257650

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by

BRADLEY, DAYTON & CO.

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

AUTHOR'S NOTICE.

IN collecting materials for a biography of the first explorers and planters of New England and Virginia, I was carried to Japan, where I happened to arrive (in the spirit) almost simultaneously with Commodore Perry's expedition. My interest thus roused in this secluded country has produced this book, into which I have put the cream skimmed, or, as I might say, in some cases, the juices laboriously expressed, from a good many volumes, the greater part not very accessible nor very inviting to the general reader, but still containing much that is curious and entertaining, and, to most readers, new; which curiosities, novelties, and palatable extracts, those who choose will thus be enabled. to enjoy without the labor that I have undergone in their collection and arrangement - the former, indeed, a labor of love for my own satisfaction; the latter, one of duty — not to say of necessity for the pleasure of the reading and book-buying public.

Instead of attempting, as others have done, to cast into a systematic shape observations of very different dates, I have preferred to follow the historic method, and to let the reader see Japan with the successive eyes of all those who have visited it, and who have committed their observations and reflections to paper and print. The number of these observ

ers, it will be found, is very considerable; while their characters, objects and points of view, have been widely different; and perhaps the reader may reach the same conclusion that I have that, with all that is said of the seclusion of Japan, there are few countries of the East which we have the means of knowing better, or so well.

The complete history of the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch relations with the Japanese is not to be found elsewhere in English; nor in any language, in a single work; while in no other book have the English and American relations been so fully treated. Many extraordinary characters and adventures make their appearance on the scene, and the reader will have no ground to complain at least of want of variety.

How little the history of Japan and of its former relations with Portugal and Holland are known- even in quarters where information on the subject might be said to constitute an official duty-is apparent in the following passage in a letter addressed from the State Department at Washington to the Secretary of the Navy, in explanation of the grounds, reasons and objects, of our late mission to Japan, and intended as instructions to the envoy: "Since the islands of Japan were first visited by European nations, efforts have constantly been made by the various maritime powers to establish commercial intercourse with a country whose large population and reputed wealth hold out great temptations to mercantile enterprise. Portugal was the first to make the attempt, and her example was followed by Holland, England, Spain and Russia, and finally by the United States. All these attempts, however, have thus far been unsuccessful; the permission enjoyed for a short period by the Portuguese, and that granted to Holland to send annually a single vessel to the port of Nagasaki, hardly deserving to be considered exceptions to this remark."

In giving Japanese names and words, I have aimed at a certain uniformity; but, like all other writers on Japan, have failed to attain it. The Portuguese missionaries, or at least their translators into Latin, in representing Japanese names, employed c with the force of k before the vowels a, o, and u, and with the force of s before e and i; which same sound of s, in common with that of ts, they sometimes represented by r. In the earlier part of the book I have, in relation to several names known only, or chiefly, through these writers, followed their usage; though generally, in the representation of Japanese names and words, I have avoided the use of these ambiguous letters, and have endeavored to conform to the method of representing the Japanese syllables proposed by Siebold, and of which an account is given in the Appendix.

The daguerreotype views and portraits taken by the artists attached to Commodore Perry's expedition, the publication of which may soon be hoped for, will afford much more authentic pictures of the externals of Japan than yet have appeared; and, from the limited stay and opportunities of observation enjoyed by those attached to that expedition, must constitute their chief contribution to our knowledge of the Japanese empire.

July 2, 1860.

R. H.