made anywhere in the “Records” or in that portion of the “Chronicles” which contains the account of the so-called “Divine Age.” But from what we learn incidentally, it would seem that the scanty population was chiefly distributed in small hamlets and isolated dwellings along the coast and up the course of the larger streams. Of house-building there is frequent mention,—especially of the building of palaces or temples for sovereigns or gods,—the words “palace” and “temple” being (it should be mentioned) represented in Japanese by the same term. Sometimes, in describing the construction of such a sacred dwelling, the author of the “Records,” abandoning his usual flat and monotonous style, soars away on poetic wings, as when, for instance, he tells how the monarch of Idzumo, on abdicating in favour of the Sun-Goddess’s descendant, covenanted that the latter should “make stout his temple pillars on the nethermost rock-bottom, and make high the cross-beams to the plain of High Heaven.”[1] It must not, however, be inferred from such language that these so-called palaces and temples were of very gorgeous and imposing aspect. The more exact notices to be culled from the ancient Shintō Rituals (which are but little posterior to the “Records” and in no wise contradict the inferences to be drawn from the latter) having been already summarized by Mr. Satow, it may be as well to quote that gentleman’s words. He says:[2] “The palace of the Japanese sovereign was a wooden hut, with its pillars planted in the ground, instead of being erected upon broad flat stones as in modern buildings. The whole frame-work, consisting of posts, beams, rafters, door-posts and window-frames, was tied together with cords made by twisting the long fibrous stems of climbing plants, such as Pueraria Thunbergiana (kuzu) and Wistaria Sinensis (fuji). The floor must have been low down, so that the occupants of the building, as they squatted or lay on their mats, were exposed to the stealthy attacks of venomous snakes, which were probably far more numerous in the earliest ages when the country was for the most part uncultivated, than at the present day. . . . . There seems some reason to think that the yuka, here translated floor, was originally nothing but a couch which ran round the sides of the hut, the rest
