Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 2/Chapter 2
Chapter II
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE
MILITARY EPOCH
THE notable points in a retrospect of the Military epoch stand out clearly by comparison with the imperial system of the eighth century. There ceased to be any regularly organised provincial army from which troops could be detached at fixed intervals for service under the Central Government in the capital. There ceased to be any pretence that the Crown's right of eminent domain received practical recognition. There ceased to be any active faith in the doctrine that every subject in the Empire belonged to the sovereign as a child belongs to its father. The local chieftains thrust themselves between the Throne and the people; held wide estates where the Government's tax-collector might not set foot, and required of their vassals obedience even to the point of ignoring the sovereign's mandates and defying his emissaries. The Court nobles in Kyōtō were not without vassals of their own; but this difference existed, that whereas the Court nobles received their servants as a gift from the Emperor, and had only such power over them as the law permitted, the provincial chiefs exercised absolute authority over their followers, rewarding them with lucrative posts or grants of land and punishing them with imprisonment or death. It was thus that there grew up in the provinces a large body of men skilled not only in administration but also in arms; bound by strong ties of gratitude, loyalty, and expediency to their own particular chiefs, and strictly forbidden to transfer their services elsewhere without special permission. Japan, as an entity, did not exist in the mental vista of these vassals. For each his fief was his country.
Class distinctions partially lost their ancient value under such circumstances. The provincial captains, coming into collision with the Court nobles who were immeasurably superior to them in social rank, by right of might stripped them of their estates and dignities, and even sent them into exile or contrived their death. The provincial vassals, often men of mean origin, the despised semmin who formerly laboured under so many disabilities, found themselves raised to the level of honoured subjects, brought within reach of high offices, and entrusted with large authority. Thus the old distinction of ryōmin (respectable people) and semmin (degraded people) disappeared in great part, and there grew up in its place a classification derived less from accident of birth than from the nature of a man's employment. The broad lines of the new division were four: military (shi),[1] agricultural (no), industrial (ko), and commercial (sho); the merchant being placed at the bottom of the scale, the artisan above him, and the farmer, who paid the greater part of the taxes, ranking next after the soldier.
It is plain, however, that this four-fold classification of shi-nō-kō-shō excludes many means of gaining a livelihood which are practised in every organised community. Religious prejudices were chiefly responsible for the exclusion. From what had been already written about the extremely strict laws of pollution and purification, the reader will readily infer that not all professions, be they ever so useful and honest, could be regarded by the Japanese as honourable. Thus every occupation that brought a man into contact with unclean things, as the corpses of human beings, the carcasses of animals, and offal of all descriptions, was degraded. In obedience, again, to another code of ethics, occupations that catered for the sensuous side of human nature, and every occupation without any fixed scale of remuneration, suffered some taint of ignominy. A large section of the population consequently fell under a social ban, which was not removed until the great reformation of the Meiji era in recent times. Not infrequently the members of this section are broadly spoken of as Eta (people of many impurities). But the Eta were only a fraction of the whole. Originally immigrants from Korea who practised the professions of tanning and furriery, they owed their name to their polluted occupation, and their descendants through all generations, as well as any Japanese that drifted into their rank, occupied the position of social pariahs. The great fifth estate of mediæval Japan, however, is very imperfectly described by the term Eta. It included a large number of industrials and professionals whose social debasement constitutes an interesting illustration of the ethics of mediæval Japan. The Chōri headed the list. This term has no dishonourable import: the ideographs used in writing it signify "head officer." Originally the Chōri were Buddhist friars. Their name occurs historically for the first time in the days of the celebrated scholar and philanthropist Shotoku (572–621). He established a charity hospital, and gave to the priests that had charge of its interior arrangements and ministrations the name of Chōri, calling those that attended to the exterior duties Hinin, or "outcasts." It has already been stated that, in early times, the tendance of the sick was held to pollute a man, and even the charitable doctrine inculcated by Buddhism could not protect the Chōri from the taint of their occupation, while those who, for the sake of mere pecuniary recompense, undertook to dispose of the bodies of the dead and to perform menial duties in connection with the hospital, were considered unworthy to rank as human beings. During the interval of six centuries that separated the time of Prince Shotoku from the commencement of the Kamakura epoch under Yoritomo, nothing is heard of either Chōri or Hinin, and it is believed that the latter term was applied only to criminals of the lowest class. But when Yoritomo undertook the re-organisation of society on a basis of military discipline, he appointed an officer called Danzayemon Yorikane to the post of Chōri, entrusting him with absolute control over all persons excluded from the four-fold classification of soldier, farmer, mechanic, and merchant. It appears, therefore, that the office thus rehabilitated bore no relation whatever to its prototype in Prince Shotoku's time.
The list of persons who thus became, in effect, subjects of Danzayemon, was very long. At the head of it should be placed, perhaps, the Hinin, or outcasts, whose principal duties were connected with executions and prisons. The office of headsman had a special occupant, but all executions other than decapitation were performed by the Hinin, under the direction of the Chōri. To them was entrusted the head of a criminal for exposure during a fixed period, and it was their business to conduct a condemned man when he was carried around the city on horseback as a preliminary to execution. They also discharged the office of torturers in judicial trials; they tattooed criminals; they wielded the spear at crucifixions, and the saw when heads were taken off with that instrument; and they executed all the sentences pronounced against Christians. In battle the Hinin were placed in charge of the heads taken from the enemy, and at the last great fight which finally established the Tokugawa sway, the Danzayemon of the time received a gold seal with the significant inscription, "gatherer," in token of the numerous trophies thus entrusted to him. Beside this seal there lies among the heirlooms of the Danzayemon family an autograph copy of the Lotus Scripture, which, when the celebrated Buddhist priest, Nichiren, was led out for execution, he gave to one of the Hinin who commiserated his fate. Had there been in any age a literary Danzayemon, he might have enriched his country with some invaluable memoirs.
The Eta seem to have occasionally enlisted for services connected with criminals, but their general occupation was the tanning of hides and the preserving of skins. It need scarcely be said that men who cremated the bodies of the dead were classed among the Hinin, as also were the guardians of tombs. The pollution of all these is easily understood, but that a similar stigma should attach to plasterers, and makers of writing-brushes and ink, was due to a less evident cause, namely, that their trade obliged them to handle the hair and bones of animals.
