less completely is the Japanese woman, | tility and refinement, the inhabitants of high or low, lady or serving-maid, a gentle woman, even after the exacting Petru chio's own heart. But to continue.

Kioto are, on all hands, allowed to excel. Of the town itself, through the long, wide, straight, well-paved streets of which we Quaint little folding maps, such as are now passing at such a pace as the abound for sale in every Japanese town, busy marketing crowd of morning perhave been produced for inspection, and mits, neatness, cleanliness, and what may, Kioto and its environs carefully studied, by a slight abuse of terms, be called till the plan of our daily campaign having "quietness" in architectural style and been accurately determined, we descend, decoration, are the chief features. What escorted honoris causa by the landlord between the great breadth of the roadand an indefinite number of followers, ways, and the unwillingness of the Japanmostly housemaids, to the street door. ese to allow their earthquake-shaken Here six sturdy fellows are in waiting to houses more than one story over the pull, two apiece, our jin-riki-shas, vehi-ground floor, nor always that, the extent cles of recent introduction, but now uni- of a city which even now, however versal throughout Japan, and which, for shrunken from its old grandeur, numbers the benefit of those who have not seen a quarter of a million of inhabitants, is or sat in them, may be described as exag- sufficiently great; and we have at least gerated perambulators of the hansom-cab two miles of street to traverse before we type with shafts, and drawn for short dis- reach our first destination, the mikado's tances by one, for longer by two, and palace. The centre of the town is almost occasionally three men, tandem-yoked, at exclusively devoted to shops, warehouses, a pace averaging, and not rarely exceed-tea-houses, inns, and the like; public ing, five or six miles an hour.

buildings and institutions, together with the private houses of the nobility and the upper classes, are more frequent. in the outer quarters; while most of the temples, Shinto or Buddhist, famed as the chiefest adornment of Kioto, are placed on the outskirts of the houses, beside the many tree-margined embranchments of the swift Kamo Gawa, or on the green slopes of the hills that encircle this loveliest of plains.

Of all their surface qualities - I use the word "surface" not as excluding "substance," but rather implying it none is more noteworthy among the Japanese than their cheerfulness at work. It is a quality shared by all classes, and common to all employments. The Japanese statesman dictates a despatch or discusses a cabinet question with a smile on his face; the financier, more astonishing yet, smiles over the intricacies of a defi- Familiar by hearsay, or by the speci cient budget; the preacher smiles during mens which may now be seen in abunevery pause in his sermon; the writer at dance everywhere, with Japanese art, and his desk; the shopkeeper smiles while aware that Kioto is pre-eminently the chaffering with his customer, the servant artistic city of Japan, the visitor cannot on receiving his master's orders, the but wonder, as he traverses the business smith while forging the metal, the potter quarters of the mid-town, at the want of manipulating the clay, the husbandman display of any kind. In size and style as he wades knee-deep in mud across the one shop-front much resembles another, rice-fields, the bargeman propelling his and except the quaint Japanese or occaclumsy boat against wind and tide, the sionally Chinese characters fantastically coolie straining to lift the heaviest load, inscribed on the lintel or door-posts, there nay, even the convict at his forced labor is little to proclaim the nature of the by the roadside. And what is more, a wares within. These treasures, embroidvery slight occasion will broaden the ery, porcelain, lacquer-work, enamel, smile into a hearty laugh. All this is true metallurgy, painting, than which none and genuine good-humor, based firstly, choicer are to be found throughout the no doubt, on a good digestion, but also island empire, are stowed away for the a remarkably elastic temperament, most part in the unostentatious backgreat courage, and the sound good sense ground of small apartments. Coleridge's that everywhere and everyhow makes the devil "did grin "when he passed a genbest of things. Had Mark Tapley been teel cottage, knowing its apparent humilsomewhat more of a gentleman in man-ity to be merely the aping of pride. ners he might have passed for an average Japanese.

on

In the qualities just touched on, as in whatever else pertains to Japanese gen

But

then the devil was in Scotland; had his morning walk been through Kioto his grin would have missed its meaning; for vain as the Japanese may be—with or

