THE HEIAN EPOCH
distinguish the Imperial Palace from the mansion of a great nobleman or minister of State. The latter consisted of a principal hall, where the master of the house lived, ate, and slept—there being no practically recognised distinctions of dining-room, sitting-room and bedroom,—and of three suites of chambers, disposed on the north, the east, and the west of the principal hall. In the northern suite the lady of the house dwelt,[1] the eastern and western suites being allotted to the other members of the family. It was essential that no room should face the north, lest supernal influences of malign tendency should pervade the household. Corridors joined the principal hall to the subordinate edifices, for as yet the idea had not been conceived of having more than one chamber under the same roof.
In front of this row of linked buildings a garden was laid out. Much care and sometimes large sums of money were lavished on its construction. But the general plan was almost uniform. Little of the great variety of landscape, breadth of design, and subtlety of arrangement that ultimately distinguished Japanese parks could be seen in the gardens of the Heian epoch. Any one who has made a study of Chinese paintings must have recognised that they fall into one of two broad categories, literary pictures and artistic pictures. The former are to the latter what the stiff formality of the square ideograph is to
- ↑ See Appendix, note 51.
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