the superiority of Japanese to English law; but they hope for the best. The heavy and complicated system of taxation,—especially the business tax, with its wheels within wheels—weighs their business down; but there again they hope for the best. Meantime lawyers, officials, and arbitrators can go on arguing and penning despatches to their hearts' content. The house-tax question alone has produced cumbrous volumes in several languages; but the day of settlement is not yet.
The conclusion would seem to be that neither the advocate of European official methods, nor those (and the present writer avows himself one of them) who love Japan but dislike jingoism, can find any source of edification in this page of modern history, on which so much pettiness and shiftiness are inscribed.
Book Recommended. Treaties and Conventions between the Empire of Japan and Other Powers, compiled by the Japanese Foreign Office.
Tycoon. The literal meaning of this title is "great prince" (大君), It was adopted by some of the Shōguns in their intercourse with foreign states,—Korea first in the seventeenth century, then the Western powers at the time of the opening of Japan. Their object apparently was to magnify their position, and they succeeded; for the European diplomats assumed that the Shōgun was a sort of Emperor, and dubbed him "His Majesty" accordingly.
Vegetable Wax. The vegetable wax-tree is closely allied to the lacquer-tree, both being sumachs of the genus Rhus. The
to devote a word to it would be to defraud our readers of a good laugh. Mr. Wilkinson is the proprietor of the favourite Tansan mineral spring near Kōbe, which he bottles for table use. A Japanese firm had imitated his label. He obtained a judgment against this firm, who thereupon appealed, and went on imitating the label. He then applied for an injunction to inhibit them from doing so, pending the result of the appeal. But the judge decided that the Japanese firm might continue to imitate the label in question, His Lordship opining that, as it was winter time, probably very few bottles of Tansan water would be drunk, and Mr. Wilkinson's loss could therefore be but slight. (!!) By the way, we should apologise to Mr. Wilkinson for speaking of the case as amusing. It was amusing to the public, but doubtless appeared in quite a different light to him, as the butt of this Japanese juridical joke.