119

without cause needs not to discuss at | Within we walk over simple wooden floors present of his nationality, no man in of pine, laid down with the identical closethe world is freer from individual vanity, woven mats, scrupulously clean like none more averse from showing off and pretentiousness, which indeed he would look upon as that worst of all offences stigmatized by the Japanese code, a breach of good manners. To say that the snob is wholly absent from among the social fauna of Japan would be perhaps, human nature considered, an over-bold assertion, but certainly the specimens of that kind are very rare.

everything else, but otherwise neither better nor worse than those of a private house; the ceiling above is plain as the rest, and as neat. One, and one only, apartment is there to betoken state; a kind of public hall, or rather open shed, on smooth wood pillars, over-roofed with wood; a simple raised seat with the por traits of the emperor and empress above indicates that the place does duty for an Issuing at last from these the most audience hall. The sliding screens which crowded and busiest quarters of the town, separate the hall from the passage behind from the almost democratic equality of are figured with the supposed portraits of shops and houses, tea-rooms, bath-rooms, Chinese sages; the front is open to a garrefreshment-rooms, and the rest, we enter den walk. Neither here, nor anywhere on a quieter region, interspersed with else throughout the palace, is any ornagardens, the entrance gates of private ment displayed except it be the paintings, residences, or public offices, till we come many of them by the best Japanese arton a long, low, whitewashed wall of brick ists, and representing chiefly landscape and plaster, topped by a plain tile coping, scenes, birds, flowers, studies of trees, one side of a parallelogram which en- and the like, which diversify the wallcloses in its circuit a space of about thirty slides between one room and another; nor acres. Within these walls, on this spot mats excepted, have the little closet-like of enclosed ground, dwelt for one thou- rooms themselves any furniture or decosand and seventy-five years of uninter- ration beyond an occasional piece of rupted succession the mikado, emperor quaint bronze-work, or some carved utenof Japan, direct descendant of the sun- sil for tea-making or food. A small, ungoddess, high priest, or rather himself gilt, unpainted, imageless Shinto shrine the ever-present pattern and deity of Shinto, absolute lord and ruler, unquestioning obedience to whose every will is the first duty of every one, male or female, high or low, great or small, of the three-and-thirty million inhabitants of Japan. What evidences of despotic power, what caprices of despotic fancy, what traces of despotic cruelty, what treasures of despotic greed, what extravagances of despotic luxury, may we not expect to find within these walls!

Leaving our vehicles at the unadorned outer gate, but accompanied by the men who have been dragging them, we give our names as visitors to the writer or clerk at the old porter's lodge, where not a soldier, not a policeman even keeps guard, and enter the spacious courtyard, where full in front stands the palace. And what do we see? A one-storied assemblage of small apartments, exactly similar to those of any ordinary Japanese dwelling, only somewhat more extensive, united by long, low, open corridors, the walls composed of unpainted timber, with the usual sliding screens of paper and bamboo for doors and windows, the pillars plain, unadorned, unpainted though polished timber; the projecting roof part tile, part thatch.

denotes the mikado's personal form of worship; while within a closet, shut off by heavy lacquered screens from the adjoining apartment, is said to be the original stone of sovereignty, round and polished, bestowed by the sun-goddess Ama-terasu on her descendants, together with a copy of the sword, conjoint symbol of rule, and also divinely given; the sword itself is preserved at the still more ancient shrine of the mythical YamatoDaké, queller of the barbarous aborigines of eastern Japan. Nor is the heaven-sent mirror, chief emblem of the mikado's great ancestress, within these walls, but at the sacred temple in the adjoining province of Tse; the mikado contenting himself with a copy, now deposited in the little Shinto shrine mentioned before. But to none of these objects, nor even to the private apartments and sleeping-room of the mikado himself, is the approach in any way guarded other than by the customary sliding screens; no preparation for defence, indeed no possibility of it exists anywhere within the palace, not even privacy sufficient to ordinary European requirements; no vestige of luxury, none even of any but the most moderate expenditure, but simplicity everywhere;

such is the imperial abode. The very the "thick, sweet, stupefying incense garden amid which it stands, though laid out with the best of that horticultural art in which Japan has no rival, is equally unpretentious, quiet, almost homely; no wide walks, no stately avenues, no giant fountains, no statues, no arches, no balustraded terraces, no calculated approaches, no regal vistas; such a garden as might be the recreation ground of a well-to-do gentleman, or quiet-loving author or poet; barely a Twickenham, much less a Pembroke Lodge; in nothing a Belvedere or a Versailles.

