Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan/Series 1/Volume 2/Meteorological Observations
METEOROLOGICAL TABLES.
From observations made in Yokohama from 1863
to 1869 inclusive.
BY
J. C. HEPBURN, M.D.
Read before the Asiatic Society of Japan,
on the 17th June, 1874.
——o——
The city of Yokohama is situated in Lat. 35° 26′ N. and Long. 139° 39′ East from Greenwich. It lies on the west side of the bay of Yedo; about 37 miles from Cape King, the nearest point on the Pacific, and about twenty miles from Yedo, which is at the head of the bay. The bay at Yokohama is about twelve miles wide. The city is, for the most part, built upon a plain, about from two to 10 feet above high water mark, at the mouth of a valley opening on the bay. The valley is about a mile wide, and extends back in a westerly direction some three miles, gradually narrowing to a quarter of a mile. It is bounded on each side by a low range of hills about 120 feet high. It is cultivated in paddy fields, is consequently wet and marshy; and is exposed to the sweep of N.E. and Easterly winds from across the bay, and to S.W. and Westerly winds through the valley.
The climate of the Japan Islands generally is much influenced by their position, being on the edge of, and even within, the great ocean current called Kuro-shiwo, which flows from the equatorial regions in a northerly and easterly direction.
The N.E. and S.W. monsoons, which blow with so much regularity on the coast of China, are not much felt on the coast of Japan. The winds being at all seasons exceedingly irregular, frequently violent and subject to sudden changes. The N.E. and Easterly winds are generally accompanied with rain, with a high and falling barometer, and are usually not violent. The S.W. and Westerly winds are generally high, often violent, and accompanied with a low barometer. It is from the S.W. that the cyclones almost invariably come; with one and sometimes two of which we are visited yearly. On clear and pleasant days, which are in excess of all others, there is a regular land and sea breeze at all seasons.
As may be seen from the Table, the rainfall is above the average of most countries; varying much however from one to another. About two-thirds of the rain falls during the six months from April to October.
The steady hot weather, when it is considered safe to change to light summer clothing, does not generally set in before the latter decade of June or first of July, and ends, often very abruptly, about the middle of September.
The snow-fall is for the most part very light, not often exceeding two or three inches; though on one occasion, in the winter of 1861, it fell to a depth of twenty inches.
The ice seldom exceeds one inch or an inch and a half in thickness. Fogs are rarely noticed, so also is hail. Thunder storms are neither frequent nor severe. Earthquake shocks are frequent, averaging more than one a month; but hitherto, since the residence of foreigners in Yokohama, no very severe or dangerous shocks have occurred.
ASIATIC SOCIETY OF JAPAN.
A Regular Meeting of the Society was held on the 17th of June, at 8.30 P.M.—the President in the Chair. After the passing of the minutes the names of the following new members were announced: Dr. S. Wells Williams (Honorary) and Mr. W. F. S. Mayers, of Peking; Dr. Thos. Antisell, Captain Leon Descharmes, Professor W. E. Grigsby, Dr. D. B. McCartee, Mr. Benj. Smith Lyman and Baron D’Anethan, of Yedo; Rev. E. R. Miller and Messrs. John Carey Hall, John Rickett, Jr., N. J. Stone and E. De San. The following donations were announced: from C. G. Wilson, Esq. a specimen of Petrefaction from the Great Salt Mines of Cracow; from E. M. Satow, Esq., a Copy of his Japanese Chronological Tables.
Mr. Aston read his paper on the question “Has Japanese any Affinity with Aryan Languages?”
The President returned the thanks of the Society to Mr. Aston for his suggestive paper, and remarked that he had not given any special attention to the philology of the Japanese language, but from his general knowledge of the subject, he was of the opinion it belonged to the so called Turanian family. He thought that the occasional resemblances to be traced between the words of different languages were not to be regarded as evidence of their affiliation; he considered resemblance in grammatical structure as a much surer evidence from which to infer such a relation. He knew a gentleman, a very good Japanese and Hebrew scholar, who had been led, from the frequent resemblances he found between Japanese and Hebrew words, to think that these languages might belong to the same family. No philologist as yet, however, regarded them as having this relationship.
