The Dairi,[27] Ō, or Mikado, as he was otherwise designated, had for his residence the northeast quarter of Miyako (a great city not far from the centre of Nippon, but nearest the southern shore). This quarter was of vast extent, surrounded by a wall, with a ditch and rampart, by which it was separated from the rest of the city. In the midst of this fortified place, in a vast palace, easily distinguished from a distance by the height of its tower, the Dairi dwelt, with his empress or chief wife; his other eleven wives had adjoining palaces in a circle around, outside of which were the dwellings of his chamberlains and other officers. These Dairi claimed to be descended from Jimmu, who, it was said, had, A. D. 660, introduced civilization into Japan, and first established a regular government, and commencing with whom, the Japanese annals show a regular series of Dairi, who are represented as having been for many ages the sole lords and imperial rulers of Japan, till at length they had been insensibly set aside, as to the actual exercise of authority, by the Kubō-Sama, or commanders of the armies. Yet these gradually eclipsed and finally superseded emperors—equivalents of the “idle kings” of the Carlovingian race of France, or to the present nominal sovereign of the British empire—were, and still are, treated (as Queen Victoria is) with all the ceremonial of substantial power, and even with the respect and reverence due to the spiritual head of the national church, descended from a race of divinities, and destined at death to pass by a regular apotheosis into the list of the national gods. All the revenue drawn from the city of Miyako and its dependencies was appropriated to their support, to which the Kubō-Sama added a further sum from his treasury. He himself treated the Dairi with as much ceremonious respect and semi-worship as the British prime minister bestows upon the British queen. He paid an annual visit to the court of the Dairi in great state, and, withal, the carriage of an inferior; but took care to maintain a garrison at Miyako, or its neighborhood, sufficient to repress any attempt on the part of the Dairi or his partisans to reëstablish the old order of things,—an idea which, when the islands first became known to the Portuguese, seems not yet to have been entirely abandoned. We may trace a still further resemblance between the position of the Dairi of Japan and the Queen of England, in the circumstance that all public acts are dated by the years of his reign, and that all titles of honor nominally emanate from him, though of course obliged, as to this matter, to follow the suggestions of the Kubō-Sama. Even the Kubō-Sama himself condescends, like a British prime minister, to accept such decorations at the hands of the Dairi, affecting to feel extremely honored and flattered at titles which had been, in fact, dictated by himself.