smoke" of a corrupt Buddhism, and the fatal caste avatar of southern Asia, overshadowed the clear heavens of Shinto. Let the foremost living Japanese scholar, the most accurate critic, Ernest Satow, tell the tale, it is one among many such, of Nintoku-Tenno, mikado in the third century, contemporary of the European despot Constantine, the Asiatic tyrant Sapor. "The mikado, having climbed a hill, looked all around, and observing the absence of smoke from the cottages of the people, decreed that for the space of three years no taxes or forced labor should be imposed on his subjects. His own palace, for want of funds to repair it, was allowed to become so dilapidated that the roof admitted the rain. Three years later he again ascended the hill, and behield smoke arising from every dwelling. The people were now rich enough to bear taxation without feeling the burden, and voluntarily offered to contribute toward the rebuilding of the pal ace." Legendary in form the story may be, but it is history in fact; nor unaptly illustrated by him who so lately on the removal of the seat of empire from Kioto to Tokio, refused to have a palace of his own erected to him in his new capital, till such time as the finances of the empire might be able easily and without prejudice to other national interests to bear the out

And these are the headquarters of the most ancient dynasty that yet lives and reigns on earth's surface, amid the ruins of so many sceptres, so many thrones; this is the palace, this the residence of the most absolute autocrat who ever claimed not merely the "right divine of kings to govern wrong," but almost divinity itself; this the dwelling, the shrine of the goddess-descended demigod, the heir of the war spirit Jimmo-Tenno, of the civilizer and organizer Sujin, of the heroic Jingu Kojo, victress of Corea, of the heaven-ascended Yamato-Daké, of the people's father Nintoku-Tenno, of three thousand years of worshipped sovereignty; this building, not distinguished in type, scarce distinguished in size and details from a private house; these quiet groves, this unguarded enclosure! And rightly is it thus. Here, as in the sacred lay. May that time soon come! Meanmirror itself, we see the inmost nature of the mikado's sway, the true position of the sun-born emperor amid his kin dred people. Secure in his own congenital and inherent right, raised above all around him by dignity of nature and birth, a demigod among men, he owns no need of the two props that most uphold the To these very principles, as the learned tottering weakness of artificial rulers, the Japanese scholar Motoori, the most au iron and the gold, military strength and thentic exponent of Shinto in the last pompous display. Such accessories would century, informs us, was due the ready not set off, they could only obscure the access and the familiarity of daily interpurity of his glory, as clouds the sun; course allowed by the mikados in their more yet, the living head of a religion earlier and better days to their subjects at that teaches by existent fact, not by writ-large, when the Japanese emperors were ten precept, of a system according to not only among their people but of them, which man is a law to himself, and na- their leaders and fellow-soldiers in war, ture's own simplicity the standard measure of the highest great and good, he is in his own self the embodiment, the supreme illustration, the perfection of that simplicity, of that law, he the archetypal fact of Shinto, the personification of the god-governed empire. And such, as no uncertain history tells, were the emperors of Japan for nigh two thousand years, till

time the emperor, inheritor, and restorer of the secular throne, Mutsu-Hito, true mikado, and worthy descendant of worthy ancestors, inhabits not a palace but a pri vate dwelling, not the less honored, but more, for his faithful adherence to the principles of Shinto and Japan.

