Footnote 2:[(return)]
We use Dr. James Legge's spelling, by whom these classics have been translated into English. See Sacred Books of the East, edited by Max Müller.
Footnote 3:[(return)]
The Canon or Four Classics has a somewhat varied literary history of transmission, collection, and redaction, as well as of exposition, and of criticism, both "lower" and "higher." As arranged under the Han Dynasty (B.C. 206-A.D. 23) it consisted of—I. The Commentary of Tso Kinming (a disciple who expounded Confucius's book, The Annals of State of Lu); II. The Commentary of Kuh-liang upon the same work of Confucius; III. The Old Text of the Book of History; IV. The Odes, collected by Mao Chang, to whom is ascribed the test of the Odes as handed down to the present day. The generally accepted arrangement is that made by the mediaeval schoolmen of the Sung Dynasty (A.D. 960-1341), Cheng Teh Sio and Chu Hi, in the twelfth century: I. The Great Learning; II. The Doctrine of the Mean; III. Conversations of Confucius; IV. The Sayings of Mencius.—C.R.M., pp. 306-309.
Footnote 4:[(return)]
See criticisms of Confucius as an author, in Legge's Religions of China, pp. 144, 145.
Footnote 5:[(return)]
Religions of China, by James Legge, p. 140.
Footnote 6:[(return)]
See Article China, by the author, Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Chicago, 1881.
Footnote 7:[(return)]
This subject is critically discussed by Messrs. Satow, Chamberlain, and others in their writings on Shintō and Japanese history. On Japanese chronology, see Japanese Chronological Tables, by William Bramsen, Tōkiō, 1880, and Dr. David Murray's Japan (p. 95), in the series Story of the Nations, New York.
Footnote 8:[(return)]
The absurd claim made by some Shintōists that the Japanese possessed an original native alphabet called the Shingi (god-letters) before the entrance of the Chinese or Buddhist learning in Japan, is refuted by Aston, Japanese Grammar, p. 1; T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 77. Mr. Satow shows "their unmistakable identity with the Corean alphabet."
Footnote 9:[(return)]
For the life, work, and tombs of the Chinese scholars who fled to Japan on the fall of the Ming Dynasty, see M.E., p. 298; and Professor E.W. Clement's paper on The Tokugawa Princes of Mito, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVIII., and his letters in The Japan Mail.
Footnote 10:[(return)]
"We have consecrated ourselves as the instruments of Heaven for punishing the wicked man,"—from the document submitted to the Yedo authorities, by the assassins of Ii Kamon no Kami, in Yedo, March 23, 1861, and signed by seventeen men of the band. For numerous other instances, see the voluminous literature of the Forty-seven Rōnins, and the Meiji political literature (1868-1893), political and historical documents, assassins' confessions, etc., contained in that thesarus of valuable documents, The Japan Mail; Kinsé Shiriaku, or Brief History of Japan, 1853-1869, Yokohama, 1873, and Nihon Guaishi, translated by Mr. Ernest Satow; Adams's History of Japan; T.A.S.J., Vol. XX., p. 145; Life and Letters of Yokoi Héishiro; Life of Sir Harry Parkes, London, 1893, etc., for proof of this assertion.
Footnote 11:[(return)]
For proof of this, as to vocabulary, see Professor B.H. Chamberlain's Grammars and other philological works; Mr. J.H. Gubbins's Dictionary of Chinese-Japanese Words, with Introduction, three vols., Tōkiō 1892; and for change in structure, Rev. C. Munzinger, on The Psychology of the Japanese Language in the Transactions of the Gorman Asiatic Society of Japan. See also Mental Characteristics of the Japanese, T.A.S.J., Vol. XIX., pp. 17-37.