The life of the present emperor of Japan may be divided into two very nearly equal periods. The first was one of quiet, inaction, and seclusion. The second has been filled to the brim with the din of changing government, personal publicity, and the fiercest of struggles toward a different civilization. The first was spent behind the walls of the holy place in the sacred capital of Kioto. The second has been in the thick of the new Japan, in the palaces of the former city of the shoguns, the great capital of Tokio, the famous Yeddo of our schoolboy geographies. These two cities symbolize the two Japans of modern times. Kioto stagnates still, the center of the old religion, art, and culture. Tokio moves on, the new capital, the home of the new nobility and the dynamo, whose electric currents are carrying the forces of foreign invention and of modern civilization into every part of the thirty-eight hundred islands which make up the Japanese empire.
Both of these cities lie in the main island of Hondo, which contains twenty-five out of the thirty-eight million of the Japanese people, and Kioto is in the center of the densest population of the empire. Tokio lies three hundred miles further to the east. A city of magnificent distances, it spreads itself out on a great plain bounded on one side by the beautiful bay of Yeddo. It is within fourteen miles of the great seaport of Yokohama, where the Pacific steamers stop in going to and from China, and where the navies of all nations are represented time and again during the year. It is the greatest city of Japan, and its more than one million of people make it the peer in numbers of Brooklyn or Philadelphia, while the push and rush of its busier streets remind one of some parts of New York or Chicago.
It is a curious city. Of Japan, it is not Japan. Its main street, the Ginza, was rebuilt by a foreign architect after one of the great fires of a few years ago, and the result is a conglomeration of the east and the west. Other streets have the wide overhanging roofs of heavy tile, with low one- or two-story buildings of Japanese architecture made up of rooms walled with paper, and so constructed that the whole of the interiors can be seen from the street. Many of these houses are mixed stores containing foreign and Japanese goods. They are lighted at night by American coal-oil lamps, and their Japanese signs have under them attempts at English translation which are often as hard to read as the tea-box hieroglyphics of the Japanese. The small letters are mixed with the large ones. The A’s, B’s, D’s, and P’s are turned wrong side foremost, and the N’s, W’s, and U’s are generally upside down.
The scenes upon the streets are as mixed as the signs. American street-cars, drawn by scraggy Japanese horses, trot by poor jinrikishas pulled by a bare-legged cooly, and foreign carriages, with coachmen and footmen in livery, dash by rude ox-carts, the bottom of which, with great straw mats stretched above them, move lazily along, led by a bowl-hatted farmer dressed in a blue Japanese gown, and wearing upon his feet sandals of the same straw with which his ox is shod. Here a gang of half-naked men push great carts of merchandise through the streets of the great city, and their chorus of grunts at each turn of the wheels is broken in upon by the whistle of the railroad locomotive at the station. On the sidewalks the mixture grows worse than ever. The colors of the clothes are as many as those of the coat of Joseph, and the blue-gowned man of old Japan, with his head shaved at the top, and with the back hair done up in a short door-knocker cue, walks side by side with his almond-eyed brother in modern clothes. The old man’s white-mittened feet clatter along on sandals, while those of his brother creak in patent leathers. The European outfit, however, of the younger brother is often one of rare combinations. I have seen Japanese on the streets of Tokio clad in a simple white well-starched shirt and a pair of European shoes. Others have passed me dressed in frock coats, with their celluloid collars fastened around their bare and shirtless necks, and with thin gauze drawers taking the place of pantaloons. I saw once an old Japanese mother with blackened teeth and shaved eyebrows walking on the Ginza in company with her daughter, who sported a genuine French bustle, and whose chunky form looked awkward and dumpy in the foreign corset. The Japanese women, however, take less to the foreign dress than do the men. They lose their picturesqueness by the change, and the sentiment in Japan is, I think, generally in favor of the women retaining the soft, graceful, long-flowing gowns of their mothers. Many of the men, however, are well-dressed, and the highest officials of the government compare favorably in appearance and clothes with those of our capital at Washington. The motley above spoken of is chiefly that of the common people who ape their superiors, and to whom the foreign dress is altogether new.
