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Updated: May 25, 2025
It is possible that letters and writings were known in some parts of the country as early as the fourth century, but it is nearly certain, that, outside the Court of the Emperor, there was scarcely even a sporadic knowledge of the literature of China until the Korean missionaries of Buddhism had obtained a lodgement in the Mikado's capital.
Whether she was strangely unable to make any sort of beginning in the period, or whether she purposely delayed it in order to show her contempt for Chinese sovereignty in Manchuria, it is difficult to say; what is known is only that the Mikado's government let its treaty rights lapse, and then when China objected to a renewal, defied China, and proceeded with the work of "improvement" by what was euphemistically termed "independent action."
My purpose was to get further information concerning the general condition of Japanese farmers and Japanese farming, but the biggest fact my researches brought out was not in regard to rice or barley or potatoes or taro, or any other field product of the Mikado's empire. Rather it was a fact with regard to what is in every land the most important of all crops the crop of boys and girls.
The subject of illustration represents one of these sacred observances: the procession is coming from the Mikado's palace, which, properly speaking, is a temple, being full of idols and effigies of the 'Kamis, or 'canonised saints. The principal figure is the third minister of state, and from this circumstance the white dresses worn by the 'Kargardhee, or 'fire-bearers, and the presence of some of the Imperial children, it is probably a midnight pilgrimage to some neighbouring shrine, in honour of the manes of a departed member of the family.
The streets were crowded with people. Priests were passing in processions, beating their dreary tambourines; police and custom-house officers with pointed hats encrusted with lac and carrying two sabres hung to their waists; soldiers, clad in blue cotton with white stripes, and bearing guns; the Mikado's guards, enveloped in silken doubles, hauberks and coats of mail; and numbers of military folk of all ranks for the military profession is as much respected in Japan as it is despised in China went hither and thither in groups and pairs.
In allowing such charges at the door of the Mikado's Special Envoy who is also Minister of the Imperial Household, the Korea Daily News deliberately insults the Mikado himself.
At Wuchang he called on Bishop Williams, whom he had met in London at the Pan-Anglican council, and who afterwards made so noble record of work in the Mikado's empire.
He then married the Mikado's daughter, and assumed the name of Taiko-sama, with a view, perhaps, of dissociating himself as completely as possible, in his exaltation, from the obscure individual Fide-yosi, with whom, otherwise, he might not unnaturally be confounded.
Now, however, there is no cause for concealment; the Roi Fainéant has shaken off his sloth, and his Maire du Palais, together, and an intelligible Government, which need not fear scrutiny from abroad, is the result: the records of the country being but so many proofs of the Mikado's title to power, there is no reason for keeping up any show of mystery.
The Mikado's generals, however, had formed a perfectly just estimate of their own powers as against those of the enemy. In fact, a third of their force could have taken Port Arthur from the ridiculous soldiers who held it. The garrison in ordinary times amounts to 7000 men, but before the Japanese attack it had been increased to nearly 20,000.
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