The category of degraded persons was largely extended by the inclusion of all who resorted to irregular methods of obtaining a livelihood. Among these the most numerous were the beggars. Many kinds of beggars plied their profession in ancient Japan. There was the ordinary itinerant beggar; the cross-roads beggar; the river beggar (so called because he inhabited a hut constructed of boulders from the bed of a stream); the mendicant friar, who sometimes asked for alms in the most commonplace manner, sometimes went about with a wooden bowl and a long-sleeved robe, sometimes beat a metal vessel or a gourd and recited prayers or intoned formulas about the evanescence of life, sometimes chaunted verses and struck attitudes; and finally, there was the mummer beggar, who acted a part similar to that of the waits in England. Almost as numerous as the beggars were the professional caterers for amusement in various forms: the man who, with a deftly waved fan in his hand and a variously folded kerchief on his head, danced a musicless measure by the roadside; the puppet-show man; the performer of the sarugaku music; the monkey-master; the keeper of a miniature shooting-gallery where flirting and assignations were more important than archery; the actor, the Dog-of-Fo dancer, the brothel-keeper, the peep-show man, the dog-trainer, the snake-charmer, the story-teller, the riddle-reader, the juggler, the acrobat, and the fox-tamer. Necromancers and diviners were also reckoned among outcasts,—a significant fact, indicating the robust sentiment of the military age as compared with the spirit of the time when interpreters of the Book of Changes (the Inyō-shi) were consulted on the eve of every important enterprise. It is not to be inferred, however, that superstition had faded out of the life of the people at large. The agricultural, the industrial, and the mercantile classes continued to torment themselves as much as ever about omens, affinities, coincidences, apparitions, demonology, enchantment, and divination, and even the inferior orders of the military often laboured under similar delusions. The great founder of the Tokugawa dynasty, Iyeyasu, makes a strange appearance in the annals of the monkey-masters just enumerated. On entering the city of Yedo to make it his stronghold, his favourite horse fell sick, and instead of consulting a horse-leech, he ordered the Chōri to summon a monkey-man, whose incantations cured the animal. Thenceforth, on the 11th of January, year after year, the Chōri received several strings of cash in the castle scullery for distribution among the monkey-masters.
All persons who made a livelihood by means of performing animals were credited with occult methods. Even the trainer of the docile dog was regarded mysteriously. On the occasion of the Moriya rebellion in the sixth century, Toribe-no-Yorozu, whose title shows that he had to tend the birds kept in the Palace, entrenched himself with a hundred companions and defied the Imperial troops. Threatened with starvation, he forced his way through the besiegers, and reaching the bank of a river, cut off his own head so that it fell into the stream. His body was thereafter hewed into eight pieces, and these, according to Korean custom, were exposed at eight places. It is related that a white dog which had been his pet, ran perpetually for several days from fragment to fragment of the corpse, guarding them from birds and beasts of prey, and finally, finding the head in the river, carried it into a deserted house, and having secreted it there, remained at the place until death from hunger ended the vigil. The Emperor, hearing of these things, caused the parts of the dead rebel's body to be collected and decently buried, and erected in memory of the dog a tomb which may be seen to this day in the province of Kawachi. Numerous instances of similar intelligence and fidelity made it easy for people to believe that the dog was more than a mere beast, and as for the fox, its cunning had always been counted supernatural. The fox-tamer spoken of above did not actually exhibit the uncanny animal at public performances. His business was to conjure in its name. There had once been a rustic who by virtue of the incantations of a Buddhist priest obtained the brush of a fox in a dream. Some intricate process of deduction led men to believe that if certain formulæ were repeated and certain rites observed, one could procure the services of a fox to benefit oneself at the cost of injuring some one else. If three balls of rice were tied to a straw rope a hundred palms long, and were carried at midnight on a hundred consecutive nights to the shrine of Inari, a palm's length of the rope being deposited at the shrine on each occasion, the rice would ultimately be eaten by a fox which thenceforth became the servant of the worshipper, provided that his heart was free from carnal lust. The professional fox-tamer undertook to produce the same result without these troublesome preliminaries, and one could thus enrich oneself and bring fever or madness on an enemy. On the other hand, if a man possessed this power, it was believed that the fact showed itself by miraculous and voluntary materialisation of his thoughts, so that if he happened to think of a snake as he watched a friend eating a meal, the reptile would immediately appear among the friend's viands, or if a sorrowful mood visited him as he reflected on another's conduct, the subject of his reflections would at once be moved to tears. The fox-tamer, dog-trainer, or snake-charmer being thus unable to fully control his wayward servant, ordinary men shunned him carefully; a fact which doubtless helped to determine the degraded position assigned to him by official classifiers.
The fact that while the keeper of a brothel was placed among the polluted, no such stigma attached to the inmates of the brothel, must be attributed to the theory that the adoption of a life of shame could never be a matter of free volition, but must either be attended by extenuating self-sacrifice or result from uncontrollable misfortune. In truth, the ranks of prostitution were chiefly recruited with children sold to save their parents or brothers from starvation or dishonour and with kidnapped girls. No female regarded the profession with any feeling but the profoundest horror.
Among the ignominious populace there were some whose relegation to such a place is hard to understand; as the makers of tiles, of hats, of bow-strings, of lamp-wicks, and of horse-reins; the caster of metal, the stone-cutter, the ferry-man, the dyer, and the barrier-watchman.
Danzayemon Yorikane, the first official commissioned to control this large class of persons, was a military man of some standing, but his office ultimately shared the degradation attaching to its connections. The power he wielded and the wealth he accumulated must have compensated to a great extent for his loss of caste. As to his power, the members of the degraded classes being disqualified to enter a Court of Justice, full authority to adjudicate their disputes and punish their offences was vested in Danzayemon; and as for his wealth, it is recorded that many merchants of standing borrowed large sums from him habitually. Such transactions were secretly arranged, for even pecuniary dealings with a Chōri involved contamination. The representative of the family in the beginning of the eighth century, desiring to break down the irksome barriers of caste, invited his debtors to a banquet. The great majority of them resented the invitation as a gross impertinence, but some few felt constrained to accept it. When these latter sat down to the magnificent repast prepared for them, they found their soup-bowls filled with gold coins, and the souvenirs handed to them when they took their leave were their own promissory notes. Danzayemon nevertheless remained an outcast. No payment could purchase his elevation from that grade. It need scarcely be said that alike for him, for his family, and for all members of the various professions and trades under his control, marriage with persons of the superior classes was strictly interdicted.