Tokio has for centuries been a political center. It was long the seat of the shogun, or the Tycoon, and it was the real capital of Japan, though Kioto was the nominal one. The word Tokio means the capital, and it was given this title after the revolution. The name Yeddo was dropped, and it sprang forth under its new name as the capital of the Mikado. The government offices, the palace of the emperor, and the imperial household have a part of the city to themselves. This is a tract of land covering many square miles, and surrounded by a series of moats walled with stone, and crowned with old-fashioned Japanese castles. Over these moats are bridges, and they run around the imperial reservation in three circles, one within another, and in the interior space are these great government offices. The moats are filled in places with lotus plants. Their flowers of pink and white, shaped like a water lily, and as big as your two hands, with round basin-like leaves make the water a bed of bloom. Trees grow upon the walls of these moats. The moss clings to their stones, and the grass upon their tops, and the emperor’s palace and garden combine to make this part of Tokio one of the most picturesque and beautiful of the parks of the world. These moats and walls were a part of the fortifications of the government of the shogun. During the centuries in which Tokio formed the capital of the Tycoon, or shogun, the commander-in-chief of the Mikado’s army, the Mikado was a spiritual puppet, and he was kept by these military dictators at Kioto. He was revered by the people as the Son of Heaven, and the Tycoons spent the money collected from the people and governed the empire. They made much of the holiness of the office of the Mikado, knowing that the holier he was the less danger there could be of his ever contesting their rule. It was death to pronounce his name, and no ordinary man ever saw his face. His name was never even written in full, and his power in reality extended only over his wives.
This government was kept up for hundreds of years. A great feudal system grew up under it. The shoguns had their lords or daimios, and these daimios had their retainers or samurai. These retainers were numbered by the tens of thousands. Their profession was war, and they went about Japan with two swords in their belts. It was inside of this castle and these moats that the shogun had his grand palace. Around him were the dwellings of the daimios of his court, and between the outer moats lived many of the retainers. Each daimio had an army of retainers about him, and so for centuries Yeddo was a great military camp. In time, however, the daimios waxed fat and lazy. With fixed incomes and nothing to do, they acquired luxurious habits and gave over the management of their estates to their chief samurai, who acted as stewards. These stewards about twenty years ago, seeing the rottenness of the feudal system, combined together to overthrow the daimios and the shogun, to bring the Mikado from his seclusion at Kioto, and to make him the real emperor of the Japanese people, as he had been in the distant past. That conspiracy was the beginning of the new Japan, and these men are now at the head of the Japanese Government, and they are the chief movers in the march of modern Japanese progress. The story of how the shogun was dethroned, and how his palace and those of his lords in the inside of these moats were burned to the ground, is well known. Upon their ashes, however, has risen the new Japan. Government offices built in foreign style stand on the sites of the palaces of the daimios. The imperial guard goes through the exercises of the German army where the samurai practiced with their lances and shot their bows and arrows. The bureau of engraving and printing of Japan makes the national bank currency of the empire in one of these old feudal homes, and by the time this article is read the Mikado will be occupying his new palace, not far from the site of that in which the shogun reigned and ruled.
