The sovereigns (Mikado, Tenno) of Japan during this period were:
Kameyama-Tenno (1260; abdicated 1274; repulse of the Mongols);
Go-Uda-Tenno (1275; abdicated 1287); Fushimi-Tenno (1288; abdicated
1298); and Go-Fushimi Tenno.
The shikken (prime ministers) were Hojo
Tokiyori (1246); Hojo Tokimune (1261); Hojo Sadatoki (1284). In 1266
Prince Kore-yasu and in 1289 Hisa-akira, were appointed shogun.
- H.C.]
NOTE 2. - Ram. says he was sent to a certain island called Zorza
(Chorcha?), where men who have failed in duty are put to death in this
manner: They wrap the arms of the victim in the hide of a newly flayed
buffalo, and sew it tight. As this dries it compresses him so terribly
that he cannot move, and so, finding no help, his life ends in misery. The
same kind of torture is reported of different countries in the East:
e.g. see Makrizi, Pt. III. p. 108, and Pottinger, as quoted by Marsden
in loco. It also appears among the tortures of a Buddhist hell as
represented in a temple at Canton. (Oliphant's Narrative, I. 168.)
NOTE 3. - Like devices to procure invulnerability are common in the
Indo-Chinese countries. The Burmese sometimes insert pellets of gold under
the skin with this view. At a meeting of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in
1868, gold and silver coins were shown, which had been extracted from under
the skin of a Burmese convict who had been executed at the Andaman Islands.
Friar Odoric speaks of the practice in one of the Indian Islands
(apparently Borneo); and the stones possessing such virtue were, according
to him, found in the bamboo, presumably the siliceous concretions called
Tabashir. Conti also describes the practice in Java of inserting such
amulets under the skin. The Malays of Sumatra, too, have great faith in the
efficacy of certain "stones, which they pretend are extracted from
reptiles, birds, animals, etc., in preventing them from being wounded."
(See Mission to Ava, p. 208; Cathay, 94; Conti, p. 32; Proc. As.
Soc. Beng. 1868, p. 116; Andarson's Mission to Sumatra, p. 323.)
[1] These names in parentheses are the Chinese forms; the others, the
Japanese modes of reading them.
CHAPTER IV.
CONCERNING THE FASHION OF THE IDOLS.
Now you must know that the Idols of Cathay, and of Manzi, and of this
Island, are all of the same class. And in this Island as well as
elsewhere, there be some of the Idols that have the head of an ox, some
that have the head of a pig, some of a dog, some of a sheep, and some of
divers other kinds. And some of them have four heads, whilst some have
three, one growing out of either shoulder. There are also some that have
four hands, some ten, some a thousand! And they do put more faith in those
Idols that have a thousand hands than in any of the others.[NOTE 1] And
when any Christian asks them why they make their Idols in so many
different guises, and not all alike, they reply that just so their
forefathers were wont to have them made, and just so they will leave them
to their children, and these to the after generations.
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