The extraordinary vicissitudes of men's fortunes during the Military epoch were reflected in the state of Kyōtō. At one time the very centre of luxury and magnificence, it became, at another, a scene of desolation and penury. Kiyomori, the Taira chief, had the wisdom to see that the strength of his soldiers and the integrity of his officials could not be preserved amid the turbulence, disorder, lawlessness, and debauchery of the Imperial city. He made Fukuhara, near Hyōgo, the seat of administration, and moved the Court thither, much against the will of the aristocratic families. Very soon Kyōtō's condition was such that a poet of the time described it as a town where "the streets had become grassy moors; the moonlight shone on ruins only, and the autumn wind told sad stories of the past." But when the Hōjō family fell from power and Kamakura ceased to be the seat of government, Kyōtō quickly recovered its old importance. An anonymous placard exposed at the market-place in the early part of the fourteenth century gave the following picture of the metropolis:—
Of the confusion existing in the capital and of the critical eyes with which some men of the time viewed it, this anonymous writer gives us a vivid impression. It is, indeed, bewildering to reflect what a complete subversal of the old order of things must have taken place when the rude warriors from the provinces, unlettered, ignorant of Court etiquette, without respect for time-honoured rank and careless of social canons, trooped into the Imperial city and substituted their blunt, practical ways for the effeminate perfunctoriness of the hereditary officials. A Japanese historian, writing when the memory of the events he described was still fresh, said:—
But the Court nobles had their revenge, for the luxury and debauchery which the samurai treated with such contempt at the outset, ultimately proved the ruin of the samurai themselves. Kyōtō was a kind of political barometer. When it reached its highest point of magnificence and splendour, a revolution could always be predicted. Probably its zenith of glory was in the days of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1368–1374). He undertook the building of temples and palaces on a scale suggesting that the resources of the nation had only one fitting purpose, the embellishment of the capital. A pagoda three hundred and sixty feet high and a "golden pavilion" (Kinkaku-ji) were among his most celebrated constructions. The former disappeared altogether in the "eleven years' war" half a century later, and of the latter only a portion remains,—a three-storyed pavilion, the ceiling of its second storey decorated with paintings by a celebrated artist, and the whole interior of the third storey, ceiling, walls, floor, balcony-railing, and projecting rafters, covered with gilding which was thickly applied over varnish composed of lacquer and hone-powder. Traces alone of the gold can now be seen, but the effect when the edifice was in full preservation must have been dazzling. Yoshimasa, who succeeded to the Shōgunate in 1449 and is remembered as Japan's foremost dilettante, erected a Silver Pavilion (Ginkakuji) in imitation of his predecessor's foible, but never carried it to completion. Of Kyoto as it was in his days, at the middle of the fifteenth century, before long years of war reduced it once more to ruins, only a faint conception can be formed from the descriptions of subsequent writers, for they employ adjectives of admiration instead of recording intelligible facts. Here is what one of them says:—
The writer then devotes pages to enumerating the great temples that stood in the city and its suburbs. Of one he says that it was "bathed in blossoms as a mountain is in clouds," and that "in the rays of the setting sun the roof glowed like gold," while "every breath of air wafted around the perfume of flowers." Of another—Shō-kaku-ji, which Yoshimitsu built—he affirms that one of the pagodas cost a hundred times as much as thirteen pagodas of a century later. Of a third he says that "its fifty pagodas stood like a row of stars." And his eulogies end with the lament: "Alas! The city of flowers which was expected to last for ten thousand years, became a scene of desolation; the home of the fox and the wolf. Even the temples of Tōji and Kitano, which survived for a time, were ultimately reduced to ashes. Peace succeeds war, rise follows fall in all ages, but the catastrophe of the Ōnin era (1467) obliterated the ways of Emperor and of Buddha at once. All the glories of Imperialism and all the grandeur of the temples were destroyed for ever. Well did the poet write: 'The capital is like an evening lark. It rises with song and descends among tears.'"
Something must be allowed for the obvious exaggeration of this writer, but the fact remains that the city of Kyōtō attained its zenith of grandeur in the middle of the fifteenth century; that it was reduced, a few years later, to a mere shadow of its former self, and that it never again recovered its old magnificence. Yet, even in the days of which the writer quoted above speaks in such glowing terms, Kyōtō could not compare with the city that was destined to grow up in the east of the country during the eighteenth century under the sway of the Tokugawa Shōguns.
One more quotation, from a work compiled in the middle of the sixteenth century, may be added here for the sake of the plaintive picture it presents of the ruin caused by the furious and continuous fighting which the great trio, Oda Nobunaga, Hashiba Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Iyeyasu, at last brought to an end:—
Much the same story might be told of Kamakura, the capital of the Minamoto and the Hōjō; of Odawara, the second capital of the Hōjō, and of Yamaguchi in the south, where the Ouchi family sat ruling the six provinces of Suo, Nagato, Buzen, Chikuzen, Aki, and Iwami, and growing rich by means of their monopoly of the country's foreign trade; and whither many of the Court nobles fled when Kyōtō ceased to be habitable by any but strong soldiers. The cities of Japan have invariably grown to greatness under the shadow of the Government.
The great vicissitudes mentioned above convey a fact which must not be lost sight of in studying the Military epoch, namely, that it extended over a period of nearly four centuries, and that, during the social and political convulsions which marked its course, many of the customs and institutions of the nation underwent changes almost as violent as the events amid which they occurred.
As to the dwellings of the aristocratic classes in Kyōtō during the first two hundred years of the Military epoch—the "illustrious houses," as they were called—there is little to be added to what has already been written on this subject with regard to the Heian epoch. Conspicuous progress was subsequently made in the matter of interior decoration, but of that it will be necessary to speak elsewhere.
Military residences, however, presented some special features. Their general character aimed at simplicity. There were two enclosures, each surrounded by a strong boarded fence. A fosse encircled the whole. Outer and inner gate alike were "two footed," and the latter had sometimes flanking watch-towers. These gates seldom carried roofs, though an occasional exception was made in favour of a roof covered with earth to a depth of some inches. Within both gates were places of arms, where various weapons stood ranged, and inside the second gate there was a kind of vestibule for depositing foot-gear. Archery ranges and ball courts were provided, but the residence itself was small and plain. It comprised a hall having a dais with a lacquered chair for distinguished persons, a women's apartment, a servants' room, and a kitchen. The heating apparatus was a hearth sunk in the floor, and all the household utensils were kept in a cupboard. It was the policy of Yoritomo and the Hōjō Vice-gerents to encourage a plain style of living. The outer fence of the great Hōjō Yasutoki's mansion being in a state of decay, his officers wished to build an embankment, but he withheld his assent, saying that the task would require much labour, and that an embankment could never protect him if the bravery of his comrades did not suffice. To such an extent was this spirit of austere simplicity carried that great military chiefs, who possessed wide estates and commanded many soldiers, might be found sleeping in a veranda, their guards in the open places-of-arms beside the middle gate, and their servants on the floor of the stable; an arrangement typical of absolute readiness for any emergency. By and by the Zen sect of Buddhism began to flourish. It inculcated the doctrine of abstraction which was supposed to render the devotee superior to all his surroundings, and to educate a heart that defied fate. This creed immediately attracted the samurai. The mood it produced seemed to him an ideal temper for displays of military valour and sublime fortitude; the austere discipline it prescribed for developing that mood appealed to his conception of a soldier's practice. Even the construction of his dwelling reflected this new faith. He fitted up a room for purposes of reading and abstraction, calling it a "study" (sho-in), and to the inner gate of the enclosure he gave the name gen-kwan, or "the hall of the origin," in allusion to the saying of Laotsze, "the origin of the origin, the gate of all truth." A different meaning afterwards came to be attached to the gen-kwan, as will be seen presently. The "study" was, in fact, a modified form of the old "bedroom." The latter had bamboo blinds hung round it, and was closed by latticed shutters swinging on hinges, which could be raised so as to form a kind of awning in fine weather, but, when lowered, rendered the room dark and gloomy. In the houses of the Zen monks sliding shutters covered with thin white paper, possessing the peculiar translucidity of unglazed paper made from rice-straw, were substituted for bamboo blinds, and the hanging lattices were either retained, or replaced by wooden doors which could be slid, along a groove and thus removed altogether during the day. There resulted a chamber immensely improved in the matter of light, warmth, and privacy, for although the papered doors gave free passage to light, they effectually concealed from outside observation everything within. Another feature borrowed from the Zen monasteries was an alcove. This consisted of a recessed space, on one side of which a sacred picture could be hung or a Buddhist image placed, to serve as an object for contemplation while practising the rite of abstraction; on the other side, a cupboard above and a cupboard below, separated by a shelf, were used for writing materials, books, and incense utensils. In its original form the alcove was unpretentious, being destined simply to serve the purposes just mentioned. But its decorative capabilities soon obtained recognition. Rare woods were sought for its ground slab and its shelves; curious timbers for its pillars, and pictures by great artists or rich products of the lacquerer's art for the panels of its cupboards. It became, too, a species of cabinet for the display of objects of virtu. Celebrated paintings, or autographic scrolls by renowned men, were suspended on its wall, and choice specimens of porcelain, jade, or bronze were ranged on its shelves. That use of the alcove belongs, however, to a late period of the epoch, and is to be associated with the architecture of the "illustrious houses" in the cities rather than with that of the military residences in the provinces. The original and long-obeyed conception was that the objects appropriate to an alcove were limited to a religious picture or image, a bell (shō) for ringing during prayer, a "worldly-dust-brush" (hossu) such as priests carried, and the "three armour-pieces" of Buddha, namely, a pricket candlestick, a censer, and a flower-vase.[2] The use of the tatami—that is to say, the thick mat of plaited straw and invariable dimensions, which has already been described in speaking of the Heian epoch—was greatly extended during the times now under consideration. Instead of being laid on the dais of state and in sleeping and women's chambers only, these essentially Japanese objects covered the floors of all the rooms, even military men not considering them too comfortable. It has to be observed, however, that men of very high rank, social or official, did not sit in direct contact with the mats: they used cushions, round or square, made of silk crape stuffed with cotton wool. Ultimately these came into vogue in every well-to-do household.