The new palace of the Mikado had its first reception on New Year’s Day, 1889, when the emperor, in the uniform of the general of the army, received the foreign diplomats and his officers, with the empress by his side. The diplomats were in their gay court dresses, the Japanese officials appeared in foreign costume, and the empress wore a dress woven in the looms of Kioto, and made in all probability by one of the great dressmakers of the world. She put on her first European dress less than two years ago. Her form was too sacred for the hands of the dressmaker, and her measure, I am told, was taken from that of a lady who was exactly her size and height. The dress was ordered of a German firm and was made by Worth. Prior to this time, the empress had worn nothing but Japanese clothes, and the picture which accompanies this article is copied from a painting of an Italian artist who made two portraits for the palace several years ago. A number of photographs were taken of both the emperor and the empress, and the best of these were forwarded to the studio of this artist at Rome. The paintings were made and they now hang in the imperial palace. The photographic plates were, however, destroyed, and at present no good photograph of either the Mikado or the empress exists. These paintings are said to be good likenesses. In them the Mikado appears in his uniform of the general of the army, and it is in this style that he has dressed during the past sixteen years. He has adopted almost altogether foreign ways. He no longer sits and sleeps upon the floor, and the knife and fork often take the place of the chop-sticks. His new palace is a mixture of the foreign and the Japanese. It covers nine acres of ground, and it is a village of low Japanese buildings with wide, heavy overhanging roofs. These buildings are connected by long corridors, and the whole is surrounded by one of the most beautiful gardens of Japan. The palace comprises separate establishments for the Mikado and his young son, who is the heir-apparent, and the servants of these many buildings make almost an army in themselves.
The palace contains hundreds of rooms, and the private apartments of the emperor will never be shown to visitors. Standing in some of the rooms you look through what seems to be an endless vista of crystal chambers, and these rooms have no windows, but they are walled with sliding screens of plate-glass. This plate-glass takes the place of the paper walls of the ordinary Japanese house, and these walls of glass run to the height of about seven feet, and they move back and forth in grooves. The ceilings are very high above them, and the walls between the ceilings and the glass are covered with fine silk woven at Kioto for the purpose. I watched the weaving of some of this wall cloth and handled it. The material was better than that of many a White House reception dress, and I was shown thick seal-brown velvet which I was told was being made for the walls of the palace. The looms were working at the curtains at the time of my visit and these at this writing, the last of September, are almost completed. They are of gorgeous brocade and many of them are exceedingly costly. The Japanese excel in embroidery and in decoration by means of gold thread, and this imperial palace will contain the finest treasures of modern Japanese art.
The woods are especially fine. They are in their natural grain, and the pillars of many of the rooms are massive square posts of that velvet-like satin wood found in Japan. In the whole palace there is no paint; but the colored decoration is made up entirely of gilding, lacquer, and fine cloths. The ceilings are works of fine art. They are divided by lacquered ribs into many panels, each of which contains a different design, painted, embroidered, or embossed. No nails show in the wood work, and the metal work is a wonder of damascene and carved brass. The crest of the Mikado, the chrysanthemum flower, appears everywhere, and many of the ceilings are finished in gold and colors.
The rooms are in many cases very large, and the banqueting hall requires five hundred and forty square yards of matting to cover its floor. Its walls are hung with the costliest of silks, and the ceiling is finished in gold. The throne room is equally fine, and the whole palace as far as the Japanese part of the workmanship is concerned, is worthy of an emperor. It is furnished, however, with foreign furniture, and this was bought in Germany. It is curious that the Japanese should go to Germany for the furniture for their palace, and there is no lack of criticism among the foreigners in Japan as to the poverty of the selection which they have made. The furniture is of old patterns and of a style by no means fitted to the establishment of a great ruler. The tables have thin tops, the chairs are uncomfortable, and the mantels of some of the rooms are cheaper than those of many an ordinary seaside cottage. Had the Japanese taken competitive bids for this furniture, the leading establishments of New York, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and other American cities could have filled the contract with credit to the United States. The palace is lighted with seventeen hundred electric lights. These are of the Edison pattern, and they are put in by an American. They are universally praised, and the contrast between them and the cheap German furniture is sharply drawn. The heating power of the palace is steam, and it is a question as to the effect that steam heat will have on Japanese cabinet-making. In a country where the houses are warmed by boxes of charcoal, and in which the cooking stove and the baseburner have yet to appear, the bringing of steam heat into rooms made, as I am told, largely of green timber, may cause more cracks than Japanese embroidery can cover.
