Identifier: mikadosempire05grif (find matches)
Title: The mikado's empire
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Griffis, William Elliot, 1843-1928
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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of the nation—is taken as the basis, and the wordsare then transliterated from the katagana spelling, as given by the best nativescholars. The vowels are sounded as follows : a has the soiiBd of a in father, arm ; ai has the sound of at in aisle, or i in bite; i has the sonnd of z in pique, machine; lut has the sonnd of ua in quarantine;e has the sound of e in prey, they;ei has the sound of ay in saying ; tt has the sound of u in rule, or oo in boot; I o has the sound of o in hore, so. Long vowels are marked thus, o, u; short vowels, li, i. The combination uai is sounded as wai; iu as yu; E or e, as e m prey; but (\as in men; g is always hard, and s surd, as in sit^ sap. C before a vowel, g as in gin, gem; I, g, s sonant; x, and the digraphs pJi andth., are not used. The map facing page 17 is reduced, and the names transliterated from thelarge copper-plate map of the empire compiled and published by the JapaneseWar Department in 1872. The numerals refer to the provinces on page 601.
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Dai Nippon (the Empire of Japan). THE MIKADOS EMPIRE. THE BACKOROUND. It is manifest tliat to understand a people and their national life,the physical conditions under which they live must be known. Toenjoy the picture, we must study the background. Dai Nippon, as the natives call their beautiful land, occupies a sig-nificant position on the globe. Lying in the Pacific Ocean, in thetemperate zone, it bends like a crescent off the continent of Asia.In the extreme north, at the island of Saghalin, the distance fromthe main-land of Asia is so slight that the straits may be crossed eas-ily in a canoe. From Kiushiu, with the island of Tsushima lying be-tween, the distance from Corea is but one days sail in a junk. For4000 miles eastward from the main island stretches the Pacific, shoredin by the continent of America. From Yezo to Kamtchatka, the Ku-riles stretch like the ruins of a causeway, prolonged by the AleutianIslands, to Alaska. The configuration of the land is that resultingfrom th

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