Through the heart of Tokio winds a broad spiral moat, encircling the palace in its innermost ring, and reaching, by canal branches, to the river on its outer lines. In feudal days the Shogun’s castle occupied the inner ring, and within the outer rings were the yashikis, or spread-out houses, of his daimios. Each gate-way and angle of the moat was defended by towers, and the whole region was an impregnable camp. Every daimio in the empire had his yashiki in Tokio, where he was obliged to spend six months of each year, and in case of war to send his family as pledges of his loyalty to the Shogun. The Tokaido and the other great highways of the empire were always alive with the trains of these nobles, and from this migratory habit was developed the passion for travel and excursion that animates every class of the Japanese people. When the Emperor came up from Kioto and made Tokio his capital, the Shogun’s palace became his home, and all the Shogun’s property reverted to the crown, the yashikis of the daimios being confiscated for government use. In the old days the barrack buildings surrounding the great rectangle of the yashiki were the outer walls, protected by a small moat, and furnished with ponderous, gable-roofed gate-ways, drawbridges, sally-ports, and projecting windows for outlooks. These barracks accommodated the samurai, or soldiers, attached to each daimio, and within their lines were the parade ground and archery range, the residence of the noble family, and the homes of the artisans in his employ. With the new occupation many yashiki buildings were razed to the ground, and imposing edifices in foreign style erected for government offices. A few of the old yashiki remain as barracks, and their white walls, resting on black foundations, suggest the monotonous street views of feudal days. Other yashiki have fallen to baser uses, and sign-boards swing from their walls.
Modern sanitary science has plucked up the miles of lotus beds that hid the triple moats in midsummer. From the bridges the lounger used to overlook acres of pink and white blossoms rising above the solid floors of bluish-green leaves; but the Philistines could not uproot the moats, which remain the one perfect feudal relic of Japanese Yeddo. The many-angled gate-ways, the massive stone walls, and escarpments, all moss and lichen-grown, and sloping from the water with an inward curve, are noble monuments of the past. Every wall and embankment is crowned with crooked, twisted, creeping, century-old pines, that fling their gaunt arms wildly out, or seem to grope along the stones. Here and there on the innermost rings of the moat still rise picturesque, many-gabled towers, with white walls and black roofs, survivors from that earlier day when they guarded the shiro, or citadel, and home of the Shogun.
The army is always in evidence in Tokio, and the little soldiers in winter dress of dark-blue cloth, or summer suits of white duck, swarm in the neighborhood of the moats. In their splendid uniforms, the dazzling officers, rising well in the saddle, trot by on showy horses. On pleasant mornings, shining companies of cavalry file down the line of the inner moat and through the deep bays of the now dismantled Cherry-Tree gate to the Hibiya parade-ground, where they charge and manœuvre. When it rains, the files of mounted men look like so many cowled monks, with the peaked hoods of their great coats drawn over their heads, and they charge, gallop, and countermarch through mud and drizzle, as if in a real campaign. Taking the best of the German, French, Italian, and British military systems, with instructors of all these nationalities, the Japanese army stands well among modern fighting forces. There is a military genius in the people, and the spirit of the old samurai has leavened the nation, making the natty soldiers of to-day worthy the traditions of the past.
A large foreign colony is resident in Tokio, the diplomatic corps, the great numbers of missionaries, and those employed by the Government in the university, schools, and departments constituting a large community. The missionary settlement now holds the Tsukiji district near the railway station; that piece of made ground along the shore first ceded for the exclusive occupation of foreigners. Besides being malarial, Tsukiji was formerly the rag-pickers’ district, and its selection was not complimentary to the great powers, all of whose legations have now left it. To reside outside of Tsukiji was permitted to non-officials in extra-territorial times only when in Japanese employ. Any who chose to live in Tokio were claimed as teachers by some kindly Japanese friend, who became responsible for the stranger’s conduct. Before the revision of the treaties with foreign powers, which compacts became operative July 17, 1899, a foreigner could not go twenty-five miles beyond a treaty-port without a passport from the Japanese foreign office issued after a personal application to his legation in Tokio. Each place which he wished to visit had to be named, and immediately upon his arrival at a tea-house, the district policeman called for the passport and registered the stranger. Any one attempting to travel without a passport was promptly escorted to the nearest treaty-port. European tourists had a formidable list of rules of conduct which their ministers exhorted them to observe—that they should not quarrel, deface monuments, destroy trees or shrubs, break windows, or go to fires on horseback. The American tourist was trusted to behave without such minute instructions, and at Kobé could visit the Kencho and ask a permit to visit Kioto without the intervention of his consul—a recognition of the freedom and independence of the American citizen, and a tribute to the individual sovereignty of his nation, concerning which a Japanese poet wrote:
“What are those strangely-clad beings
Who move quickly from one spot of interest to another
Like butterflies flitting from flower to flower?