Tiled roofs were still regarded as altogether beyond the competence of any but the greatest folk. It is for that reason that in the above-quoted descriptions of Kyōtō's grandeur in its palmiest days, the play of light upon the roofs of notable edifices is a feature always emphasised. The reference is not, however, to ordinary lustreless tiles of baked earthenware, but to richly glazed tiles procured from China, and also to copper slabs with which the roofs of palaces and great temples were sometimes covered. The green tile of China captivated Japanese fancy. But it could not be manufactured in Japan until a comparatively late period of the Military epoch. The middle of the thirteenth century found Japanese potters producing their first vitrified glazes on small utensils for the tea-drinking ceremony. Glazed tiles were still beyond their strength. By way of substitute for them, slabs of copper bronze were employed, which quickly developed a beautiful green patina when exposed to climatic influence. Expensive as such a substitute seems, it was not, perhaps, so very costly by comparison, seeing what difficulties attended the carriage of stoneware tiles from the interior of China to Kyōtō. Roofs in general were boarded until the sixteenth century, when instruction derived from Korean potters gave an 
PALANQUINS AND CARRIAGE.
SLEEPING PLACE IN AN ARISTOCRAT'S MANSION.
The "hall of the origin" (gen-kwan) served a new purpose, and underwent a corresponding modification towards the close of the fourteenth century. It has been stated that in Kyōtō the guards of a mansion were usually quartered in a back-room, whereas in provincial military mansions they occupied barracks on either side of the inner gate, which the samurai, in their zeal for the Zen doctrines, called the gen-kwan. The Kyōtō nobles, in the Muromachi epoch, finding it expedient to have guards close to the entrance, enlarged the vestibule of the main building so that it became a "spacious chamber," and, by a process of derivation at once apparent, gave the name gen-kwan to the vestibule of this chamber. Thus was reached the final form of the aristocratic mansion,—a double vestibule (gen-kwan), the larger section being for the ingress and egress of the master of the house and his guests; the smaller for that of the womankind, the soldiers, and the servants, and a hall (hiroma), around which, as well as in the vestibule, weapons of various kinds were ranged in upright racks.
In the same epoch (Muromachi), when the tea ceremony, which will be spoken of presently, had become popular, a special room, or suite of rooms, was added for its uses. Large mansions had also a chamber with a stage for the mimetic dances called saru-gaku, in which every accomplished gentleman was supposed to be able to take a part, and for which stores of magnificent costumes were an essential part of aristocratic household furniture.
It was, however, in the matter of interior decoration that architecture made its chief advance at this period. From the twelfth century, a great school of decorative painters, known in art records as the Yamato Academy, began to attract national attention, and were merged, in the fourteenth century, into the Tosa Academy, whose members carried the art of pictorial decoration to an extraordinary degree of elaboration and splendour. Masters of colour harmonies, highly skilled in conventionalising natural forms, and unencumbered by any canons of cast shadows, these experts were now employed to decorate the sliding doors, walls, and ceilings of the various chambers, and, from the fifteenth century, they were assisted in the work by the Sesshiu and Kano academies, with their noble breadth of conception and tenderness of fancy, so that the decorative motives ranged from battle scenes, historical episodes, mythical legends, and even genre subjects, to landscapes, waterscapes, representations of bird and animal life, and floral designs of large variety.[3]
Pictorial decoration, elaborate and beautiful as it was, did not constitute the principal item of cost in constructing these mansions. It was rather upon rare woods, uniquely grown timbers, exquisite joinery, and fine plastering that great sums were lavished. Single boards eighteen feet square; pine stems forty feet long without any appreciable difference of diameter throughout; carpenter's work as accurate as though all the parts of a building had grown together naturally instead of being joined artificially,—these involved outlays even greater than the sums lavished on the decorative artist.
Protection against fire was sought by constructing separate storerooms, having solid wooden frames completely covered with mud and plaster. In earlier times, the chief object of a storeroom had been security against damp. Raised floors were consequently the distinctive feature of such edifices. But the conflagrations by which Kyōtō was devastated in the Military epoch taught the people that fire was their worst enemy, and they soon saw the expediency of protecting all the timbers of a building against direct contact with flame. In the thirteenth century the first fire-proof storehouse (dozō) made its appearance, and quickly took the shape it has retained ever since. Over the wooden framework layer after layer of plaster was laid, each being suffered to dry fully before the next was applied, until a thickness of as much as two feet was obtained. The windows and doorways had hinged shutters, similarly solid; the roof also was plastered pending the time when tiles became more accessible, and a supply of mud was kept for the purpose of sealing all crevices in case of necessity.[4]
Although men were so constantly required to defend their houses against attack, no serious attempt was made until towards the close of the Military epoch to plan a building on defensive lines. Towers were sometimes erected near the gate for the purpose of watching for the approach of an enemy, and such expedients were employed as fixing nails, point upward, in the roofs of enclosures. But since no missile of greater penetrating power than arrows had to be expected, the strength of a building did not receive much consideration, and one result of that defect was that every war involved the destruction of many mansions by fire. Japanese generals were not without a sense of the value of fortifications. A celebrated example is that of the shelter trenches thrown up by the Taira leader, Munemori, at Ichi-no-Tani, in the province of Settsu, towards the close of the twelfth century. This work is often spoken of as a "castle," but in truth it was nothing more than a field fortification. Between beetling cliffs on the south and a precipitous slope on the north there lay a plateau which the Taira captain protected on the east and west by deep fosses, embankments, and strong palisades, effectual obstacles, if well defended, against the weapons of that era. Minamoto Yoshitsune, whom Japan counts her greatest general after Hideyoshi, stormed the position by descending the apparently inaccessible precipice on the north, and the fame of the exploit gave to the fortifications a vicarious reputation to which they were not really entitled. Japan had nothing worthy to be called a fortress until the days of Oda Nobunaga and Hashiba Hideyoshi, and it was owing to the introduction of fire-arms that her old custom of fosse, earthen parapet, and palisade gave place to massive solid structures, Occidental in conception but Japanese in their leading features. The Portuguese discovered Japan in 1542, and brought with them fire-arms. It is true that the Mongols, when they invaded the island empire at the close of the thirteenth century, employed arquebuses, but the Japanese did not, at that time, acquire sufficient knowledge of these weapons to manufacture and use them subsequently. They derived that knowledge from their Portuguese visitors nearly three centuries later, and their weapons of offence having thus undergone a radical change, the old wooden wall and earthen parapet necessarily received modification. Sweeping changes were rapidly effected in the system of fortification. Forty years after the coming of the Portuguese, Hideyoshi constructed Osaka Castle.[5] Forty years is a brief space in the life of a nation, yet that short interval sufficed to convert the fragile, flimsy structures of wood and clay, with their boarded towers and single-planked gates, which the soldiers of the Hōjō and the Ashikaga called strongholds, into colossal castles, with broad moats, lofty battlements, and stupendous escarpments of masonry.
