priest has inscribed some sacred characters, as a sort of passport to heaven, is placed, in the sitting posture of the country, in a tub-shaped coffin, which is enclosed in an earthenware vessel of corresponding figure; and the funeral-procession begins. This is opened by a number of torchbearers, who are followed by a large company of priests, bearing their sacred books, incense, &c. Then comes a crowd of servants carrying bamboo poles, to which are attached lanterns, umbrellas, and strips of white paper inscribed with sacred sentences. These immediately precede the corpse in its round coffin, borne upon a bier, and covered with a sort of white paper chest, having a dome-fashioned roof, over which a garland is suspended from a bamboo carried by a servant. Immediately behind the body walk the friends and acquaintance of the deceased, in their dress of ceremony, accompanying, attending, and surrounding the masculine portion of the family and kindred, who are attired in mourning garments of pure white. White mourning is also worn by the bearers and household servants of the deceased. The procession is closed by the ladies of the family and their female friends, each in her own palanquin, attended by her female servants. The palanquins (norimonos) of relations are distinguished from those of friends by the white mourning dresses of the attendants. In families of lower rank, the female relations and their friends walk after the men. The sorrowful train is met at the temple by another detachment of priests, who perform a funeral service, and the corpse is interred to a peculiar sort of funeral music, produced by striking copper basins. During this ceremony, two persons, deputed from the house of death, sit in a side chamber of the temple, with writing materials, to note down the names of every friend and acquaintance who has attended. In former times, obsequies were, in many various ways, far more onerous; for it seems that, even in secluded and immutable Japan, lapse of years has wrought its ordinary, softening effect, and lessened the propensity to make great sacrifices, either of life or property. In the early times alluded to,* the dead man's house was burnt, except so much of it as was used in constructing his monument. Now it is merely purified, by kindling before it a great fire, in which odoriferous oils and spices are burnt. At that period, servants were buried with their masters, originally, alive; then, as gentler manners arose, they were permitted to kill themselves first; and that they should be thus buried, was, in both cases, expressly stipulated when they were hired. * Siebold. Now, effigies are happily substituted for the living men. The mourning is said by some of our writers to last forty-nine days; but this must mean the general mourning of the whole family, inasmuch as Dr. von Siebold expressly states that very near relations remain impure-which, in Japan, is the same thing-as much as thirteen months. It appears, also, that there are two periods of mourning in Japan, as with us, a deeper and a subsequent lighter mourning, which may help to explain the discrepancy. During the specified forty-nine days, all the kindred of the deceased repair daily to the tomb, there to pray and offer cakes of a peculiar kind, as many in number as days have elapsed since the funeral; thus presenting forty-nine on the forty-ninth day. On the fiftieth day, the men shave their heads and beards, which had remained unshorn and untrimmed during the seven weeks. All signs of mourning are laid aside, and men and women resume the ordinary business of life, their first duty being to pay visits of thanks to all who attended the funeral. It should be added, however, that for half a century the children and grand-children of the deceased continue to make offerings at the tomb. CHAPTER VIII. POLITICAL STATE OF JAPAN. Government.-Peculiarity of Japanese despotism.-Feudal tenures.-Mikado.-Ziogoon.-Council of State.-Its constitution and power.-Governor of the Empire.-Consequence of a difference of opinion between the Ziogoon and the Council. -Vassal princes.-Ministers forced upon them.-Annoyances to which they are subjected.-Modes of impoverishment. Lordships.-Imperial governments.-Official establishment at Nagasaki. — Municipal authorities. - Mutual espial. Its effects.-Classification of the Japanese.-Princes. -Nobles.-Priests.-Military tenants.—Inferior officials and medical profession.-Superior traders.-Inferior traders, artisans and artists.-Peasantry.-Degradation of dealers in leather.-Administration of justice.-Executions.-Torture. -Prisons. THE government of Japan is usually supposed to be, like that of most Oriental states, despotic; and so in fact it is, although the received idea of despotism requires some little modification to render it perfectly applicable to the sovereign authority ruling Japan. We must especially abstract from that idea one of its greatest evils, and one which is habitually, whether or not justly, con ceived to be inseparable from, if not an essential part of, despotism—namely, its arbitrariness. Liberty is, indeed, unknown in Japan; it exists not even in the common intercourse of man with man ; and the very idea of freedom, as distinguished from rude licence, could, perhaps, hardly be made intelligible to a native of that extraordinary empire. But, on the other hand, no individual in the whole nation, high or low, is above the law; both sovereigns, the supreme mikado, and his lieutenant-master the ziogoon, seeming to be as completely enthralled by Japanese despotism as the meanest of their subjects, if not more so. If it be asked, how despotism can exist, unless wielded by a despotic sovereign, either monarch, oligarchy, or democracy, which last may be interpreted demagogue; the answer is, that, at least at this present time, law and established custom, unvarying, known to all, and pressing upon all alike, are the despots of Japan. Scarcely an action of life is exempt from their rigid, inflexible, and irksome control; but he who complies with their dictates has no arbitrary power, no capricious tyranny to apprehend. Early writers, however, certainly do speak of the ziogoon's power as being arbitrary as well as absolute, and it is possible that the actual form may have grown out of the gradual degeneracy of the reigning dynasty; but it must be recollected, on the other hand, that those early |