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drainage and the refuse water from the houses is allowed to spread itself over the streets. The rain water has no means of egress, and lies in pools until it has time to sink into the earth or is evaporated.
It is further impossible to repress a feeling of disappointment when we turn to the religious monuments of the country. The temples are stately, they are generally exquisitely ornamented, and are certainly built in a more stable and substantial manner than the other erections around them. But there is so great a sameness about them that it seems as if the original designer had made a groove so deep that all the intellectual power of the Japanese could not raise their architects out of it.
That earthquakes are prevalent throughout the whole of Japan is a fact which, in the minds of many, has affected the whole system of building in Japan, and has prevented the development of the native talent for construction. This is looked upon as sufficient reason for the absence of stone erections or buildings of solidity and durability. But if earthquakes have exercised this influence over the Japanese mind, the people have been influenced by false premises; as I think that to imagine that slight buildings, such as are seen here, are the best calculated to withstand an earthquake shock is an error of the most palpable kind. Now that foreigners have introduced a different system of building the present Japanese have no hesitation in adopting it, and edifices of any size or material are now erected with their approval. No objection is ever made on account of earthquakes, and on these grounds I am of opinion that at all events the present race have not that dread of earthquakes which would lead them to eschew solid constructions, and we must seek at some other source the reasons for the want of progress in the art of builing.
The whole country is subject to earthquakes, and there is hardly an island or a province of Japan that has not at some time or other suffered from their effects. Through the courtesy of certain Japanese officials I have been put in possession of some information, which I have
