mining purposes, for the construction of tunnels or reservoirs or what not, provided that the surface were neither entered nor broken. A change so radical in the conditions of holding land, which the purchaser may thus have acquired under a misapprehension, is serious enough, but more serious still will be its effect on future purchasers. By the newly codified law authorisation is refused to leases of longer than twenty years' duration. What foreign firm, desirous of a permanent footing on Japanese soil, would erect buildings and establish itself on land liable to be resumed by the owner at the end of so short a period? How easy for native traders under such circumstances to strangle or arrest the business of alien competitors! Should a score of years demonstrate the growth of too successful rivalry, they have merely to bring such pressure to bear on the lessor as would prevent renewal of the lease.
The Tamba Maru case, which originated in a somewhat ignoble squabble between the English third officer and the Japanese quartermaster of a Nippon Yusen Kwaisha steamer, assumes quite Homeric proportions in the pages of an Eastern World brochure. It certainly affords food for reflection on the methods of Oriental justice when racial prejudice intervenes, but the sequel shows that in Japan at any rate an appeal lies from prejudiced judges and partial witnesses to substantial wisdom and common-sense in high places. The facts are few and stirring. Horace Robert Kent had reported Umeseko Toyomatsu for smoking while on duty. His inexperienced eye had mistaken the glow of a jewel in the latter's ring for the glint of a cigarette. Fearful of losing his captain's good opinion and his place on board, the injured innocent invaded the mate's cabin with his cap on and flashed the exculpating jewel in that officer's face. Hand-to-hand scuffling ensued, of which contradictory accounts are naturally given, with the result that Toyomatsu received a black eye, was put in irons, and released at once to mollify his comrades, while Mr. Kent was bitten five or six times in the thigh and hidden by his prudent skipper from the vengeance of the crew. Each brought a charge of assault against the other. At the trial the evidence of eye-witnesses seems to have been entirely eclipsed by the opinions of medical gentlemen, who deserve the honours of the verdict. Dr. Sagara opined that a black eye (the organ not even being closed up) would prevent a sailor from work for more than twenty days, and would take from three to four weeks to heal completely; Dr. Fujise compared the wounds in the thigh of the third mate with the shape of the quartermaster's teeth, and found that they almost completely
