"by the so-called 'Regents' of the Hojo family, while their
liege lords, the Shoguns, though keeping a nominal court at Kamakura, were
for all that period little better than empty names. So completely were the
Hojos masters of the whole country, that they actually had their deputy
governors at Kyoto and in Kyushu in the south-west, and thought nothing of
banishing Mikados to distant islands. Their rule was made memorable by the
repulse of the Mongol fleet sent by Kublai Khan with the purpose of adding
Japan to his gigantic dominions. This was at the end of the 13th century,
since which time Japan has never been attacked from without." (_B. H.
Chamberlain_, _Things Japanese_, 3rd ed., 1898, pp. 208-209.)

The sovereigns (_Mikado_, _Tenno_) of Japan during this period were:
_Kameyama_-Tenno (1260; abdicated 1274; repulse of the Mongols);
_Go-Uda_-Tenno (1275; abdicated 1287); _Fushimi_-Tenno (1288; abdicated
1298); and _Go-Fushimi_ Tenno. The _shikken_ (prime ministers) were Hojo
_Tokiyori_ (1246); Hojo _Tokimune_ (1261); Hojo _Sadatoki_ (1284). In 1266
Prince _Kore-yasu_ and in 1289 _Hisa-akira_, were appointed _shogun_.
--H.C.]

NOTE 2.--_Ram._ says he was sent to a certain island called Zorza
(_Chorcha?_), where men who have failed in duty are put to death in this
manner: They wrap the arms of the victim in the hide of a newly flayed
buffalo, and sew it tight. As this dries it compresses him so terribly
that he cannot move, and so, finding no help, his life ends in misery. The
same kind of torture is reported of different countries in the East:
e.g. see _Makrizi_, Pt. III. p. 108, and Pottinger, as quoted by Marsden
_in loco_. It also appears among the tortures of a Buddhist hell as
represented in a temple at Canton. (_Oliphant's Narrative_, I. 168.)

NOTE 3.--Like devices to procure invulnerability are common in the
Indo-Chinese countries. The Burmese sometimes insert pellets of gold under
the skin with this view. At a meeting of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in
1868, gold and silver coins were shown, which had been extracted from under
the skin of a Burmese convict who had been executed at the Andaman Islands.
Friar Odoric speaks of the practice in one of the Indian Islands
(apparently Borneo); and the stones possessing such virtue were, according
to him, found in the bamboo, presumably the siliceous concretions called
_Tabashir_. Conti also describes the practice in Java of inserting such
amulets under the skin. T