The Japanese Court is now practically the same as that of a European ruler. Japan has its princes, its marquises, its counts, its viscounts and its barons. It has its imperial houses made up of the descendants of the younger sons of former Mikados, and many of these houses are centuries old. The house of Arisugawa was founded two hundred and eighty-six years ago, that of Fushimi is five hundred and thirty-seven years old, and there are eight other imperial houses, through the veins of each of which flows the blue blood of royalty. The young prince, who is now nine years old, when he comes to marry, will, I am told, have a list of all the eligible daughters of these families handed to him, and from them he must choose a wife. If, however, there are no eligible daughters, there is a list of five other noble families whose daughters are brought forth. These are the families who were the noblest in Japan before the restoration, and from whom the present empress comes. If in this list no daughters appear, then the choice goes to the five families of created princes, and out of the daughters of these must come the next empress of Japan. In the meantime the young prince has eight more years to live before he attains to the age of his father at the date of his marriage, and his relations to the future empress will be such that he need not worry whether she be beautiful or homely, good-tempered or the reverse. He will have, like the present emperor, the right to twelve of the fairest of noble Japanese ladies as his most intimate companions. This is the Japanese law, and it has been so from that time when the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.
The young prince is said to be fond of military affairs, and the Japanese predict a great future for him. It may be, however, that he will drop into the groove of his father, which, it is whispered by the best posted men at the capital, is more that of a figure-head than that of a ruler. The Mikado of Japan is, it is said, on most occasions like wax in the hands of his cabinet, and though those about the Court would hardly acknowledge it, the men who really rule Japan today are the chief officers of the various departments and their friends. These men are the young Japan, and it is through them that these reforms have been inaugurated to such an extent that whatever might be the change of rulers they can not be stopped. There are many remarkable men among them, and the almond-eyed statesmen of Tokio will compare favorably to-day with those of the other capitals of the world.
The premier of the empire is Count Kurodo, a man of strong will, sterling integrity, and great force of character. The head of the office of the foreign affairs of the empire is Count Okuma, who succeeds Count Inouye, the latter having resigned after the failure of the treaty conference of this year. Kurodo is also a new officer and he takes the place of Count Ito. Count Ito and Okuma are among the most remarkable men of the new empire, and the story of their struggle for Japan reads like a romance. It was told me by an English officer connected with the Japanese Government, and I give it as nearly as possible in his own words.
Before the restoration, when the Tycoon governed at Tokio and the Mikado was still kept inside the walls of his palace at Kioto, there were foreign and anti-foreign parties in the government, and at this time there were foreigners and there was a foreign settlement at Yokohama. At this time about a hundred hot-headed samurai boys conspired together at Tokio to go to Yokohama and to clean the foreigners from the face of Japan. They started one dark night, and had gotten half way on their journey when they found themselves surrounded by soldiers. They fought their way out and returned to Tokio. Among these boys were Ito and Inouye, then about twenty years of age. They were under the Prince of Chosiu, and this prince was the chief of the anti-foreign faction. After this failure they concluded that the killing of the foreigners at Yokohama would be only the beginning of the war with them. They had seen their great war-ships, and they knew that Japan could not successfully fight them on the sea. They talked over the situation, and concluded that the only safety for Japan was in her having as good ships and as good guns as the foreigners. Then they wanted to go to England with the other picked youth of their band. They wanted to study English customs, to master the great secret of naval supremacy and bring it back to Japan. The Japanese could then build ships and they could wage a successful war. The prince was pleased with the idea. He gave them five thousand dollars, and Inouye went to Yokohama and arranged with the consul to ship them as common sailors to Shanghai. There were five boys in the party, and they were taken on board the ship in the Yokohama harbor one dark and rainy night. They thus got away from Japan without the knowledge of the Tycoon.
