In an earlier portion of this work an allusion was made to the absence of those architectural monuments which are so [pg 321] characteristic of European countries. The castles of the Daimios, which are lofty and imposing structures, have already been referred to. There are fortresses also of great extent and solidity,—notably the one at Osaka, erected by Hideyoshi on an eminence near the city; and though the wooden structures formerly surmounting the walls were destroyed by Iyeyasŭ in 1615, the stone battlements as they stand to-day must be considered as among the marvels of engineering skill, and the colossal masses of rock seem all the more colossal after one has become familiar with the tiny and perishable dwellings of the country. In the walls of this fortress are single blocks of stone—at great heights, too, above the surrounding level of the region—measuring in some cases from thirty to thirty-six feet in length, and at least fifteen feet in height. These huge blocks have been transported long distances from the mountains many miles away from the city.
Attention is called to the existence of these remarkable monuments as an evidence that the Japanese are quite competent to erect such buildings, if the national taste had inclined them in that way. So far as I know, a national impulse has never led the Japanese to commemorate great deeds in the nation's life by enduring monuments of stone. The reason may be that the plucky little nation has always been successful in repelling invasion; and a peculiar quality in their temperament has prevented them from perpetuating in a public way, either by monuments or by the naming of streets and bridges, the memories of victories won by one section of the country over another.
Rev. W. E. Griffis, in an interesting article on “The Streets and Street-names of Yedo,”[25] in noticing the almost total absence of the names of great victories or historic battlefields in the naming of the streets and bridges in Tokio, says: “It [pg 322] would have been an unwise policy in the great unifier of Japan, Iyeyasŭ, to have given to the streets in the capital of a nation finally united in peaceful union any name that would be a constant source of humiliation, that would keep alive bitter memories, or that would irritate freshly-healed wounds. The anomalous absence of such names proves at once the sagacity of Iyeyasŭ, and is another witness to the oft-repeated policy used by the Japanese in treating their enemies,—that is, conquer them by kindness and conciliation.”
CHAPTER VIII. THE ANCIENT HOUSE.
It would be an extremely interesting line of research to follow out the history of the development of the house in Japan. The material for such a study may possibly be in existence, but unfortunately there are few scholars accomplished enough to read the early Japanese records. Thanks to the labors of Mr. Chamberlain, and to Mr. Satow, Mr. Aston, Mr. McClatchie, and other members of the English legation in Japan,[26] students of Ethnology are enabled to catch a glimpse of the character of the early house in that country.
From the translations of ancient Japanese Rituals,[27] by Ernest Satow, Esq.; of the Kojiki, or “Records of Ancient Matters,”[28] by Basil Hall Chamberlain, Esq.; and an ancient Japanese Classic[29], by W. G. Aston, Esq.,—we get a glimpse of the Japanese house as it was a thousand years or more ago.
Mr. Satow claims that the ancient Japanese Rituals are “the oldest specimens of ancient indigenous Japanese literature extant, excepting only perhaps the poetry contained in the ‘Kojiki’ and ‘Nihongi;’ ” and Mr. Chamberlain says the [pg 324] “Kojiki” is “the earliest authentic connected literary product of that large division of the human race which has been variously denominated Turanian, Scythian, and Altaïc, and it if even precedes by at least a century the most ancient extant literary compositions of non-Aryan India.”
The allusions to house-structure in the “Kojiki,” though brief, are suggestive, and carry us back without question to the condition of the Japanese house in the seventh and eighth centuries.