Population and Area. Govern ment. Religion. An for months. The summer heat is oppressive and the rainfall is abund ant. As Great Britain and Ireland is the great island kingdom of Europe, Japan is the great island empire of Asia. The population of the Japanese Empire is almost forty-seven millions, about a tenth of that of the Chinese Empire, and its area is about a fiftieth part of that of the Celestial Empire, or over one hundred and sixty-one thousand square miles. The government of Japan, formerly an absolute and a dual monarchy, is now a limited, or constitutional monarchy, based on the European model, the sovereign, or monarch, being the Mikado, or Emperor, with a Cabinet, or Ministry, responsible to the national legislature, or Parliament, consisting of two branches, one representing the nobility, and the other consisting of representatives of the people, elected by the qualified voters of the Empire, suffrage being general and based on a limited property qualification. Be Japan has no state religion, and all creeds are now tolerated. sides the two old national religions-Shintoism and Buddhism-Greek, Roman Catholic and Protestant Christianity now seem to have effected permanent lodgments in the Empire. Besides China, Japan is the only ancient empire which has existed tiquity. from ancient to modern times, though it is not, like China, one of the oldest nations of the world, being only about half as old, as its history goes back only almost two thousand six hundred years, or almost seven hundred years before Christ. A Hermit Nation. Ainos. The Mika Like China, Japan played no part in the international history of the world until quite recently, or only since the opening of the second half of the nineteenth century; and as it was wholly unknown to the ancient Greek and Roman writers, or to any of the ancient nations of Western Asia or Northern Africa, we will confine ourselves to a mere outline sketch of its ancient history in this section, and reserve a full general account of the whole history of the Japanese Empire for the closing part of this work, especially as the first eleven hundred years of its history is largely mythical and generally untrustworthy. Until lately Japan was a hermit nation. In this connection we will merely allude to the Ainos, or aboriginal Primitive inhabitants of the islands, and to the subsequent Mongolian immiJapanese. grants from the Asian mainland who subdued the Ainos and became their rulers. The Japanese themselves have always regarded the ancestors of their imperial family as divine. The one hundred and twenty-two Mikadoes, or Emperors, who have reigned over Japan durJimmu ing the last twenty-six hundred years have all belonged to one dynasty, Tenno. or one imperial race, the first Mikado being JIMMU TENNO, who does. founded the Japanese monarchy about 660 years before Christ. Thus Japan has had but one imperial dynasty, being in this respect also unlike China, which has had twenty-two dynasties during the five thousand years of its national existence, or since the founding of its monarchy by Fohi, about fifty centuries ago, an antiquity twice as great as that of Japan. only one Dynasty. Alleged Long Reigns. The unreliability of the Japanese annals of the first eleven hundred years of the Japanese monarchy is shown in the alleged extraordinary lengths of the reigns of a dozen of the earliest Mikadoes, who are said to have each ruled more than a century. The most noted among the ancient Mikadoes was SUJIN THE CIVILIZER, who reigned in the Sujin the first century before the Christian era. Civilizer. Corean tion. Bud The most important event in the closing period of ancient Japanese history was the Japanese conquest of Corea in A. D. 203, and the Immigrasubsequent Corean immigration into Japan and the introduction of Buddhism, which soon became one of the two great national religions of the country and changed the whole history and character of Japan and closed its ancient period; the oldest national religion being Shintoism, of which little is known by the outside world. dhism. Former Exclusiveness. First Outside Knowl edge of Japan. Until the last half of the nineteenth century Japan was very little known by the outside world, and was apparently as exclusive in its Japanese treatment of foreigners and its intercourse with foreign nations as China had been until recent times. The first knowledge which the outside world had of Japan was conveyed by Marco Polo, the celebrated Venetian traveler and geographer in the thirteenth century, and by the Portuguese and Dutch traders and the Jesuit missionaries during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During the last half of the nineteenth century this old far-Eastern empire had undergone a thorough transformation, having cast off its Chinse exclusiveness and become thoroughly Europeanized through the introduction of European and American customs, manners, dress and habits of thought, so that it has now become one of the most progressive nations of the world. In the closing part of this work we will give a connected sketch of the whole history of Japan to the present time, giving an account of the rivalries and struggles of the Mikadoes and the Shoguns in its later dual government, and the final overthrow of the Shogun, the introduction of European and American commerce, intercourse and civilization and the Christian religion, and the Europeanization and transformation of this old far-Eastern empire. Recent Transformation. Later Sketch. |