Mr. Goodwin, while tendering his thanks to Mr. Aston for the attempt to throw some light upon the linguistic affinities of the mysterious Japanese language, professed himself unconvinced that a relation had been shown between it and the languages of the Aryan family. The fact of apparently identical roots existing in different languages was not sufficient to prove a close connexion. Probably all the languages in the world could be shown on examination to have some common roots. If this proved anything it would only be that all the nations of the earth were parts of one great family. But it was necessary to consider not only the apparent resemblances, but the differences which existed, in structure and organization and development, and it was admitted that the Japanese in its grammatical character differed as far as possible from the languages of Aryan stock. In tracing the affinities of the Japanese, the first step would be to find out those languages with which it had really some community in structure, and thus to bridge over the immense gap by which, as we see it at present, it appears to be divided from the Aryan and other families. A samilar attempt had been made by Mr. Edkins to establish a connexion between the Chinese, and the Aryan and Semitic families. Although a great many of the instances of common roots produced by him were transparently illusory, still there seemed a grain of truth in his contention. But it went no further than to show that possibly all languages have begun with a common vocabulary, all languages have some common features, as all men have the organs common to the human family. The question is how far, and at what period, such have diverged from the common type, so as to form an essentially distinct family.
Mr. Hall, mentioning an instance of an absurd attempt to identify a Japanese word with an English word of somewhat similar sound, said that this was a fair sample of some of the writing which even at the present day, in the case of the less known languages, passed current for philological enquiry. He had not seen the work of Mr. Edkins to which Mr. Aston had referred in terms of commendation; but if it were no better than certain other of that gentleman’s contributions to philology, and notably than his paper on the Japanese language read before the Society last year, it was easy to conjecture how small its value must be. Mr. Aston, accepting as proved Mr. Edkins’ views as to the common origin of Chinese and Aryan roots, professed to apply the same method of investigation to Japanese with a similar result. It was doubtful if he had succeeded in this attempt. He himself (Mr. H.) had failed to find in Japanese any traces of an element common to its roots and those of European languages. But while he could not but agree with Dr. Hepburn in questioning the conclusion at which Mr. Aston had arrived, he thought that Mr. Goodwin had underrated the scientific value of the paper. It was highly desirable that the prevailing theory of the common origin of all the families of speech should be tested by the light of such evidence as could be obtained from examination of the various Turanian tongues. In the case of so old and highly developped a speech as Japanese—he meant of course, pure Japanese, the Yamato Kotoba—this evidence could hardly fail to be of especial importance; and to extract and set forth this evidence was the professed object of the paper. Mr. Aston had executed this task with a completeness and mastery of his subject that had left little to be gleaned by any subsequent enquirers in the same field. He was astonished at the number and verisimilitude of the resemblances discovered by Mr. Aston between Japanese and Aryan words. It would be impossible for him, and difficult, he thought, for any one, on the bare hearing of so condensed a paper on so wide a subject, to pronounce off-hand a correct estimate of the value of the evidence and arguments adduced in it; each separate instance of alleged affinity between Japanese and Aryan root would have to be examined in detail by itself, a work requiring time and care; but it must not be forgotten that behind all the etymological identities revealed by Grimm’s law in the various members of the Aryan family, lay the great fact of the close structural affinity of those languages; and that this support was entirely wanting in the case of Japanese, the grammatical structure of which was essentially different; consequently the inference from isolated instances of etymological resemblance lost much of its force. Moreover he noticed that a few of the instances adduced by Mr. Aston were very questionable. To take the first in the list;—Japanese na, alleged to be akin to English name, Latin nomen, Greek onoma, etc. Now Mr. Aston, as an Aryan scholar, must be aware that an initial hard or soft guttural formed an essential part of this root in all the Aryan tongues, and though in the process of phonetic decay this guttural had in nearly every instance disappeared in the case of the substantive for name, still abundant traces of it survived in other offshoots of the same root, as in ken, know, ignominy, &c.: it would be difficult for Mr. Aston to find any trace of this guttural having ever existed in the Japanese na or any words cognate with it. However, a mere slip of this kind would scarcely affect the general scientific soundness of Mr. Aston’s work, which was as undoubted as its philological acumen was conspicuous.
