[25] See papers on Yedo in vols. i and vii of the “Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.”—Edr.
[26] One of these Japanese plans is published as a frontispiece to Titsingh’s “Illustrations of Japan.” This plan would seem to embrace only what Kämpfer speaks of, further on, as “the palace itself.”
[27] The 23d a considerable shock of an earthquake was felt. The weather that day was excessively hot. The next day it was very cold, with snow.
[28] The reigning emperor was Tsuni Yoshi, who had succeeded to the empire in 1681, the fourth in succession from Gongen-Sama, the founder of the dynasty. The Japanese accounts, according to Titsingh, give him but a bad character.
[29] Sen is not a hundred, but a thousand. According to Klaproth (Annals des Dairi, p. 184), ken does not signify a mat, as Kämpfer translates it (though mats were made of that length), but a space between columns. It was a measure of length divided into six Japanese feet, but equal to seven feet four inches and a half, Rhineland measure.
[30] In his account of his second visit to Yedo, a year later, Kämpfer gives the following account of this second audience: “Soon after we came in, and had, after the usual observances, seated ourselves in the place assigned us, Bingo-sama welcomed us in the emperor’s name, and then desired us to sit upright, to take off our cloaks, to tell him our names and age, to stand up, to walk, to turn about, to sing songs, to compliment one another, to be angry, to invite one another to dinner, to converse one with another, to discourse in a familiar way like father and son, to show how two friends or man and wife compliment or take leave of one another, to play with children, to carry them about in our arms, and to do many more things of a like nature. They made us kiss one another like man and wife, which the ladies, by their laughter, showed themselves to be particularly well pleased with. It was already four in the afternoon when we left the hall of audience, after having been exercised after this manner for two hours and a half.”
[31] This is what Kämpfer, in another place, describes as a sort of round cakes, which the Japanese had learned to make of the Portuguese, as big as a common hen’s egg, and sometimes filled within with bean flour and sugar.
[32] See the character given of Settsu-no-kami, as a harsh enemy of the Dutch, or at least, a strict disciplinarian over them; vol. i 347, 348.
[33] “Annals des Empereurs du Japan,” p. 405, note, and in the “Asiatic Journal” for September, 1831.
[34] The history of this image, derived from the same source, is given in a note on p. 193. The roof of the temple is supported on ninety-two columns, each upwards of six feet in diameter.