ith Aug. Japan is a land of contrasts. Io the globe-trotter it is a toy land of smiling valleys and sparkling streams, of moun tains of perfect outline and lakes laughing to the sun, But it is also a land of. violent passions ending in terrible tragedies, of volcanoes and earthquakes swallowing up whole villages, of typhoons and torrents and floods which regard human life and property as of no more consequence than bits of straw. To the visitor the Japanese people are the gentiest and "most courteous in the world, in their language it is impossible to swear, and their most dangerous weapon since the Mikado became again the actual Emperor, is a fan, But under all this beautifully lacquered exterior, tragedies are being enacted such as recall the worst deeds of medieval Europe. Such a tragedy, the Soma Mystery, as it is called, is now stirring native Society in Japan to its foundations.
On the 22nd of February, 1892, Viscount Soma Masatane, the head of his house, a very wealthy one, died somewhat suddenly at Meguro, a charming suburb of Tokio, "with its green trees and pretty tea houses," says the astern World, "whose airy architect ture can scarcely conceal a kitten." Whether a post-mortem examination of his remains was made or not, seems doubtful; but the body was promptly buried at Aoyama in a grave thirty-five feet deep, and although he left a son, his younger brother was made the head of the house. It is now asserted that Viscount Soma was poisoned and, because he was such an unconscionably long time in dying, suffocated in a quilt, and buried in so deep a grave—his' murderers had originally ordered it to be forty feet deep—in order that disinterment might be almost impossible, It was ramour red at the time, the Japan Mail tells us, that his tomb at Aoyama contained nothing but rice, his body having been secretly interred in a corner of the gardens at the back of his family mansion. His murder was the climax of a long series of crimes dating from 1874, when the victim was 'a pupil in the school at Tokio, the Keiwagijuku, of Mr. Fukwzawa, At that time a number of his retainers took from the family treasury a mass of old gold coins, valued at something over a million yen, and pretended to deposit them with a certain Mr. Izutsuya, who they knew was on the verge of bavkruptcy. The money was apparently lost, but in reality it had never been deposited with Mr. Izutsuya, clerks of whom were in the conspiracy, but exchanged at the Mitsui Bank for paper money, which was invested in the Ashio Copper Mines. Another large mass of gold was taken away, and the pretext put forward that on a stormy night robbers had broken in and stolen it. The success of these raids emboldened the conspirators to commit farther
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.