Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/360

348  have acted extensively in the same direction, hamlets, for instance, being grouped together and receiving a general name, which may be either totally new or else that of one or other member of the group. In the former case, one is entirely at sea; in the latter, one is confused between the larger and the smaller entity.

Another peculiarity is what may be termed the transmission of names. A teacher, for instance, hands on his own pseudonym to a favourite pupil, in order to help to start him in popular favour. In this manner a bit of faience may be signed "Kenzan," and yet not be by the original potter Kenzan at all. In many cases only a part of the name is given or adopted. The Shōguns of the Tokugawa dynasty offer a good example of this remarkable custom. The name of the founder of the house being Ieyasu, his successors styled themselves Iemitsu, Ietsuna, Ienobu, and so on.

Now were we, or were we not, right in the statement with which we set out, that Japanese names are a labyrinth?

 Naturalisation. See third paragraph of page 18.

 Navy. The Japanese have from early days been a seafaring race:—they proved this by their repeated piratical attacks on the seaboard of Korea and China, which became so disastrous that the timid Chinese government for a time let a belt of land along the coast lie waste as a protection. But of a navy properly so called during the Middle Ages, little is known. Both the central government and the Daimyōs possessed war-ships which were worked, like the galleys of the Mediterranean, partly with sails and partly with oars; and although the outward form differed from that of the galley, the internal arrangements were the same. These ships played an important part in the domestic feuds of the times. The national annals tell of their presence at the famous battle of Dan-no-ura in A.D. 1185 between the partisans of the great houses of Taira and Minamoto, and again in the