The geography of the Japanese kingdom is included in a string of islands on the northeast coast of Asia, not far distant from the main land, commencing with the Kurile islands, a portion of which the empire exercises sovereignty over, and extending to the straits of Van Diemen on the south. The islands and uninhabited rocks are said to comprise three thousand eight hundred and fifty; but Japan of the present day is understood to include Yezo, Niphon, Kew Sew, and Sikok; among which the principal is Niphon, Nipon, Zipon, Zipango, or Cipango, by which names it has been called indifferently. It was for “Cipango” that Columbus sailed from Palos, and from the masthead of the “Pinto” the western world was first descried in 1492. Exactly fifty years afterward, _Pinto_, a Portuguese first descried “Cipango,”—“the kingdom of the origin of the sun.” The authentic history of Japan commences in 660, B. C., with the first mortal ruler, surnamed the “Divine Conqueror.” In Niphon he built him a _dairi_, or temple-palace dedicated to the sun goddess. From him all the _mikados_, or sovereigns, claim to descend. These self-styled divine rulers, from ceasing to command their armies, and intrusting military commands to kinsmen and others, came to abdicating so early, that the heirs of their power were still mere infants. These infants fell into the custody of others, who loved them about as well as the Duke of Gloster did those of his brothers he had conveyed to the Tower; and so the partisans of the legitimate descent, and of usurpers, immersed the kingdom in a civil war. In favor of the authority of an infant _mikado_, then threatened, came forth, a champion named Yoritomo, who saved the throne, by his efforts, for the imperiled juvenile sovereign, and for this service the regent allowed the real power to remain in the hands of Yoritomo, under the title of _sio-i-dai-ziogoon_, or “generalissimo fighting against the barbarians.” Very soon these ziogoons, from generalissimos fighting against barbarians, became generalissimos fighting against mikados. They became tenants of power by will, not by courtesy; they saved the spiritual head from overthrow, but they retained his temporal kingdom for themselves; their offices of trust became offices of power, and hereditarily so; and from Buddhist nunneries widows were even called to govern for infant ziogoons. The spiritual emperor soon became impotent in the hands of the military emperor, and the _dual_ government gradually dwindled until the accession of the plebeian—the self-made, the Napoleon of Japan—Taico Sama, to the ziogoonship, who died in 1598, at the age of sixty-three, after having subdued _Corea_, curtailed the power of the princes, abolished the feudal system, and made the _mikado_, a mikado “about nothing!”