The Empire of Japan comprises a chain of islands over 2,000 miles in length, which lie like a fringe along the shores of China, Corea, and Manchuria, and form a breakwater arresting the rollers of the wide Pacific on its eastern face, and enclosing between it and the mainland of Asia the land-locked Sea of Japan in the north and the Tung Hai, or Eastern Sea, that washes the coast of China in the south. This string of islands, all acknowledging the sway of the Mikado, number about 4,000, the five principal ranging in area from 13,500 (Formosa) to 87,500 square miles (Hondo); the rest forming an archipelago of islets ranging from a fraction of I square mile up to an area of 335 square miles (Sado Island). This long chain of picturesque fragmentary domains, all, with the exception of the northern Kuriles, richly clothed with sub-tropical vegetation set in the sapphire frame of a sun-illumined sea, from which they rise steeply with no unlovely foreshore to detract from their beauty, form a fitting home for the unique people that dwell in them, and go far to explain the remarkable qualities that distinguish the Japanese race, who proudly call themselves the Anglo-Saxons of the East,—with the home of whom their own home exhibits a certain analogy of position, although the closeness of the analogy vanishes upon a near inspection of the two groups of islands which thus fall into comparison.