Directory_and_Chronicle_1841 — Page 98

1841.

Notices of Japan, No. VI.

81

of administration, Fota Sagami fulfilled all the expectations to which his reputed ability had given birth; but he provoked great, if partial, animosity, by the in- exorable severity with which he treated the officers of the old siogoun, who had abdicated, depriving them of the rewards their former master had bestowed upon them for their services.

The despoiled men, having vainly petitioned for redress, meditated revenge, but determined first to make an effort for the recovery of their lost wealth by intimidation. In pursuance of this scheme, a pumpkin, carved into the form of a human head, appeared one morning over the state counselor's door, with the following inscription attached to it: "This is the head of Fota Sagami no kami, cut off and set up here in recompense of his cruelty."

Fota Sagami's servants were enraged at the insult offered to their master, but yet more terrified at the idea of the fury they anticipated it would awake in him, and which they feared might in some measure fall upon themselves, as though their negligence had given the opportunity for so daring an outrage. Pale and trembling they presented themselves before him, and reported the ominous appari. tion of the pumpkin-head, with its inscription. The effect was far different from what they had expected. Fota Sagami's fancy was so tickled by hearing, whilst full of life and health, that his head was announced to be actually cut off and set up over his own door, that he laughed heartily at the joke; and, joining his col- leagues in the council-chamber, felated his vicarious decapitation in the person of a pumpkin. There, likewise, the jest excited bursts of laughter, amongst which, however, unbounded admiration was expressed of Fota Sagami no kami's fortitude. Whether the jesters were permitted again to enjoy the rewards assigned them by the ex-siogoun, does not appear.

Another incident of the same reign, at a later date, exhibits a Japanese view of good breeding, and mode of testing talent and character.* Oka Yechizen no kami, one of the governors of Yedo, was directed to seek out able men for the service of the siogoun, and amongst others, a skillful accountant. A person named Noda-bounsa was recommended to him as an able arithmetician, and in other respects well fitted for office. Oka Yechizen sent for Noda-bounsa, and when the master of the science of numbers presented himself, gravely asked him for the quotient of 100, divided by 2. The candidate for place as gravely took out his tablets, deliberately and regularly worked the sum, and then answered 50. "I now see that you are a man of discretion as well as an arithmetician," said the governor of Yedo, "and in every way fitted for the post you seek. Had you answered me off-hand, I should have conceived a bad opinion of your breeding. Such men as you it is that the siogoun wants, and the place is yours."

Yeye sige did, indeed, want men of discretion about him, to supply his own deficiency, for he had by this time so completely destroyed his intellectual facul- ties by excesses of various kinds, as to reduce himself to idiotcy. To have plainly stated the fact, however, or to have applied to the monarch the appellation be longing to his mental disease, would have been treason. The wit of his subjects devised means of guiltlessly intimating his condition, by giving him the name of a herb that is said to cause temporary insanity, and Yeye-sige was surnamed Ampontan.t

Titsingh.

+ [The disposition to caricature and ridicule high officers is very common

VOL. X. NO. II.

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