The money in the mean while had been sent on to one of the noted English trading houses at Shanghai, and when they arrived there the house was ready to ship them to England as passengers. Ito and Inouye were full of their mission, and kept saying over again and again to the members of the firm the only English word they knew, which was navigation. The merchants took it for granted they wanted to be sailors, and instead of sending them on to London as passengers, with instructions that they be sent to a good naval school, they shipped them as common sailors on a sailing ship which went around the Cape of Good Hope for London. They left Shanghai with forty dollars in their pockets, and they were kicked and cuffed around during the voyage until they became able seamen. The sailors learned that they had money with them, and they did not let them rest until the most of their forty dollars had been gambled from them.
The moment the vessel reached London the officers and crew left the ship, and the two Japanese runaways found themselves alone. They were dazed with the din and the sights and the confusion of the great city. In the center of millions of people, they did not know which way to turn nor where to go. The fire in the ship was out, the cook was gone, and there was not a bit of food to be had. They expected some one would come for them, but after waiting a long time they grew so hungry that they decided to go out and buy something to eat. They had three dollars left, but they did not know the value of money in England. They thought, however, that this would buy them some boiled rice, a bowl of soup, or a bit of raw fish. Taking a paper with them, they marked on this a diagram of the route they took in order that they might get back to the ship, and after devious wanderings came at length to a baker’s shop. There were loaves of bread on the counter, and Ito, not knowing the price, laid down the whole of his three dollars and picked up a loaf. He had no idea how much it was worth, and he supposed that if it was less than three dollars the baker would give him the change. The baker saw that he was a foreigner, and swept the whole of the three dollars into the till. The two boys then started to go back to the ship, but they found they had lost their diagram. They walked the streets of London for hours, and it was dusk before they returned. They ate their bread, however, and the next day a messenger from the merchant came for them and gave them good lodgings and plenty of money. They spent some time in England, and their bright minds soon grasped the fact that Japan could never make a successful struggle against such wealth and such a mighty nation as that about them. They considered it their duty to go back and tell their prince what they had learned. The merchants told them that they had received no orders from Japan, and they could not ship them without orders. Ito and Inouye then shipped before the mast as common seamen. They went again around the Cape of Good Hope and finally reached their prince. He was fighting the foreigners at the time and their news was received with anything but joy. Inouye was set upon by a band of angry soldiers and slashed, hacked, and left for dead by the roadside. He recovered consciousness, and was able to crawl to his mother’s house, where by careful nursing he was brought back to life. He bears on his face to-day the scars of the wounds he received then. In the struggle that ensued between the Tycoon and the forces of the revolutionists both he and Ito came again to the front. They have been in the front ever since. They have aided Japan in the establishment of her railways, her telegraphs, and her post-offices, and it has been by the aid of their influence that she has now one of the best navies of the East.
It is through the efforts of such men as these that Japan is opening her doors to the world. Inouye is anxious to have the citizens of all nations do business in all parts of Japan, provided they will submit to Japanese laws. He would like to see foreign capital introduced, and he thinks that a revision of the treaties would increase the Japanese foreign trade. Under such ideas the ways of Japanese business are rapidly changing. The Japanese merchant still wears his long gown, and calculates his profits and losses with a box of buttons strung on wires. He still sits on his heels in his little store open to the street, and the floor still forms his counter. His mind, however, is wonderfully bright, and he is not backward to grasp at new goods as fast as he finds a demand for them. He is learning to invest in other things than those of merchandise, and the people of Japan are awaking from the age of war and servitude to that of modern speculation and of accumulating fortunes. Tokio has already its stock exchange, and the Japanese newspapers give daily quotations of the markets. The Japanese speculate upon the rise and fall of their public bonds, of their railway stocks, and of their mining interests, and there are stocks here which rank up with the best of American securities in value. From a paper which lies before me I see that the Nipon Ginko Bank stock is worth two hundred and forty-four, and that the stock of the First National Bank of Japan goes at one hundred and twenty-four per cent. above par. Seven per cent. capitalized pension bonds bring one hundred and five, and the bonds of the Nakasendo Railroad are worth one hundred and six cents on the dollar. The Electric Light Company of Japan sells stock at thirty-six, and the Tokio Gas Company’s stock brings ninety-nine. Tokio street-cars pay well, and their stock is worth two hundred and forty-two, while one of the leading Japanese life insurance companies sells its stocks readily at thirty-nine per cent. above par. The quotations of the dividends of the various companies show that these values are founded upon their interest-bearing properties. The Nipon Ginko Bank pays such a good dividend that it can afford to give interest at the rate of from one to three per cent. on fixed deposits of over three months, and I see that forty-four of the national banks of Japan are quoted as having just paid semi-yearly dividends of from five to twenty per cent. on capital stocks, ranging from thirty thousand to three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in amount. The Eighty-fourth National Bank, with a capital of ninety thousand dollars, pays twenty per cent. semi-yearly, and the Ninth National Bank, which has a capital stock of two hundred thousand dollars, is paying a semi-annual dividend of fifteen per cent. It is so with all the national banks quoted. They represent all parts of Japan, and are organized on our banking system. It is the same in private companies. The Tokio Gas Company is here quoted as having made ten per cent. on three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the past six months, and the Otsu Lake Steamship Company, with a capital of five hundred thousand dollars, is quoted at a percentage which makes its dividends about one hundred thousand dollars a year.
