Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. v., part i. p. 207.
It may be well to state here that most of the good and reliable contributions upon Japan are to be found in the Transactions of the English and German Asiatic Societies published in Yokohama; also in the pages of the Japan “Mail,” in the now extinct Tokio “Times,” and in a most excellent but now defunct magazine called the “Chrysanthemum,” whose circulation becoming vitiated by the theological sap in its tissues, finally broke down altogether from the dead weight of its dogmatic leaves.
Among the many valuable papers published in these Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, is one by Thomas R. H. McClatchie, Esq., on “The Feudal Mansions of Yedo,” vol. vii. part iii. p. 157, which gives many important facts concerning a class of buildings that is rapidly disappearing, and to which only the slightest allusion has been made in the present work. The reader is also referred to a Paper in the same publication by George Cawley, Esq., entitled “Some Remarks on Constructions in Brick and Wood, and their Relative Suitability for Japan,” vol. vi. part ii. p. 291; and also to a Paper by R. H. Brunton, Esq., on “Constructive Art in Japan,” vol. ii. p. 64; vol. iii. part ii. p. 20.
Professor Huxley has said in one of his lectures, that if all the books in the world were destroyed, with the exception of the Philosophical Transactions, “it is safe to say that the foundations of Physical Science would remain unshaken, and that the vast intellectual progress of the last two centuries would be largely though incompletely recorded.” In a similar way it might almost be said of the Japan “Mail,” that if all the books which have been written by foreigners upon Japan were destroyed, and files of the Japan “Mail” alone preserved, we should possess about all of value that has been recorded by foreigners concerning that country. This journal not only includes the scholarly productions of its editor, Capt. F. Brinkley, as well as an immense mass of material from its correspondents, but has also published the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan in advance ot the Society's own publications.
Still another English writer says: “It is unpleasant to live within ugly walls; it is still more unpleasant to live within unstable walls: but to be obliged to live in a tenement which is both unstable and ugly is disagreeable in a tenfold degree.” He thinks it is quite time to evoke legislation to remedy these evils, and says: “An Englishman's house was formerly said to be his castle; but in the hands of the speculating builder and advertising tradesman, we may be grateful that it does not oftener become his tomb.”
[Fig. 12] represents the frame-work of an ordinary two-storied house. It is copied from a Japanese carpenter's drawing, kindly furnished the writer by Mr. Fukuzawa, of Tokio, proper corrections in perspective having been made. The various parts have been lettered, and the dimensions given in Japanese feet and inches. The Japanese foot is, within the fraction of an inch, the same as ours, and is divided into ten parts, called sun. The wood employed in the frame is usually cedar or pine. The corner posts, as well as the other large upright posts, called hashira (H), are square, and five sun in thickness; these are tenoned into the plate upon which they rest. This plate is called do-dai (D); it is made of cedar, and sometimes of chestnut. The do-dai is six sun square, and rests directly on a number of stones, which are called do-dai-ishi (D,1). Between the hashira come smaller uprights, called ma-bashira (M) (hashira changed to bashira for euphony); these are two sun square. Through these pass the cross-pieces called nuki; these are four sun wide and one sun thick. To these are attached the bamboo slats as substitutes for laths. The horizontal beam to support the second-story floor is called the nikaibari (Ni); this is of pine, with a vertical thickness of one foot two sun, and a width of six tenths of a sun. The rafters of the roof, called yane-shita (Ya), in this frame are nine feet long, three sun wide, and eight tenths of a sun in thickness. Cross-beams (T), from the upper plate from which spring posts to support the ridge-pole, are called taruki. The first floor is sustained by posts that rest on stones embedded in the ground, as well as by a beam called yuka-shita (Yu); this is secured to the upright beams at the height of one and one-half or two feet above the do-dai. The upper floor-joists are of pine, two inches square; the flooring boards are six tenths of a sun in thickness, and one foot wide. The lower floor-joists, called neda-maruta (Ne), are rough round sticks, three sun in diameter, hewn on opposite sides. On top of these rest pine boards six tenths of a sun in thickness.
The accompanying sketches will illustrate the various stages in the construction of the ceiling.
General Francis A. Walker, in his Lowell Lectures on the United States Census for 1880, shows that carpenters constitute the largest single body of artisans working for the supply of local wants. He shows that the increase of this body from decade to decade is far behind what it should be if it increased in the ratio of the population; and though this fact might excite surprise, he shows that it is due to the enormous increase in machine-made material, such as doors, sashes, blinds, etc.; in other words, to the making of those parts which in former times trained a man in delicate work and accurate joinery.
There is no question but that in England apprentices serve their time at trades more faithfully than with us; nevertheless, the complaints that go up in the English press in regard to poor and slovenly work show the existence of a similar class of impostors, who defraud the public by claiming to be what they are not. The erratic Charles Reade, in a series of letters addressed to the “Pall Mall Gazette,” on builders' blunders, inveighs against the British workmen as follows: “When last seen, I was standing on the first floor of the thing they call a house, with a blunder under my feet,—unvarnished, unjoined boards; and a blunder over my head,—the oppressive, glaring plaster-ceiling, full of the inevitable cracks, and foul with the smoke of only three months' gas.”