ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY
in houses; the lower inhabited caves or holes in the earth, choosing hillsides for sites in order to escape inundations, which were then of calamitous dimensions and frequency. These cave-dwellings seem to have measured from four to six square yards in area, and to have been closed by a door four or five feet high. Common folk used them all the year round, and even princes and nobles found them comfortable as winter residences, transferring themselves in summer to huts built near the entrance of the caves.[1] In constructing houses of the best type, the palaces of the era, flat stones[2] were sunk in the ground to form a foundation, and on these was raised a stout upright, the "heavenly pillar" (ame no mihashira). At every corner also a pillar of lesser dimensions was erected, and between the tops of these corner pillars, as well as from each of them to the central post, beams were stretched, the whole bound together with wistaria withes. Reeds or rushes served for thatching, and heavy logs laid over the thatch prevented it from being blown away. The ends of the tie-beams projected high above the roof, a feature permanently preserved in Shintô architecture; a hole in the thatch gave exit to the smoke of the cooking-fire; the frames of doors and windows were tied in their places with stems of creepers, and the walls consisted of logs or bark, or of both combined. These edifices generally stood near a stream which
63
