but it only goes down to the year 1859. Though not a regular bibliography, Mr. Satow's admirable article on Japanese Literature in the American Cyclopædia gives the titles of a considerable number of native Japanese books. The Gunsho Ichiran, published in 1801, is the standard Japanese authority on the subject; but it is very imperfect, the severely classical tastes of the compiler not having permitted him to take any notice of novels and other modern popular works.

Birthdays are not much observed in Japan, except that rice mixed with red beans is eaten on the auspicious day. All the little boys celebrate their yearly holiday on the 5th May, and the little girls on the 3rd March, as explained in the article on CHILDREN. From another point of view, the 1st January may be considered the universal birthday; for the Japanese do not wait till the actual anniversary of birth has come round to call a person a year older, but date the addition to his age from the first day of the year. Thus a child born in December, 1891, will be called two years old in January, 1892, when it is perhaps scarcely a month old in reality. The sixty-first birthday is the only one about which much fuss is made. This is because the old man or woman, having lived through one revolution of the sexagenary cycle, then begins a second round, which is in itself an extraordinary event; for the Japanese reckon youth to last from birth to the age of twenty, middle age from twenty to forty, and old age from forty to sixty. This latter age corresponds to the Psalmist's "three score and ten," as the natural term of human existence.

Blackening the Teeth. This ugly custom is at least

as old as A.D. 920; but the reason for it is unknown. It was finally prohibited in the case of men in the year 1870. A black-toothed woman of the old school may, however, still be seen from time to time even at the present day. Every married woman in the land had her teeth blackened, until the present Empress set the example of discontinuing the practice. Fortunately, the efficacy of the preparation used wears out after a few days, so that the ladies of Japan experienced no difficulty in getting their mouths white again. Mr. Mitford, in his amusing Tales of Old Japan, gives the following recipe for tooth-blacking, as having been supplied to him by a fashionable Yedo druggist :-" Take three pints of water, and, having warmed it, add half a teacupful of wine. Put into this mixture a quantity of redhot iron; allow it to stand for five or six days, when there will be a scum on the top of the mixture, which should then be poured into a small teacup and placed near a fire. When it is warm, powdered gall-nuts and iron filings should be added to it, and the whole should be warmed again. The liquid is then painted on to the teeth by means of a soft feather brush, with more powdered gall-nuts and iron, and, after several applications, the desired colour will be obtained."

Books on Japan. Léon Pagès, in his Bibliographie Japonaise, enumerates seven hundred and fifteen works in European languages bearing more or less directly on Japan. Yet this list was published as far back as 1859, that is, broadly speaking, before the world had turned its attention to Japan at all. If there were seven hundred then, there must be seventy times seven hundred now. In fact, not to have

By "wine," must of course be meant Japanese sake.

written a book about Japan is fast becoming a title to distinction. The art of Japan, the history of Japan, the language, folk-lore, botany, even the earthquakes and the diseases of Japan-each of these, with many other subjects, has a little library to itself. Then there are the works of an encyclopedic character, and there are the books of travel. Some of the latter possess great value, as photographing Japanese manners for us at certain periods. Others are at the ordinary low level of globe-trotting literature-twaddle enlivened by statistics at second-hand.

We give references at the end of most of the articles of this work to the chief authorities on each special subject. At the risk of offending innumerable authors, we now venture to pick out the following ten works (ten is the Japanese dozen), as probably the most generally useful that are accessible to English readers. Of course it is more than possible that some of the really best have escaped our notice or our memory. Anyhow, an imperfect list will perhaps be deemed better than none at all:

1. Dr. Rein's "JAPAN," with its sequel, "THE INDUSTRIES OF JAPAN." No person wishing to study Japan seriously, can dispense with these admirable volumes. Of the two, that on the INDUSTRIES is the better:-agriculture, cattleraising, forestry, mines, lacquer-work, metal-work, commerce, everything, in fact, has been studied with a truly German patience, and is set forth with a truly German thoroughness. The other volume is occupied with the physiography of the country, that is, its geography, fauna, flora, etc., with

*Though Dr. Rein is a German and his work was first published in the German language, the English edition is to be preferred. For, writes the author in his preface, "the English translation is based on a careful revision of the original, and may be considered a new and improved edition of it."

an account of the people both historical and ethnographical, and with the topography of the various provinces.

2. "THE MIKADO'S EMPIRE," by the Rev. W. E. Griffis. This is the book best calculated to give the general reader just what he requires, and to give it to him in a manner less technical than Rein's. The first part is devoted to the history, the second to the author's personal experiences and to Japanese life in modern days. The sixth edition brings the story down to 1890. More than one reader of cultivated taste has, indeed, complained of the author's tendency to "gush," and of the occasional tawdriness of his style. But these faults are on the surface, and do not touch the genuine value of the bɔok.

3. "JAPANESE GIRLS AND WOMEN," by Miss Bacon. This modest volume gives in a short compass the best account that has yet been published of Japanese family life,-a sanctum into which all travellers would fain pry, but of which even most old residents know surprisingly little.

4. "JAPAN AS IT WAS AND IS," by Richard Hildreth, an excellent book, in which the gist of what the various early travellers have left us concerning Japan is woven together into one continuous narrative, the exact text of the originals being adhered to as much as possible.

5. The "TRANSACTIONS OF THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF Japan." Almost every subject interesting to the student of Japanese matters is treated of in the pages of these TRANSACTIONS, which have, for twenty years past, been the favourite vehicle of publication for the researches of Satow, Aston, Blakiston, Pryer, Geerts, Batchelor, Troup, and other eminent

Thus the nose is spoken of as the "nasal ornament;" a volcano in a state of eruption is said to "ulcer its crater jaws;" laughing is called an "explosion of risibilities," etc., etc.

scholars and specialists. Of course the ASIATIC TRANSACTIONS are not light reading. They appeal rather to the serious student, who will have nearly all that he requires if he joins to a perusal of them that of Rein's work; for the ASIATIC TRANSACTIONS are strongest exactly where Rein is weakest, namely, in questions of literature and history. Thus the two supplement each other.

6. "YOUNG JAPAN," by J. R. Black. Mr. Black was one of the earliest foreign residents of Yokohama, and editor of various newspapers both in English and in Japanese. His book is, so to say, the diary of the foreign settlement at Yokohama from 1858 to 1879, that is, during the two most eventful decades of modern Japanese history. It records events and impressions, not indeed with any great literary skill, but with that particular vividness which contemporary memoirs, jotted down from day to day, as the events they describe are unfolding themselves, can alone possess. A perusal of YOUNG JAPAN will help fair-minded persons to rate at their true value many of the generalisations of authors of a later time or who have written at a distance.

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THE CAPITAL OF THE TYCOON," by Sir Rutherford Alcock. Though published more than a quarter of a century ago, and though, as narrative, it covers only the brief space of three years (1859-1862), this book is still delightful and profitable reading. In its pages we live with the fathers of the men who rule Japan to-day. True, these men may reject the application to their case of the proverb which says "like father, like son." But we foreign lookers-on, who perhaps after all see something of the game, must be permitted to hold a different opinion, and to believe that even in cases so exceptional as Japan's, the political and social questions of a