their instructors and fellow-workmen in the arts of peace; hence the absence of all vain parade, all idle pomp, splendor, and luxury in their personal and imme diate surroundings; they exemplified in themselves the simple conformity to nature in which consists the highest Japanese perfection; fitting models, rulers, high priests, gods of the nation to which they

belonged, and of which they were the grounded in national self-respect, there head by right, alike natural and divine, is no fear lest a Japanese crowd, though the existent unchallenged fact of birth. made up of roughs and street arabs, or Nor less truly with the unerring in- rather of those who by prescription would stinct of genius does Motoori ascribe the be such, were they natives of western eclipse, and, for nigh ten centuries, the Europe or the United States, should for practical obliteration of the mikado's rule, a moment forget in word, deed, or even to the violation of these very prescriptions gesture, what is due to the nation and the of Shinto, to their supersession by Asiatic nation's sovereign, lest "princely privcourt ceremony and cumbrous pomp, to ilege" should be compromised by "vile luxury and artificialism, to seclusion, participation,' or familiarity lapse into partly voluntary, partly enforced, and contempt. How far the same may hold separation from the people; in a word good where others than Japanese are conto the Chino-Buddhist system and caste cerned might not be so easy to determine; government that for an entire millennium and I myself personally incline to think brooded, as clouds do over a cholerastricken land, over the length and breadth of Japan. And the first remedy that his writing as he did in the very worst days of the Toku-gawa usurpation, when the compulsory immurement of the true sovereign had become so absolute that his very existence was, to many of his own subjects, a matter of doubt, can suggest for the many evils of his time, is to urge that the mikado should once more reappear, a Japanese among Japanese, in personal and daily contact with his subjects, living amidst them and after their fashion, as in the times of old.

that the extreme limit of condescension has been already reached, if not overpassed in that direction. European racestands, circus performances, the decks of foreign frigates, and the like are, to say the least, questionable places for the presence of the mikado of Dai-Nihon, the heir of Jimmo-Tenno, the descendant of Ama-terasu, goddess of the Among his own kinsman-subjects the case is widely different, the precedent honorable and safe.

sun.

Such is the writing and such the reading of it on the walls of the Kioto palace. But the more fully to apprehend its meanNothing could have been further to all ing, let us pay a brief visit to the favorite appearance from realization than this ad- recreation grounds of the Japanese emvice, wise and well grounded as it was, peror without the city circuit. So, turnwhen given in the days of the too power- ing to the right, we cross the pebbly bed ful Bakufu and the family of Kii. But in of the Kamo-gawa where it flows not far Japan, as elsewhere, the whirligig of time from the palace limits, and traverse a brought its revenges; and the story of level half-mile or more of gardens, fields, 1868 and the succeeding years has amply and little peasant cottages, till at the base proved and illustrated the soundness of of the pine-clad hills that border to the Motoori's counsel. There in the palace east the plain of Kioto, we reach a very of Kioto itself, though no longer honored unpretentious garden wall and an unorby the actual presence of Japanese maj-namented gate. Here we give in our esty, I see a curious exemplification of the names to the old doorkeeper, and without recent change, or rather of reversion to further preliminary are admitted - as inthe ancient and normal condition of deed is any person of respectable appearthings, in the numerous groups of Japan-ance, and some, if European toilette ideas ese, most of them, as their dress indicates, be taken as standard, of very disrespectbelonging to the middle, not a few to the lower classes, whom I meet strolling about in respectful curiosity through the rooms and corridors of the imperial dwelling. The entrance of the mikado's historical palace, whence the jealous tyranny of the shoguns so long excluded all visits, except their own, is now practically open to all the mikado's subjects alike, whatever their condition, and the eagerness with which they avail themselves of the permission bears witness no less than their orderly and subdued demeanor to the loyalty of their devotion. Well

able-to the pleasure-grounds of Shugaku, the resort by preference of the later mikados when tired, as they often must have been, of their half-seclusion, halfimprisonment in their city abode. Terrace above terrace the grassy slopes run up the hillside, traversed by narrow serpentine walks, and dotted here and there by little thatched garden houses, wood and bamboo, where the mikado and his attendants might take tea, and enjoy the different points of view across this Japanese Val d'Arno with its eastern Florence lighted up, tower and temple, castle and

