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Kaempfer informs us that it is prepared from a decoction of the wood and roots of the tree cut into small pieces; and the form of the lumps in which it is brought to us shows that it has undergone a process.
Even in the present reign the most glorious in Japanese history there have been two rebellions, during one of which a rival Emperor was set up in one part of the country, and a republic proclaimed in another. As for Bushido, so modern a thing is it that neither Kaempfer, Siebold, Satow, nor Rein all men knowing their Japan by heart ever once allude to it in their voluminous writings.
More than hundred and sixty years ago Kaempfer wrote of the Japanese 'In the practice of virtue, in purity of life and outward devotion they far outdo the Christians. And except where native morals have suffered by foreign contamination, as in the open ports, these words are true of the Japanese to-day.
The sacred images of the Tartars, Japanese, and Indians are almost all placed upon it, of which numerous instances occur in the publication of Kaempfer, Sonnerat, etc: The Brama of India is represented sitting upon a lotus throne, and the figures upon the Isaic table hold the stem of this plant, surmounted by the seed vessel in one hand, and the cross representing the male organs in the other: thus signifying the universal power, both active and passive, attributed to that goddess."
The Japanese account, taken from Kaempfer, which makes them to be in the proportion of twenty-two to eighteen, is very inconclusive, as the numbering of the inhabitants of a great city can furnish no proper test; and the account of births at Bantam, which states the number of girls to be ten to one boy, is not only manifestly absurd, but positively false.
With a grasp on this rock, Carlyle springs from the slough of despond and asserts himself: Denn ich bin ein Mensch gewesen Und das heisst ein Kaempfer seyn. He finds in persistent action, energy, and courage a present strength, and a lamp of at least such partial victory as he lived to achieve. He would not make his judgment blind; He faced the spectres of the mind,
According to Kaempfer, the Japanese found similar vessels in the sea; and they value them very highly for the purpose of preserving their tea in them. Morga writes: They are unable to say either when or where they obtained them; but they are no longer to be acquired, nor are they manufactured in the islands.
The first accurate ideas in reference to elephantiasis arabum are given by Rhazes, Haly-Abas, and Avicenna, and it is possibly on this account that the disease received the name elephantiasis arabum. The disease was afterward noticed by Forestus, Mercurialis, Kaempfer, Ludoff, and others.
Kaempfer and even Rein were content to endorse the chronology of the Chronicles the Records avoid dates altogether but other Occidental scholars* have with justice been more sceptical, and their doubts have been confirmed by several eminent Japanese historians in recent times. Where, then, is collateral evidence to be found? *Notably Bramsen, Aston, Satow, and Chamberlain.
If the Japenese vessels are, as Kaempfer describes them, open in the stern, it would not have been possible for those they saw to have survived the fury of the storm; but as the appearance of the weather, all the preceding part of the day, foretold its coming, and one of the sloops had, notwithstanding, stood far out to sea, it was concluded they were perfectly capable of bearing a gale of wind.
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