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founded to a great extent on the reports furnished by the officers of the daimiôs, and is therefore not accepted as authentic. It is doubtful whether Japan, in spite of her greater area, has as large a population as the British Isles.
The notion that miako, which means Imperial Capital, is the name of the old metropolis, has by this time been exploded. The real name of the city was Kiôto, until the year 1869, when it was changed to Saikiô, or ‘western capital,’ in order to distinguish it from Tôkiô, the new name given to Yedo. Tôkei is merely another pronunciation of Tôkiô, but it is certainly to be wished that the Japanese would adhere to one of the two, to the complete exclusion of the other. The population of Tôkiô is variously stated, but is probably not much over 800,000. Saikiô had about 370,000 inhabitants in 1870. Next in importance after these two cities comes Ôzaka with a population of 414,000 souls. Foreigners generally both spell and pronounce the name of this city wrongly. Nagoya, the capital of Owari, is next in size, followed closely by Hiroshima in Geishiu, Saga in Hizen, Kagoshima in Satsuma, Kanazawa in Kaga, the double town of Hakata and Fukuoka in Chikuzen, and Himéji in Banshiu. Most of these towns are said to have over 100,000 inhabitants. Kumamoto in Higo, Kurumé in Chikugo, Fukui in Echizen and Gifu in Mino rank in the second class, but I am unable to say what is the population of each. Of the ports open to foreign trade, Ôzaka being excluded, Nagasaki is said to have the largest population, but Yokohama bids fair to surpass it before long. Hakodaté and Niigata have, I believe, about 30,000 inhabitants each.
The work on Geography to which I alluded at the commencement of this paper contains numerous other errors besides that of supposing Nippon to be the name of the main island of the group. Considering that the country had been open to foreign trade for at least eleven years when the edition from which I quote was published it is a little strange that the author should not know better than to assert that there are few domestic animals in Japan. Cows, horses, dogs, cats and poultry
