revolution *
; but, from the analogy of similar cases, we may
conjecture that it was occasioned, at least in part, by the introduction
into Japan, and-the spread there, of a new religion, gradually super-
* According to the Japanese historical legends, the office of Cubo-Sama,
originally limited to the infliction of punishments and the suppression of
crimes, was shared, for many ages, between the two families of Ghenji and
Feiji, till about 1180, when a civil war broke out between these families, and,
the hitter, having triumphed, assumed such power that the Dairi commis-
sioned Joritomo, a member of the defeated family of Ghenji, to inflict punishment
upon him. Joritomo renewed the war, killed Feiji, and was himself
appointed Kubo-Sama, but ended with usurping a greater power than any
of his predecessors.