The railroad era of Japan is now at its full; and Japan has, I am told, lately invested about ninety million dollars in new railroads. In a short time the old and new capitals will be joined by iron bands, and the screech of the locomotive is making its impression upon the old civilization of the interior. The change in Japan began at the top, and the countryman and the agriculturist are, to a large extent, the same as they were a thousand years ago. They will be the last to succumb to the new civilization; but the daily newspaper is eating its way among them, and the government regulation, which provides that every man shall serve in the army from three to seven years of his life, will aid in the work of change. At present the contrast between the rolling wheels of the modern cars and the work of the Japanese farmers is that of two extremes of the past and the present. The farmer of Japan does his work in the rudest and most laborious of ways. He wears a hat like a butter bowl, tied to his head by straw ropes. Dressed in a blue gown, he goes bare-footed or clothes his feet in straw sandals, and he farms his fields with a long-handled mattock, the blade of which is nearly as wide as a spade. In some parts of Japan he plows with an ox harnessed to a stick, and in damp weather he throws a straw rain-coat about his shoulders, which makes him look more like a great bird than a man. He considers himself happy if the rice crop is good and he has enough left at the end of the year to pay his taxes. If he is a farm-laborer he is content with ten cents a day. He believes in the Buddhist or the Shinto religion, and he reveres the Mikado as the Son of Heaven. It is through this reverence which the farmers and the common people have for the emperor that it will never be possible for any faction to rule Japan which has not his nominal sanction.
This reverence made Kioto a sacred city, and when the treaties were entered into with the foreign powers, by which they were allowed to reside and do business in certain ports, it was strictly provided that no foreigner should come within twenty-five miles of Kioto. It has only been within the past few years that passports have been granted for travelers to visit Kioto, and in 1882 so great was the fear of violence to foreigners felt by the officials that policemen accompanied them whenever they went about the city. At present, however, Kioto can be visited by any foreigner who has a passport from the government. It has a foreign hotel, and I have lived in it for two weeks, and have had nothing but smiles while I walked through its temples, and there were no scowls when, through the influence of the government at Tokio, I penetrated to the inmost recesses of the sanctum sanctorum of Japanese royalty, the interior of the great palace of the Mikado himself.