The site chosen for Osaka Castle was a lofty plateau on the bank of the Yodo River. At the time when Hideyoshi fixed his eyes on this spot, it was occupied by a large monastery of Shinshiu monks, who, owing mainly to the splendid advantages that the position offered, had managed in previous years to beat off an assault made upon them by Hideyoshi's patron, the renowned soldier, Oda Nobunaga. That fact had much to do with the steps that Hideyoshi took to obtain an order from the Emperor for the removal of the monastery and its replacement by a castle which should protect the approaches to the Imperial city from the sea. The plan of the fortress showed three surrounding moats and escarpments, an arrangement which has always been adopted whenever possible by the architects of Japanese castles. These moats were about one hundred and fifty feet wide and twenty feet deep, and they not only contained from six to ten feet of water, but had numbers of wooden stakes fixed in the bottom to prevent an enemy from wading across. The revetment of the escarp was built with polygonal granite blocks, put together in the fashion of Japanese masonry, the blocks being pyramidal and having the small end of the pyramid turned inward and the broad base outward. No mortar was used, and thus the revetment presented a slightly irregular rubble face. The corners and angles were strengthened with large quoins of carefully squared ashlar work, usually bound together by strong cramps of iron or copper. Each escarpment was crowned by a series of loopholed curtain-walls, one and a half feet thick, ten in the outermost enclosure, and five in each of the inner; and between these walls, or parapets, there were trenches, twelve feet wide and eighteen feet deep, covered with bamboos and earth so as to constitute pitfalls. The parapets were eight feet high on the face, but had on the inner side a banquette approached by stone steps. In building these walls clay mixed with salt was used, an old recipe which gave a hard and durable composition. The general trace was irregular, having salient and re-entering angles for purposes of flank defence, and the salient angles were crowned with pagoda-shaped turrets from twenty to thirty feet high. Within the outermost moat the space enclosed was one hundred acres, and that within the innermost, namely, the keep (hommaru), measured twelve and a half acres. There were no buildings except guardhouses in the outer belt, but in the inner stood the residence of Hideyoshi as well as extensive barracks, and in the keep-enclosure were forty-seven fire-proof storehouses for provisions, fuel, arms, medicine, and other necessaries, and finally the donjon itself. This last, which had a base more than one hundred feet square, stood on a battering stone basement forty-eight feet high, access being by means of stone steps and platforms with projecting walls and battlements. The donjon was three-storeyed, over forty feet high. Its framework was of timbers, huge in scantling, and these were covered externally with a thick coating of clay plaster as a protection against fire. The granite blocks used in constructing the basement of the donjon, as well as those in the basements of the gates and turrets and at the corners and angles of the escarpments, were of huge size. Many of them measured fourteen feet in length and breadth, and some attained a length of twenty feet. These immense stones had to be conveyed by water from quarries at a distance of several miles. The moats were crossed by wooden bridges constructed so as to be easily destroyed by the garrison in case of emergency, and the main bridge was built in such a manner that by the removal of a single pin the whole structure would fall to pieces,—a fact from which it derived its name, "abacus bridge." It could thus be used by the garrison till the last moment. Each gate opened upon an inner court surrounded by a high parapet, from which a cross fire could be poured upon the enemy after he had forced the gate, as well as upon the bridge leading to the gate. In short, an assailant, having broken through the massive iron-bound timbers of an outer gate, found himself, not within the enceinte, but in a kind of cul-de-sac, where he became the target for bullets, arrows, and other missiles poured upon him from all sides by a hidden foe; and in the face of such a fire he had to turn and force another gate at right angles to the original entrance. This method of division into spaces separately defensible, somewhat on the principle of the watertight compartments of a modern war-vessel, was extensively applied to the inner keep, so that an assailant had to establish his footing square by square. There stood also high towers on either side of the gates, with numerous loopholes opening in every direction, and among the weapons of defence was a movable tower which could be wheeled to any point at will. The roof of the donjon was tiled with copper, and the gates were sheeted and studded with iron.
It is scarcely possible to conceive a greater contrast than that which this noble structure presented to the so-called "castle" of one of the Minamoto or Hōjō chieftains, where the only stones employed were for the foundations of the wooden pillars, and the only protection was a thin wall of clay-plaster easily penetrable by a musket bullet. That an architectural revolution so wholesale should have taken place within a period little longer than a generation, bears strong testimony to the reforming courage of the Japanese, to their elasticity of conception, and to their fertility of resource. One imagines that men whose military edifices had not hitherto possessed the defensive capacities even of a log-hut, must have shrunk from the notion of building Cyclopean escarpments, battlements, and donjons. But nothing has ever deterred the Japanese. Hideyoshi not only planned this vast work with perfect assurance, but by requiring each of the great nobles to undertake the construction of a part, he succeeded in having the whole completed within a twelvemonth. It will be objected, perhaps, that Hideyoshi himself towered as high above his countrymen in mental stature as did Osaka Castle above the shanties of Tokiyori and Takauji. But Hideyoshi's castle was only a type. Other men of his generation erected strongholds not less remarkable in proportion to the smaller resources of their constructors and the greater inaccessibility of fine materials. Several of these castles stand intact to-day. They form not only grand but also picturesque features in the landscape, for while the diminishing storeys of their keeps soften the oppressive effect of their massiveness, the graceful curves of their salient roofs crowned with terminals of gold or copper in the shape of huge carp or rampant dragons, present a sky-line at once bold and interesting.
Hideyoshi's castle was probably the strongest from a military point of view ever erected in Japan; so strong that when Iyeyasu reduced it after a long siege, he caused the outer moat to be filled up lest the place should ever again fall into the hands of his enemies. But in his own capital of Yedo he built a castle on a far grander scale than that of Hideyoshi, though its greater size rendered it less defensible. Around it stretched a triple line of moats, the outermost measuring nine and a half miles in length, the innermost one and a half, their scarps constructed with blocks of granite nearly as colossal as those of the Osaka stronghold, though in the case of the Yedo fortification every stone had to be carried hundreds of miles over sea. The gates, the parapets, the towers, and all the accessories were proportionately as huge as those at Osaka, and the whole structure constituted one of the most stupendous works ever undertaken, not excepting even the pyramids of Egypt. There is not to be found elsewhere a more striking monument of military power, nor can any one considering such a work, as well as its immediate predecessor, the Taikō's stronghold at Osaka, and its numerous contemporaries of lesser but still striking proportions in the principal fiefs, refuse to credit the Japanese with capacity for large conceptions and competence to carry them into practice.
