ght of what we now know, is not only
misleading but nonsensical. A considerable amount of space is devoted
by Kaemfer to chimerical animals, and he dilates upon the awful
sanctity that surrounds the person of the Emperor. "There is," he
remarks, "such a Holiness ascribed to all the parts of his Body that
he dares not cut off neither his hair, nor his beard, nor his nails.
However, lest he should grow too dirty, they may clean him in the
night when he is asleep; because they say that what is taken from his
Body at that time had been stolen from him, and that such a theft does
not prejudice his Holiness or Dignity." In a notice of this new
edition of Kaemfer's work I have seen it asserted that the book is the
foundation of nearly all that was known or written of Japan till the
last twenty-five years. How such a statement as this came to be
published I quite fail to comprehend. There was plenty of literature
in reference to Japan far more reliable than Kaemfer's whimsical
"yarns" at a much earlier period than twenty-five years back. Sir
Rutherford Alcock's "The Capital of the Tycoon" was, I think,
published in 1863. Sir Rutherford was the first resident British
Minister in Japan, and his book remains a stirring and, making
allowance for the author's prejudices on various matters, on the whole
a vivid picture of Japan as it was in the early sixties. Alcock's book
was followed by many others, and twenty-five years ago the world was
so far from being dependent on Kaemfer for its knowledge of Japan
that, as I have said, it had even then quite a library of recent and
reliable books in regard to that country.

Following Kaemfer, a little later in the eighteenth century, a Swedish
physician, Thunberg by name, who also had been attached to the Dutch
factory at Nagasaki, wrote a book undoubtedly interesting and of great
value. That country, he remarks, is "in many respects a singular
country, and with regard to customs and institutions totally different
from Europe, or, I had almost said, from any other part of the world.
Of all the nations that inhabit the three largest parts of the globe,
the Japanese deserve to rank the first, and to be compared with the
Europeans; and although in many points they must yield the palm to
the latter, yet in various other respects they may with great justice
be preferred to them. Here, indeed, as well as in other countries, are
found both useful and pernicious establishments, both rational and
abs