Professor W. E. Ayrton remarked that, as Mr. Aston had mentioned that the Aryans possessed a system of counting up to one hundred, he would like to ask whether the names for the numerals resembled those in Japanese. He presumed not, since the Japanese numerals, with perhaps the exception of fatatsu, differed entirely from the numerals of all the languages he was acquainted with, whereas the Chinese ichi, ni, san resembled, of course, closely the numerals found in many countries of Asia and Europe.
He would also feel obliged if Mr. Aston would inform them whether the word “riyo”, a yen, pronounced in Tokei “ro” and frequently “do,” and which was written in Japanese by the same characters as the word “riyo”, meaning “both”, had any connection with the root “do” and “du” meaning “two” which occurs in so many languages. Or was the Tokei word “do” simply short for dollar?
Mr. Aston. Japanese numerals have no connection with European.
Mr. Hall contrasted Mr. Aston’s admission that he could find no connection between the Japanese and Aryan numerals, with Mr. Edkins’s confident identification of two of them. This instance, afforded a capital illustration of the difference between the philology of Mr. Aston and that of Mr. Edkins. The latter, in his paper on the Japanese language had laid it down without any misgivings, that hitotsu is the English “first,” and futatsu the English “both!” Of course riyô, which Mr. Ayrton affirmed was sometimes pronounced dô, had no connection whatever with the Aryan numeral for two, but was simply the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word liang.
In answer to an inquiry from Sir H. Parkes, Mr. Aston explained, in part, the grounds of discriminating the ancient from the modern forms of Japanese words.
Mr. Ayrton remarked on the resemblance of the numerals to those of European languages.
Rev. Nathan Brown thought the paper had by no means claimed too much for the affinities of Japanese with the Aryan languages, perhaps not enough. The examples of affiliation that had been given, so far from being visionary, or mere accidental coincidences, would, he believed, be found to rest, in nearly every instance, on a true philological basis. He did not agree with the objection made to this paper that the only true way to study the affinities of language was to begin with the grammatical construction. It was a much readier and surer way to begin with the comparison of vocables. The first word adduced by Mr. Aston, na, English name, which had been objected to as a false example, is certainly of Aryan origin. The word runs through most of the oriental languages. In India its pronunciation fluctuates between nam and nao, while the Sanskrit is naman, the two forms corresponding to the Japanese na and namaye. Mr. Brown thought the suggestion, in the paper read, that the changes of form in Aryan words found in Japanese, were regulated by determinate and discoverable laws, was an important one; and he thought it a confirmation of this idea that the Bonzes, in transliterating Indian terms into Japanese characters, invariably represent the Sanskrit letters by the values which Mr. Aston gives them, h or f for the Sanskrit p, ph and b, and k for the Sanskrit h. The Sanskrit ti is naturally softened to tci or chi, the sibilant being intercalated for ease or euphony, as it is also, not unfrequently, in the Western languages. In philological inquiries similarity of sound is not alone a proof of radical identity; we must also trace the historical connection of the words compared. Nor does dissimilarity of sound disprove identity; words that are very unlike in pronunciation often prove to have been originally the same. For example, the English word pot and the Japanese hatci are as far apart as they well could be, and yet, on historical grounds, we must pronounce them identical, for our pot, which is from the Norse poti, corresponds with the Sanskrit patra, and the Assamese and Bengali bati; and the latter, transliterated by Japanese rules, must become just what it is, hatci or batci. Mr. Brown believed that the comparison of Japanese with the Aryan languages, instead of showing meagre results, would prove a rich field of philological research, especially the comparison of Japanese and Greek. With the Burmese language Japanese has very strong affinities, not only in its vocabulary but in its grammatical structure.
The second paper, (translated and read by Mr. Howell), was on “The Increase of the Flora of Japan,” by Dr. Savatier of Yokoska.
The third paper (read by Sir H. Parkes) was on “A Journey in North-East Japan,” by Captain Blakiston.
Dr. Hepburn read Remarks on the Climate of Yokohama, to accompany his Meteorological Tables for the seven years, from 1863 to 1859.
Meteorological Observations were also presented, made at Nagasaki by Mr. Geerts, during the year 1872.
Arrangements were made for a Special Meeting to consider the Revised Constitution and By-Laws; and it was resolved to hold the Annual Meeting early in July.