can be placed upon such hearsay information. Were any further change to be anticipated for Japan, it would be, that the hereditary prime minister may play against the ziogoons the game they played against the mikados; abandon Yedo to the generalissimo, as Miyako is abandoned to the Son of Heaven, and establish elsewhere a third court of the vicegerent's vicegerent, the Governor of the Empire. But of such change open rebellion would hardly be either the instrument or the harbinger. Like the superseding of the mikados by the ziogoons it would probably be only the gradual development and progress of the existing system.

CHAPTER XV.

INTERCOURSE BETWEEN JAPAN AND CHINA.

Relations between Japan and China.

Chinese assumption of

sovereignty.-Corean narrative of a Japanese embassy to China. · Ambassadors' audience. Treatment. - Chinese visit to Japan. Japanese literati in China.-Chinese attempts to establish sovereignty over Japan. Hideyosi's resentment. War with China in and for Corea. -Peace.Commercial and friendly intercourse.-Narrative of Japanese traders. Their capture.—Treatment in Tartary.—At Pekin.-In Corea. Their remarks. Return home.-Formalities.

THE relations of Japan with China, although now restricted within the same narrow limits as those with Holland, appear to have long been intimate and active, always, it need hardly be said, characteristic of those two extraordinary countries, but by no means always friendly. The Central Empire, as China is named by Japanese writers, seems from the first to have entertained a thorough conviction of her own superiority, of her right to sovereignty over Daï Nippon, as over all other

neighbouring states, whether adjacent or remote ; and seldom to have missed a favourable opportunity of advancing and enforcing her pretensions; whilst the high-minded Japanese, who esteem it derogatory to be even compared to the Chinese, acknowledge no inferiority, moral, physical or political, except in their numbers and the superficial extent of their territories. In letters indeed, as in the arts and sciences, they cannot deny that China formerly took precedence of them, inasmuch as the fact, that they originally received all these from China is not only asserted in the annals of that country, but pretty nearly self-evident, and admitted as well by their own. old chronicles as by their learned men of the present day. According to Chinese accounts, all civilization was carried to Japan by a somewhat original sort of Chinese colony. The story told is, that in the second century of our era, the lord of the Central Empire, having understood that the herb of immortality grew in Japan, and cherishing an aversion for death, sent thither three thousand boys and girls to seek for and bring home this valuable vegetable drug. But instead of obeying the latter part of their instructions, the whole three thousand settled in Japan, in consequence, it may be suspected, of their inability to find the desired plant, and their dread of going home without having accomplished their

errand. Of this Chinese legend, however, no trace is said to be found in the Japanese annals, which, like the living Japanese literati, represent the Corean peninsula as the channel through which Chinese letters and science as well as Chinese religion reached Japan. An opinion confirmed by divers trifling circumstances, some of which have been mentioned in their proper places.

Upon the several topics comprised under the head of international relations, Dr. von Siebold has collected native opinions and statements, and presented them to the European world in the form of extracts from divers Japanese historical works. These, together with some upon the religion and history of Japan which have been given in the chapters treating of those subjects, serve further to supply a fair, and far from disagreeable sample of Japanese taste and skill in literature. The most amusing or informing of those relative to the intercourse between Japan and China, or affording glimpses of the manners and customs of either empire, will furnish the present chapter.

The pretensions of the Central Empire to sovereignty evidently date from very remote times, possibly from the conquest of Daï Nippon by Zin-mu-tan-woo; but it is on record that the Emperor of China, in the second century of the Christian era, if not four hundred years earlier,

sent to the Heaven-descended sovereign of the insular empire, the heir and representative of the sun-goddess, a diploma appointing him Wang of Nippon. This alluring mode of asserting the claim was adopted, it should seem, whenever an opportunity was offered by Japanese civil wars, in which one of the contending parties might be supported as a vassal of China. By more direct acts of aggression they never seem to have been enforced, and thus cannot be said to have even given occasion to war, since the solitary attempt to conquer or invade Japan here recorded, was that made by the Mongols, and though the invading armament be called Chinese, it was so only because the Mongols had previously conquered China. The two empires were indeed engaged in frequently recurring hostilities, but these were uniformly carried on in Corea, and arose either from a contest for the sovereignty of that peninsula, or, more commonly from their clashing interference in the squabbles of the several states into which it was long divided, and which were respectively the dependent allies of China and Japan.

Of commercial intercourse little mention is made until after the Mongol invasion; but old chroniclers, even in Europe, disdained to record affairs of trade, and the contempt entertained for so vulgarly useful a matter, by the Japanese, would