There is another aspect of the Yedo fortress that commands attention. Above the immense masses of masonry rose lofty banks of earth, their slopes turfed with fine Korean grass, and their summits planted with pine-trees, trained, year after year, to stretch evergreen arms towards the spacious moats. These moats varied in width from one hundred and seventy yards to twenty-two, and through them flowed broad sheets of water, reaching the city by cunningly planned aqueducts from a river twenty miles distant; aqueducts which, as evidence of Japanese engineering skill, unassisted by foreign science, are scarcely less remarkable than the castle itself. In this combination we have an example of the homage to the beautiful that holds every Japannese a worshipper at Nature's shrine even when he seems to rely most implicitly on his own resources of brain and muscle. Placid lakes lapping the feet of stupendous battlements; noble pines bending over their own graceful reflections in still waters; long stretches of velvety sward making a perpetual presence of rustic freshness among the dust and moil of city life; flocks of soft-plumaged wild-fowl placidly sailing in the moats or sunning themselves on the banks, careless of the tumult and din of the streets overhead; sheets of lotus-bloom glowing in the shadow of grim counterscarps—where but in Japan can be found so deliberate and so successful an effort to convert the frowns of a fortress into the smiles of a garden? This castle of the Tokugawa Regents is a portion of the alphabet by which Japanese character may be read. Hidden beneath a passion for everything graceful and refined, there is a strong yearning for the pageant of war and for the dash of deadly onset, and just as the Shōgun sought to display before the eyes of the citizens of his capital a charming picture of gentle peace, though its setting was a framework of vast military preparation, so the Japanese of every era has loved to turn from the fencing-school to the arbour, from the field of battle to the society of the rockery and the cascade, delighting in the perils and struggles of the one as much as he admires the grace and repose of the other.
All the great captains of the later military epoch, from Oda Nobunaga downward, sought to combine the artistic beauties hitherto peculiar to the "illustrious mansions" of Kyōtō with the strength and solidity demanded by the new weapons and greatly increased organisations of the era. It is, indeed, a very remarkable fact that pari passû with the growth of strategical ability, with the improvement of tactical methods, and with the development of military resources, the rude austerity of life affected by earlier warriors lost its value, and people ceased to count it incongruous that a leader of soldiers should be a lover of art. Possibly something of the change is attributable to the great strides made by art itself, both pictorial and applied, from the fourteenth century to the seventeenth. The painter, the sculptor, the worker in metals, the lacquerer, the keramist, all ascended to a plane not higher, perhaps, from the point of view of nobility of ideal, than that occupied by the glyptic artists of the seventh and eighth centuries, and the pictorial artists of the ninth, but certainly a plane of far greater achievement in a generally decorative sense. Yet when the history of all technical progress in Japan is examined, the student finds that the motive impulse, though its inception may not be plainly due to aristocratic or official patronage, certainly derives its lasting strength from that source, and it is impossible to doubt that the same principle applied to art in the Military epoch. The great academicians of Tosa, Sesshiu, and Kano; the grand carvers of the later Nara; the Jingoro schools; the Goto and the Myōchin masters who chiselled in metal as men paint on canvas; the potters of Seto, Bizen, Imari, and Kyōtō; the lacquerers who, from the middle of the fifteenth century, began to make the departure that ultimately led to such incomparable results, would never have risen to fame had not the nation's political and military leaders taken them by the hand. To Oda Nobunaga, indeed, is commonly attributed the first employment of decorative woodcarving in religious edifices. He is said to have caused figures of dragons to be chiselled on the pillars of a Buddhist pagoda within the precincts of a magnificent mansion erected by him at Azuchi in Omi, and from that time annalists are wont to date the beginning of this application of glyptic art to the ornamentation of interiors. But though there is no reason to doubt that to the patronage of Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Iyeyasu, must be attributed such a development and employment of wood-carving as enriched Japan with masterpieces unsurpassed by any cognate products of artistic genius the world over, a difficulty presented itself with regard to the theory that this branch of applied art owed its inception to Oda Nobunaga. His castle at Azuchi was built in 1576; in 1585 Hideyoshi constructed the celebrated "Palace of Pleasure" at Momoyama, and in 1592 the Shin sect built the temple Nishi Hongwan-ji in Kyōtō. It will be observed that the erection of Hideyoshi's palace was separated from that of Oda's by only nine years, and that the interval between the latter event and the building of the Hongwan temple was seven years. The "Palace of Pleasure" was pulled down by order of Hideyoshi within a few years of its completion. Nothing certain, therefore, can be said about its details. But portions of it were distributed among the "illustrious mansions" of Kyōtō, and these relics indicate that wood-carving of the highest type was employed in its decoration. A two-leaved gate, called the "day-long portal," because a whole day might be spent studying its beauties, now stands at the Nishi Hongwan temple, whither it was brought from Momoyama. It is a noble specimen of carving, showing the highest skill in chiselling à jour and in relief. The subject is an incident from Chinese history, and the carver had told the story on each side of the panels as though they were leaves of an album.[6] It is scarcely a reasonable hypothesis that an art which had its commencement in 1576 attained such a degree of development in 1585. As to the Hongwan temple itself, magnificent masterpieces of carving are to be seen in its ventilating panels (ramma), the subjects being tree peonies, angels, wild geese, phœnixes, cranes, flying squirrels, and grapes. The celebrated mausolea of the Tokugawa nobles in Tōkyō and Nikkō show greater profusion of glyptic ornamentation, but have nothing of finer quality than the chiselling of the ramma in the Kyōtō temple. Thus the Oda Nobunaga theory involves the conclusion that in the short space of sixteen years the application of glyptic art to interior decoration was carried from its genesis to its zenith. Naturally the disposition is to reject such a theory; but then a second difficulty is encountered, namely, that certainly no specimen of such work is known to have existed prior to the construction of the Azuchi Castle. It appears, therefore, that there is here another case of the extraordinarily rapid development already noticed with regard to military architecture. In forty years the Japanese passed from flimsy wooden edifices to solid stone structures of colossal dimensions, and in twenty they added to their scheme of interior decoration an application of glyptic art which has never been surpassed anywhere. There can be no question of a historical lacuna in the case of military architecture, since the cause of the new departure can be fixed with
absolute accuracy, and there is no reason to sus
TEMPLE BELL AT KAWASAKI,
A village between Tokyo and Yokohama.
of architectural decoration.