palace, by the morning sun. Cherry- of his greatness and virtues. Lesser trees and maples, the former delighting rulers by far than the mikado of Japan do the Japanese eye by the delicate tints of and have done so; and here in Dai-Nihon their abundant flowers in the spring-time itself the tombs of the shoguns, mere (when, indeed, it was my good fortune to military chiefs of usurped authority, and visit Shugaku), the latter by the gorgeous they themselves not sovereigns, but subcrimson of the unfolding leaves, are thick jects by title, have made famous the burplanted everywhere, but mostly in ave- ial-grounds of Nikko, of Shiba, and Nynues by the winding margin of an artifi- eno with some of the choicest, if not, cial lake, where miniature bridges and indeed, the very choicest marvels of archirock-work islands give somewhat of a tecture and skill. Not so the lords of Chinese character to the scene. On the the shoguns. At the town of Nara, caphighest ledge of the garden grounds a ital of the Yamato province, about thirty wooden pavilion, plain and unadorned miles to the south of Kioto, and in its like the other constructions here, has vicinity, is the favorite resting-place of been skilfully placed so as to command the emperors; let us visit them there. through an opening between the giant Unfrequented by the sight-seeing tourist, pine trunks a complete bird's-eye view of some of them, indeed, almost unknown the city and plain of Kioto, girt in with to his research, their graves are for the its wooded amphitheatre of hills, except most part amid the fields, under the for where it opens southward far away to the est trees of the wide land; but of one, level lands of Osaka and the distant sea- the great ruler, Kai-kwa Tenno, fourth of coast. The day is fine, an Italian spring the sun-descended line, and numbered morning, and holiday-makers, shopmen among the demigods more than two apparently, artisans, day-laborers, and thousand years ago, the tomb is yet to be country-folk are strolling about at leisure seen just outside the town gates of Nara; through the imperial enclosures, admir- and now, leaving the street lines behind ing the flowers, gazing on the lovely pros- us, we stand before it. An uncarved pect, or grouped by the water's edge feed-gateway of smooth, unpainted timber, a ing certain huge golden carp, favored pets small, gravel-strewn space, wherein to of the Japanese populace, with rice pel-offer up commemorative prayer, two tall lets purchased at a booth close by. Oth lanterns of hewn but ungraven stone on ers are respectfully bowing their heads before an imageless shrine bosomed among the shrubs, and commemorative of some Japanese demigod of the mikado's family. Gardens, walks, ponds, temples, pavilions, all are such for size and style as might be owned by any quiet-loving gentleman proprietor of orderly habits and good taste; anything less royal, less imperial, in the vulgar Asiatic or, only too frequently, European sense of the word, it would be difficult to imagine. The recreation grounds of the "people's emperor," for such the mikado truly is, are as characteristically simple, as devoid of adventitious parade and circumstance, as are the official headquarters, the palace itself.

either side, and beyond these a little earth-mound, thickly planted round with bamboo for screen, and on its summit a lofty pine-tree, overshadowing a single upright cube of uncarved, uninscribed, unornamented stone; no other memorial is there, no other needed. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice; the heaven and the earth of Japan are the monument of the mikado.

We have seen Shinto in its imperial and political, let us now see it in its more strictly religious aspect; and from among the many shrines of Kioto let us select for our purpose that of "Inari no Yashiro," on the eastern hill slopes that adjoin the town. "This popular Shinto temple," as we are informed by Mr. E. But if content to pass the days of his Satow in his excellent handbook, "the mortal sojourn after this homely and, to prototype of the thousand of Inari temuse the stereotyped phrase, patriarchal ples scattered all over the country, was fashion, the Shinto demigod will surely founded in A.D. 711, when the Goddess of at least, when departing to take his place Food is said to have first manifested heramong his deified ancestors, the tutelary self on the hill behind. The first temple powers of Japan, leave to earth as memo- consisted of three small chapels on the rial of his reign some gorgeous monu- three peaks of the hill, whence the worship ment, some star-pointing pyramid, some of the goddess and her companion deities pillared mausoleum, some giant wonder was removed to its present site in 1246." of labor and art in long-enduring witness | These two associated deities are, by Mr.