specially built hut for the purpose of consummating the marriage, and it is certain that for each sovereign a new palace was erected on his accession.
Castles are not distinctly spoken of till a period which, though still mythical in the opinion of the present writer, coincides according to the received chronology with the first century B. C. We then first meet with the curious term “rice-castle,” whose precise signification is a matter of dispute among the native commentators, but which, on comparison with Chinese descriptions of the Early Japanese, should probably be understood to mean a kind of palisade serving the purpose of a redoubt, behind which the warriors could ensconce themselves.[1] If this conjecture be correct, we have bore a good instance of a word, so to speak, moving upward with the march of civilization, the term, which formerly denoted something not much better than a fence, having later come to convey the idea of a stone castle.
To conclude the subject of dwelling-places, it should be stated that cave-dwellers are sometimes alluded to. The legend of the retirement of the Sun-Goddess into a cavern may possibly suggest to some the idea of an early period when such habitations were the normal abodes of the ancestors of the Japanese race.[2] But at the time when the national traditions assumed their present shape, such a state of things had certainly quite passed away, if it ever existed, and only barbarous Ainos and rough bands of robbers are credited with the construction of such primitive retreats. Natural caves (it may be well to state) are rare in Japan, and the caves that are alluded to were mostly artificial, as may be gathered from the context.
The food of the Early Japanese consisted of fish and of the flesh of the wild creatures which fell by the hunter’s arrow or were taken in the trapper’s snare,—an animal diet with which Buddhist prohibitions had not yet interfered, as they began to do in early historical times. Rice is the only cereal of which there is such mention made as to place it beyond a doubt that its cultivation dates back to time immemorial.
