346
JAPAN.
Each of the great territorial magnates called Daimios being absolute lord within his own territory, and having power of life and death over all his subjects and dependents, certain districts only are under the immediate control of the central Government, and their revenues are assigned to the maintenance of the sovereign rulers of the State, the Mikado and the Tycoon. The influence of the former rose greatly after a short civil war, which came to an end at the commencement of 1869, and the consequences of which seem to tend to the establishment of a monarchy in Japan. Army and Population.
The armed force of Japan is composed of two distinct elements:-1. The troops maintained by the Daimios, and destined for the defence of their domains. 2. The troops kept by the Tycoon, and constituting the imperial army. The number of Daimios who have troops in their service amounts to 200, and they together maintain an effective of 370,000 infantry, and 40,000 cavalry, forming the Federal army, and placed at the orders of the Tycoon when the independence of the country is threatened. The imperial army, placed under the command of the Tycoon, reaches the nominal figure of 100,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry, but its actual force does not exceed half of that amount. The late Tycoon reorganised the force in 1865-66, and it is said to comprise 80,000 men, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and engineers. The infantry is formed into regiments, manoeuvring like the French soldiers, and armed on the same model. A number of Japanese officers and sub-officers were instructed by French military men at Yokohama in 1866-69.
The total area of Japan is estimated at 156,604 square miles, with a population of 35,000,000, or 229 per square mile. The empire is geographically divided into the thrée islands of Nippon, the central and most important territory; Kiushiu, "the mine provinces," the south-western island; and Sikok, "the four states," the southern island. Administratively, there consists a division into seven large districts, called "Do," or roads, which are subdivided into sixty-three provinces.
The number of foreigners settled in Japan is as yet very small. At the end of the year 1862, the foreign community at Kanagawa, the principal of six ports of Japan open to aliens, consisted of fifty-five natives of Great Britain; thirty-eight Americans; twenty Dutch; eleven French; and two Portuguese; and in the latter part of 1864 the permanent foreign residents in Kanagawa had increased to 300, not counting soldiers, of which number 140 were British subjects, and about 80 Ame ricans, and 40 Dutch. At Nagasaki, the second port of Japan thrown open to foreign trade by the government, the number of alien settlers on the 1st January, 1866 amounted to 166, of whom there were-British subjects 70; American citizens 32: Dutch 26; Prussian 19; French 14; Portuguese 3; Swiss 2.
A third port opened to European and American traders, that of Hakodadi, in the north of Japan, was deserted, after a lengthened trial, by nearly all the foreign merchants settled there, it having been found impossible to establish any satisfactory intercourse with the natives. Hakodadi is situated on an island where there is little or no cultivation, separated from the continent of Niphon by the Sangar Straits. No Japanese can enter Hakodadi or have commercial intercourse with any foreigner, without permission from the officials, who claim a large percentage on the business
transacted.
Fines are seldom im-
There is an edict of 1637 still in force in the whole of Japan, which makes it a capital offence for natives to travel into other countries. Japanese seamen, even when accidentally cast on foreign shores, are on their return subjected to a rigorous examination, and sometimes imprisonment, to purify them from the supposed pollu tion contracted abroad. The laws of Japan are very severe. posed; banishment to the mines, imprisonment, torture, death by decapitation, and impaling on a cross, are ordinary penalties of crime, the shades of which are little distinguished. It frequently happens, also, that the courts visit with punishment not only the delinquents themselves, but their relatives and dependents, and even strangers who have accidentally been spectators of their crimes. The prisons are gloomy abodes, containing places for torture and private executions, besides numerous cells for solitary confinement.
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