Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1871.djvu/712

 6; 6 japan.

of Japanese officers and sub-officers were instructed by French mili- tary men at Yokohama in 1866-69.

The total area of Japan is estimated at 156.604 square miles, with a population of 35,000,000, or 229 per square mile. The empire is geographically divided into the three islands of Nippon, the central and most important territory ; Kiushiu, ' the nine pro- vinces,' the south-western island ; and Sikok, ' the four states,' the southern island. Administratively, there exists a division into seven large districts, called ' Do,' or roads, which are subdivided into sixty-three provinces.

The number of foreigners settled in Japan is as yet very small. At the end of the year 1862, the foreign community at Kanagawa, the principal of the six ports of Japan open to aliens (see page 679), con- sisted of fifty-five natives of Great Britain ; thirty-eight Americans ; twenty Dutch ; eleven French ; and two Portuguese ; and in the latter part of 1864 the permanent foreign residents at Kanagawa had increased to 300, not counting soldiers, of which number 140 were British subjects, and about 80 Americans and 40 Dutch. At Nagasaki, the second port of Japan thrown open to foreign trade by the Government, the number of alien settlers on the 1st of January 1866, amounted to 166, of whom there were — British subjects, 70 ; American citizens, 32 ; Dutch, 26 ; Prussians, 19 ; French, 14; Portuguese, 3 ; and Swiss, 2. A third port opened to European and American traders, that of Hakodadi, in the north of Japan, was deserted, after a lengthened trial, by nearly all the foreign merchants settled there, it having been found im- possible to establish any satisfactory intercourse with the' natives. Hakodadi is situated on an island, where there is little or no cultiva- tion, separated from the continent of Niphon by the Sangar Straits. No Japanese can enter Hakodadi, or have commercial intercourse with any foreigner, without permission from the officials, who claim a larce percentage on the business transacted.

There is an edict of 1637 still in force in the whole of Japan, which makes it a capital offence for natives to travel into other countries. Japanese seamen, even when accidentally cast on foreign shores, are on their return subjected to a rigorous examination, and sometimes imprisonment, to purify them from the supposed pollution contracted abroad. The laws of Japan are very severe. Fines are seldom imposed ; and banishment to the mines, imprisonment, torture, death by decapitation and impaling on a cross, are the ordinary penalties of crime, the shades of which are little distinguished. It frequently happens, also, that the courts visit with punishment not only the delinquents themselves, but their relatives and dependents, and even strangers who have accidentally been spectators of their crimes. The prisons are gloomy abodes, containing places for