It would be proper at this place to supplement previous references to the development of temple architecture, but there has in truth been very little architectural development in these edifices, and it will not be improper to discuss them in general terms. The Japanese themselves are wont to speak of four stages of sacred architecture; that of the Suiko era, that of the Fujiwara era, that of the Momoyama era, and that of the Tokugawa era,—terms which will become more intelligible to a foreign reader if they are replaced by "ancient Buddhist epoch," "Nara epoch," "Kyōtō epoch," and "Tōkyō epoch." The buildings chosen as illustrative of these stages are, respectively, the Hōryu-ji, the Byōdō-in, the Hongwan-ji, and the mausolea of Shiba and Nikkō. But it must be confessed that a close examination of these structures fully bears out the dictum of Mr. J. Conder, the greatest living authority on Japanese architecture, that "from a time somewhat ulterior to the introduction of the Buddhist style until now, no important development or modification in the constructive art of temple building has taken place, the chief change being decorative, caused by the growth of the decorative arts." It is true that in the oldest of all these temples—the Hōryu-ji built in 607 a. d.—the wooden columns show very marked swelling, and this entasis has been regarded as a proof of Grecian affinities. But the inference seems to have been hastily drawn; for whereas there are innumerable proofs that the principle of entasis was fully understood by the Japanese, and that they used it intelligently as a device to correct the hollow appearance which the sides of high pillars or long horizontal beams would present if perfectly straight, the so-called entasis of the Hōryu-ji columns is exaggerated to such a degree that they have distinctly bellied outlines. They do not, in fact, show entasis at all, but are intentionally convex. It is possible, of course, that the idea of entasis may have been derived by the Japanese from Greece viâ India, but the practical application of it is seen in the work of later architects, not in the Hōryu-ji columns, and there is no solid reason to suppose that the Japanese borrowed the principle at all and did not discover it by the exercise of their own remarkably accurate observation.
Nothing hitherto written on the subject of Japanese sacred architecture can be compared, in point of accuracy of observation and technical knowledge, with the accounts embodied in essays contributed by Mr. J. Conder to the Royal Institute of British Architects. As these essays are not accessible to the general reader, the following extracts may be quoted here:—
The popular temples of Japan have generally one open enclosure with a grand two-storeyed gateway, continually left open to the public. A water-basin and belfry are seldom omitted, but a pagoda is often wanting (these will be presently spoken of). The principal building, called the Honden, contains in some cases a large bronze image, and in some cases statuettes of wood or metal encased in small shrines, and revealed only on special occasions. In many temples there exist two Honden side by side, one for the founder and one for the deity, or one for each of two separately adored deities. This principal sanctuary is generally an oblong building raised some four feet from the ground. In some cases there are an inner and an outer sanctuary, separated by an interval room; in others the two sanctuaries are separated only by a screen or blind, the separation being sometimes emphasised by a different treatment of the ceilings of the two. These buildings vary greatly in size, there being in the larger temples an interior peristyle—or other arrangement of columns, often of great size, to support the roof—forming an ambulatory or aisle round the oratory, or sometimes round three sides of it, leaving the fourth to be occupied by the sanctuary and secondary temples on either side. The temple Tōdai-ji at Nara, which contains a celebrated bronze image of Buddha fifty-three feet high, measures two hundred and ninety feet long, one hundred and seventy feet wide, and one hundred and fifty-six feet high, being a two-storeyed building. The temple of Miyo-jin in Tōkyō measures sixty-six feet by twenty-seven feet high by forty feet to the ridge.
The building is invariably surrounded by a raised gallery, reached by a flight of steps in the centre of the approach front, the balustrade of which is a continuation of the gallery railing. This gallery is sometimes supported upon a deep system of bracketing, corbelled out from the feet of the main pillars. Within this raised gallery, which is sheltered by the over-sailing eaves, there is, in the larger temples, a columned loggia passing round the two sides and the front of the building, or, in some cases, placed on the facade only. The ceilings of the loggias are generally sloping, with richly carved roof timbers showing below at intervals; and quaintly carved braces connect the outer pillars with the main posts of the building. Some temples are to be seen in which the ceiling of the loggia is boarded flat and decorated with huge paintings of dragons in black and gold. The intercolumniation is regulated by a standard of about six or seven feet, . . . and the general result of the treatment [of columns, wall posts, etc.] is that the whole mural space, not filled in with doors or windows, is divided into regular oblong panels, which sometimes receive plaster, sometimes boarding, and sometimes rich framework and carving or painted panels. Diagonal bracing or strutting is nowhere to be found, and in many cases mortises and other joints are such as to very materially weaken the timbers at their points of connection. In my opinion it is only the immense weight of the roofs and their heavy projections which prevents a collapse of some of these structures in high winds. The principal facade of the temple is filled in one, two, or three compartments with hinged doors, variously ornamented and folding outwards, sometimes in double folds. From these doorways, generally left open, the interior light is principally obtained, windows, as we generally understand the term, being rare. In some of the more important buildings, however, a method is followed of filling in the chief compartments of the front and sides with large movable latticed shutters in two halves, the upper half being hinged at the top so that it can be raised and attached on the outside to metal rods hung from the eaves. . . . A striking peculiarity of all Japanese buildings is that direct light from the sky is rarely obtained, owing to the lowness of the openings and the great projection of the eaves. . . . An elaborate cornice of wooden bracketing crowns the wall, forming one of the principal ornaments of the building. The bracketing is arranged in groups placed immediately over the pillars and at certain intermediate intervals, the intervening spaces being variously decorated. . . . The whole disposition of pillars, posts, brackets, and rafters is harmonically arranged according to some measure of the standard of length. . . . A very important feature of the facade is the portico or porch-way, which covers the principal steps and is generally formed by producing the central portion of the main roof over the steps and supporting such projection upon isolated wooden pillars braced together near the top with horizontal ties, curved, moulded, and otherwise fantastically decorated. Above these ties are the cornice brackets and beams, corresponding in general design to the cornice of the walls, and the intermediate space is filled with open carvings of dragons or other characteristic forms. . . .
The forms of roof are various, but mostly they commence in a steep slope at the top, gradually flattening towards the eaves so as to produce a slightly concave appearance, this concavity being rendered more emphatic by the tilt which is given to the eaves at the four corners. . . . The appearance of the ends of the roofs is half hip, half gable. Heavy ribs of tile-cresting with large terminals are carried along the ridge, hip, and along the slope of the gable. The result of the whole is very picturesque, and has the advantage of looking equally satisfactory from any point of view. . . .
The interior arrangement of wall columns, horizontal beams, and cornice bracketing corresponds with that on the outside. . . . The ceiling is invariably boarded, and subdivided by ribs into small rectangular coffers; sometimes painting is introduced into these panels, and lacquer and metal clasps added to the ribs. When the temple is of very large dimensions, an interior peristyle of pillars is introduced to assist in supporting the roof, and in such cases each pillar carries profuse bracketing corresponding to that of the cornice. The construction of the framework of the Japanese roof is such that the weights all act vertically; there is no thrust on the outer walls, and every available point of the interior is used as a means of support. . . . The floor is partly boarded and partly matted. The shrines, altars, and oblatory tables are placed at the back in the centre, and there are often other secondary shrines at the sides. Drums and bronze gongs are among the furniture which is always to be found in these temples. In those of the best class the floors of the gallery and of the central portion of the main building from entrance to altar are richly lacquered; in those of inferior class they are merely polished by continual rubbing.
