I am afraid my explanation is becoming too minute and consequently tedious, but I presume I must complete it. In the writings, too, there are in Japan two systems, one of which consists of our own phonetic letters, and the other consists of a mixture of our phonetic letters and Chinese ideographs. Unfortunately, the latter system is in common use. It is done in the following manner. The order of the words is not changed, but nouns and verbs, for instance, are written in the original ideographs with the significance of the cases or conjugations, which are written in the phonetic letters succeeding these ideographs. Let me take an example in the English word 'telegraphed' or 'telegraphing,' and let us write 'telegraph' in the original Greek letters, writing 'ed' or 'ing,' which is the part of the pure English, in the ordinary English letters. This will give you an idea of our using Chinese ideographs in our sentences. But our method is still more complicated. Besides the above examples we read very often the ideographs thus used, not according to their pronunciation but according to so-called 'kun' of the word, which is in reality a translation. In English books the term 'viz.' is used and is read as 'namely.' Here 'namely' is not pronunciation but translation. This is an example similar to our 'kun' of a word. When to read by pronunciation and when to read by 'kun' entirely depends upon the construction of the phrases, but one thing is certain, and it is that in Japan one has to know both the pronunciation and 'kun' of Chinese ideographs. The Japanese pronunciation of Chinese ideographs is not the same as any kind of the modern Chinese pronunciation, and therefore even one simple word expressed by an ideograph is unintelligible between a Chinese and a Japanese, though they understand when it is written. In China the pronunciation of ideographs underwent much change; besides it has varied according to localities. In Japan the pronunciation of those Chinese ideographs, which is comparatively ancient, has been preserved on account of our possessing phonetic letters, by the use of which the preservation has been effected. But then there are two kinds of pronunciation of those ideographs, on account of its introduction into Japan at different periods from the different localities. This is an additional difficulty we have in reading Chinese characters used in Japan, though the usual customs where to use one or where the other are usually plain to educated people. Japanese phonetics consist of fifty letters.[1] Five of them are vowels, being equal to _a_, _e_, _i_, _o_, _u_, and each of the rest represents the sound of two Roman characters, _i.e._ a consonant and a vowel; thus, for instance, the sound of _ka_ or _ke_ is represented by a single letter without spelling.