ommonage,
belonging to many, prevents each from deriving profit from his share.
All are bound to cultivate their land, and if a husbandman cannot
annually cultivate a certain portion of his fields he forfeits them,
and another who can is at liberty to cultivate them. Meadows are not
to be met with in the whole country; on the contrary, every spot of
ground is made use of either for corn-fields or else for plantations
of esculent-rooted vegetables: so that the land is neither wasted
upon extensive meadows for the support of cattle and saddle-horses,
nor upon large and unprofitable plantations of tobacco; nor is it sown
with seed for any other still less necessary purpose; which is the
reason that the whole country is very thickly inhabited and populous,
and can without difficulty give maintenance to all its innumerable
inhabitants."

Let us now take a step, a long step, forward in time from the Swedish
physician relating his impressions in the seventeenth century, to an
American in the eighteenth century delivering his opinions on Japan
and the Japanese as viewed from the American standpoint at that
period. "The sitter is the same, and, what is more, he sits on his
heels to-day just as his grandfather did to Thunberg, yet it is hard
to see any points of resemblance--a lesson to all theologians and
politicians who still indulge the dreams that uniformity of opinion on
the plainest matters of fact and observation can ever be attained
among men, however honest and conscientious they may be in their
efforts after unity. The Chinese proverb with more wisdom declares,
'Truth is one, but opinions are many.'

"All officials serve in pairs, as spies upon each other, and this
pervades the entire polity of Japan. It is a government of espionage.
Everybody is watched. No man knows who are the secret spies around
him, even though he may be and is acquainted with those that are
official. The emperors themselves are not exempt; governors, grand
councillors, vassal princes, all are under the eye of an everlasting
unknown police. This wretched system is even extended to the humblest
of the citizens. Every town is divided into collections of five
families, and every member of such a division is personally
responsible for the conduct of the others; everything which occurs,
therefore, out of the ordinary course in any one of these is instantly
reported by the other four to save themselves from censure. The
Ziogoon (Tycoon) has his minion