These details, if somewhat technical, are thoroughly useful guides to the principal features of temple architecture in Japan. The mausolea are differently planned. They consist of three buildings en suite: an oratory, flanked on both sides by an antechamber; an interval room, and a sanctuary. There are two enclosures, the outer surrounded by a belt of cloisters, and the general scheme of decoration is on a much more elaborate and magnificent scale than that of the temples. These mausolea belong properly to a later epoch, that of Yedo, and are to be seen in perfection at Shiba in Tōkyō and at Nikkō, where the bodies of the Tokugawa Shōguns are interred. They are mentioned here, however, in order to avoid needless division. It may truly be said of them that they display Japanese decorative art in its most profuse and splendid stage.
The oldest form of architectural decoration in . Japan was mural painting. It is seen in the temple Hōryu-ji, the walls of which are covered with nobly executed paintings of Buddhist subjects, traditionally ascribed to a sculptor of Chinese origin and to a Korean priest. Tradition may be right in this instance, but it is a curious fact that no mural decoration of even approximate quality is to be seen in any part of China or Korea. It is also noteworthy that although mural painting continued to be a feature of temple decoration from the seventh century through all ages, the artists never chose essentially religious motives—unless the figures of Ten-nin, or angels, may be so regarded—for the adornment of sacred edifices subsequent to Hōryu-ji. Their favourite subjects were mythical animals and birds—the Dog of Fo, the Kylin, and the Phœnix,—or flowers, especially the lotus and the peony, and they generally chose a gold ground. Broadly speaking, the decoration may be divided into monochromatic and poly- chromatic. The former obeys the Shintô canons. It is seen in temples constructed of pure white, knotless pine, having elaborately chiselled and embossed metal (gilt brass) caps, sockets, and bands applied to the ends of projecting timbers, to the joints of pillars and beams, to the corners of frames (door and panel), and to the bases and necks of posts. The effect is well described by Mr. Conder as "an appearance of pale, ashen grey touched up richly with gold." In the monochromatic class may also be included structures coloured outside with vermilion red, harmonising beautifully with the green woods in which the temple stands. The polychromatic class includes the great majority of the temples and nearly all the mausolea. Externally, the colour commences "with the lintels or ties near the top of the posts or pillars. From this height the different beams and brackets, together with the flat spaces and raised carvings between, are diapered, arabesqued and variously picked out in bright colours and gilding. Such treatment imparts a light elegance to the otherwise ponderous eaves of Japanese temple buildings, and the deep sun-shadows beneath the massive projections assist in subduing and harmonising the bold contrast of colour employed. The decorator uses fearlessly the greatest variety of colours in juxtaposition, but generally separates adjoining tints by means of a white or gold line" (Conder). Internally, the scheme may be broadly described as mural paintings on a gold ground; carved panels, solid or pierced, the carving heavily gilt and sometimes picked out with various colours; coffered ceilings with coved cornices, the coffer of the ceiling and the carved panels of the coving filled with decorations in colour or in gold lacquer, pillars with decoration of embroidered drapery, and beams, brackets, etc. coloured much on the same principle as the external members. Occasionally the ceiling is not coffered, but presents a flat surface carrying a large painting of angels, dragons, phoenixes, or Dogs of Fo. A celebrated example of this treatment is to be seen at Nanzen-ji in Kyōtō, where a ceiling, sixteen hundred square feet in area, carries a painting of a colossal dragon in black and gold.
It would be quite useless, of course, to attempt any detailed description of Japanese temple decoration in these volumes. A special work elaborately illustrated would be necessary. The general effect is at once gorgeous and delicate, lacking, however, in massiveness and grandeur. Apart from the main structure there are several objects of beauty and interest: the sepulchres of the mausolea; the gateways, which Japanese architects have made an object of extraordinary study; the font-sheds, with their basins of bronze or granite;[7] the belfries; the exquisitely toned bells they contain; the pillar-lanterns of stone or bronze; the sculptured images that flank the gates; and the pagodas.[8] The charm of the whole is greatly enhanced by the features of the surrounding landscape and the skilfully planned approaches, which are matters of no less importance in the eyes of the Japanese designer than the structure itself and its decoration.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 8.
Note 8.—This matter of the evolution of the military class will be described more accurately in subsequent pages.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 9.
Note 9.—Another variety of alcove derived from the fashions of the Zen sect took the form of a protrusion instead of a recess. It was, in fact, a reading-nook so contrived that it projected into the veranda, and thus received light on three sides. This kind of alcove is still seen in many Japanese houses. It has undergone no change for six centuries.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 10.
Note 10.—It should be explained, perhaps, that the description given in a previous chapter of the suites of rooms and their intercommunications in the mansion of a prince or high dignitary of State holds equally for this epoch. But the division of interior spaces is now planned on a much more elaborate scale, owing to the improved lighting facilities afforded by paper doors. The decorator soon appreciated and applied the principle of congruity in choosing his motives, and thus each room had its own distinguishing pictorial subjects, from which, also, it ultimately derived its name, being spoken of as the "wistaria chamber," the "chamber of the eight scenic gems," the "crane-and-tortoise chamber," and so on. In the houses of military men some of the rooms owed their appellations to the weapons placed in the immediate vicinity of their entrances, as the "bow room," or the "spear room." But such terms found no place in the nomenclature of the "illustrious mansions."
- ↑ See Appendix, note 11.
Note 11.—These precautions succeeded well, on the whole. After an area had been swept by a conflagration, the fire-proof storerooms usually remained standing intact among the ruins. But the cost of such edifices being large, many folks preferred an underground storeroom (tsuchi-kura), obviously a relic of the time when ordinary habitations were little better than caves. Pawnbrokers specially affected the latter kind of store, so that during the Military epoch the word "earthen edifice" (dozō) was usually interpreted in the sense of "pawnbroker."
- ↑ See Appendix, note 12.
Note 12.—In 1576 Oda Nobunaga built at Azuchi in Omi a castle with a donjon said to have been one hundred feet high. But as there are no remains of that stronghold to-day, and as history contains no exact details of its construction, Hideyoshi's castle at Osaka is taken as the first complete example of such structures in Japan.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 13.
Note 13.—The glyptic work on this gate has been persistently attributed to Hidari Jingoro, one of the greatest carvers of Japan. Jingoro was born in 1574, and the gate was erected in the Momoyama Palace in 1585. Obviously Jingoro had nothing to do with it.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 14.
Note 14.—Within the enclosure of the mausoleum of Iyeyasu at Nikkō there is an immense rectangular basin carved out of a block of granite. It is so perfectly adjusted on its base that it has stood for two hundred and fifty years with the water welling absolutely evenly over its four edges. This monolith, weighing many tons, was transported from Osaka to Nikkō.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 15.
Note 15.—The Japanese pagoda, according to Mr. Conder's researches, is generally a five-storeyed wooden tower, averaging one hundred and fifty feet in height. "The plan is about twenty-four feet square at the base, and each of the four upper storeys recedes somewhat from that below it.... The construction is of very heavy timbers, framed and braced upon the inside in such a complicated manner that there is barely room for the ladderlike staircases which lead from stage to stage. A central post, about three feet in diameter and diminishing towards the top, is framed into the apex of the structure, resting upon a central stone block at the bottom. This is intended to stiffen the tower against swaying in the wind, and the length is so calculated that, after the various stages of the tower have shrunk and settled, the central post shall just bear upon its stone base."