Kioto is as different from Tokio as Milan is different from Naples. Lying as it does in a great basin surrounded by green hills, which rise from it like the seats of an amphitheater, its skies are as blue and its sunsets as bright as those of the Mediterranean. Above the ridged roofs of the plain of one- and two-story houses rise here and there the mightiest of its five thousand temples. The domes of the Buddhist and the Shintô sanctuaries of worship peep out of the trees on every hillside. Jolly priests with beads and long gowns mix with the people on its streets, and the sound of its wonderful bells makes the air reverberate as from all parts they strike out the hours. Kioto is the seat of art and music as well as of religion, and its people are the votaries of pleasure as well as of the gods. Dancing girls abound, and the geisha, with her pantomimic posturing dance, is seen in many a tea-house. The people dress in brighter colors than do those at Tokio, and the gorgeousness of the costumes of the Kioto beauties are celebrated to the ends of Japan. The brightest of reds and the richest of blues make the scenes of the streets a panorama of ever-changing colors. The ugly innovations of foreign fashions have never invaded the sacred city. The belles of Kioto appear to-day as they did when the Mikado held here his Court, and their long faces and highly arched eyebrows show out the blue blood of the old capital as they wabble along on lacquered wooden shoes, in brocaded dresses, with the brightest of silk crape skirts shining out at their feet.
Kioto is the center of the art work of the Japanese Empire. Its porcelains are among the finest, and the rich gold and gorgeous paintings which go to America are put on here. The painting is done by hand, and Japanese art has yet to know the benumbing effects of modern machinery. At low wages, the artists seem to throw their souls into their work; and I saw yesterday a pair of vases about a foot high and about six inches in diameter, which were intended for the Paris Exposition. They had consumed three years of constant work in their making, and they were wonders of flowers and birds in cloisonné. They were being made in a shop which was not more than ten feet square, and the maker told me that the pair was worth one thousand dollars, but that it was not for sale. The velvet brocades and fine silks of Kioto are made by hand, and in a little shop where six silk looms were being managed by twice as many workmen, I saw some of the most noted of the silk weavers of Japan. They were making silk brocades for the dresses of the empress, and curtains for the new palace. And as they threw the shuttle back and forth, moving the looms that were almost delicate, I saw that the patterns were both costly and beautiful. I asked their wages, and was told that they received from thirty to sixty cents a day. It is in these little shops that the silk weaving and the porcelain-making of Japan goes on. The country has not yet learned the use of machinery, and it has yet to hear of monopolies and trusts.
Here at Kioto everything calls up the past, and the Mikado’s palace is much the same to-day as it was when he was taken from it twenty years ago to begin his reign at Tokio. Armed with my permit from the household department of the emperor, and accompanied by a guide furnished by the governor of the city, I visited it. Its grounds cover about twenty-six acres, and they are in the shape of a parallelogram. A massive wall of stucco, roofed with heavy tile, runs around them, and the gates of this area are as tall as a good-sized house, and their great curved roofs of thatch about two feet thick slope down and out in the purest style of the architecture of the old Japanese. The massive doors within these swing on heavy hinges. They are gorgeous in their carving, and the work upon them is that of the old masters. There is no paint to spoil the delicate color of the carved wood. The ends of the beams have been covered with gold leaf, and the whole is a symphony of soft old browns, wooden grays, and golden yellows. It is through this gate that the royal family enters the palace, and the gate-keeper living near it came out in gown and sandals at the call of our guide, and led us through and into the palace. At the doors of this we stopped and took off our shoes, for no one wears shoes in a Japanese house, much less in the palace of the Mikado. The palace from the outside appears far different from those of Windsor, Versailles, or Potsdam. If it were dropped down on an American plain, and its exterior gates were not so gorgeously decorated as to carvings, and its thatched roof was not so thick and beautifully curved, it might be taken for a multitude of stables. It comprises many long and wide one-story buildings covered with these high overhanging Japanese roofs, made of thatch and unpainted, and unornamented save by the touch of time and of nature.
The interior is made up of corridor after corridor, shut out from the air by walls of paper lattice, and into these corridors the rooms of the palace look out. They are square, and their walls are covered with gold leaf and decorated with the paintings of Japanese masters. No nails are visible, and the joinings of the beams are covered with the finest of carved brass work. The crest of the emperor, the chrysanthemum, is everywhere, and upon these bits of brass are seen the fine art of the Japanese metal workers.
