From the first the debates were recorded verbatim. Years before the date fixed for the promulgation of the constitution, a little band of students elaborated a system of stenography and adapted it to the Japanese syllabary. Their labours remained almost without recognition or remuneration until the diet was on the eve of meeting, when it was discovered that a competent staff of shorthand reporters could be organized at an hour’s notice. Japan can thus boast that, alone among the countries of the world, she possesses an exact record of the proceedings of her Diet from the moment when the first word was spoken within its walls.

A special feature of the Diet’s procedure helps to discourage oratorical displays. Each measure of importance has to be submitted to a committee, and not until the latter’s report has been received does serious debate take place. But in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred the committee’s report determines the attitude of the house, and speeches are felt to be more or less superfluous. One result of this system is that business is done with a degree of celerity scarcely known in Occidental legislatures. For example, the meetings of the house of representatives during the session 1896-1897 were 32, and the number of hours occupied by the sittings aggregated 116. Yet the result was 55 bills debated and passed, several of them measures of prime importance, such as the gold standard bill, the budget and a statutory tariff law. It must be remembered that although actual sittings of the houses are comparatively few and brief, the committees remain almost constantly at work from morning to evening throughout the twelve weeks of the session’s duration.

Divisions of the Empire.—The earliest traditional divisions of Japan into provinces was made by the emperor Seimu (131-190), in whose time the sway of the throne did not extend farther north than a line curving from Sendai Bay, on the north-east coast of the main island, to the vicinity of Niigata (one of the treaty ports), on the north-west coast. The region northward of this line was then occupied by barbarous tribes, of whom the Ainu (still to be found in Yezo) are probably the remaining descendants. The whole country was then divided into thirty-two provinces. In the 3rd century the empress Jingō, on her return from her victorious expedition against Korea, portioned out the empire into five home provinces and seven circuits, in imitation of the Korean system. By the emperor Mommu (696-707) some of the provinces were subdivided so as to increase the whole number to sixty-six, and the boundaries then fixed by him were re-surveyed in the reign of the emperor Shōmu (723-756). The old division is as follows[10]:—

I. The Go-kinai or “five home provinces” i.e. those lying immediately around Kyōto, the capital, viz.:—

Yamashiro,also calledJōshūIzumi,also calledSenshū
Yamato”WashūSettsū”Sesshū
Kawachi”Kashū

II. The seven circuits, as follow:—

1. The Tōkaidō, or “eastern-sea circuit,” which comprised fifteen provinces, viz.:—

IgaorIshūKaiorKōshyū
Isé”SeishūSagami”Sōshyū
Shima”ShinshūMusashi”Bushyū
Owari”BishūAwa”Bōshū
Mikawa”SanshūKazusa”Sōshū
Tōtōmi”EnshūShimōsa”Sōshū
Suruga”SunshūHitachi”Jōshū
Izu”Dzushū

2. The Tōzandō, or “eastern-mountain circuit,” which comprised eight provinces, viz.:—