In one of the rooms I was shown the throne on which the Mikado used to receive his ministers of state. A curious throne it is. It looks more like a four-post bedstead with its long white silk curtains falling from the top to the floor than like the seat of royalty. These curtains are of the finest brocade. They are painted with a white outline of thousands of storks, so drawn that they seem to form a sort of watered silk of the rich stuff, and they hang so that the whole throne looks like a great white silk box. With my sacrilegious hands I parted these curtains at the middle of the front and looked in. I saw the royal throne of the Mikado, the place which for ages the Japanese people have worshiped as holiest of the holy things of this earth, and the interior of which, twenty years ago, had been probably seen by fewer Japanese men than you could count on your fingers, and upon which at that time the eye of foreigner had never looked.
And what is it after all? It is nothing but a piece of matting not more than a yard and a half square, laid on a platform raised about four inches above the floor of this silk-covered cage. The floor itself is four inches from the ground, and the curtains of the throne hang from a square frame supported by four black lacquered posts about two inches square, which stand at the four corners of this floor. At the right and the left of the Mikado’s throne are two small lacquered tables, each a foot high. One of these was intended for his sword and the other for his shield, as in his robes of state he sat cross-legged on this mat while he received his ministers. In the front of the throne and just outside of it are two hideously carved dogs of wood, and in one corner of this throne-room the floor is paved with cement. These dogs were emblematic of the Shinto religion, and this cement was the place where the Mikado worshiped his ancestors. According to the Shinto rites he must stand upon the earth to do this, but the Mikado’s feet were considered too holy to touch the ground, so his attendants brought fresh earth every morning, and upon this the emperor stood, or knelt and worshiped.
At the right of the throne-room was the royal bed-chamber, and I took a look at the luxurious couch on which this god-born Mikado reclined in days of yore. It was much like the throne only larger. A raised platform two inches from the floor had a covering of very fine white matting bound with red silk, and this was not more than six feet long by four feet wide. His probably slept upon this with one of the wadded covers of Japanese make above and below him, and rested his royal head on a wooden pillow cushioned with silk. It was contrary to the custom if he used sheets or pillowcases, for all Jpana sleeps upon the floor. His bedroom had no opening save into the throne-room, and these apartments were not accessible to any but his chief ministers and his wives.
Passing on from this room we were shown the grand throne-room in which the present Mikado was crowned, and where he held his court, I am told, during his visit to Kioto last year. It is of immense size. More than one hundred feet long, it is nearly as wide, and its roof is upheld by great pillars, and heavy beams of pine at least four feet square run from one side of the top to the other. The walls are lined with gold leaf, and decorated with paintings of the Chinese sages. A throne much similar in exterior to that which I described above stood at the back of the room, but in this was placed a chair with a wide seat, upon which lies a square mat bound with silk. This is large enough to allow the emperor to sit cross-legged upon it if he chooses; but the chair is modern, and I doubt not the Mikado uses it in the ordinary way.
Leaving the throne-rooms we were led through room after room of this same Japanese style, with rich ceilings and sliding walls, carpeted with matting and covered with gold leaf. We saw the house set aside for the empress, were pointed to the Mikado’s culinary department, and took a stroll in the royal Japanese gardens.
We then took jinrikishas and drove to the castle of the shogun, for the Tycoon had a residence at Kioto as well as at Tokio. His castle at the Mikado’s home was much finer than that of the emperor himself, and the most skilled of Japanese carvers and the greatest of Japanese artists had been employed to beautify his house. The palace seemed mean and cheap beside this great mansion of the commander-in-chief of the Japanese armies, and the Tycoon evidently thought the Mikado well clad in his robe of righteousness and reverence, and too holy to need the luxurious things of this world. Both palace and castle, however, now belong to the Mikado. His crest has taken the place of that of the shogun on the great brass-covered gates of the latter, and the usurper and his heirs have been dethroned and their system destroyed. After long centuries of seclusion the Mikado is again at the head of his people, and the new Japan goes rapidly on, governed by the same house which has either really or nominally ruled it for more than two thousand years.
