The sacredness of the imperial person long postponed her Majesty’s change of fashion, as no ignoble dress-maker could be allowed to touch her. Countess Ito, the clever wife of the premier, and leader of foreign fashions at court, was finally chosen as lay figure, to be fitted until a model could be made. The Empress now wears European dress altogether, conduct little short of heroic for one accustomed only to the loose, simple, and comfortable garments of her country. Her gowns are made of Japanese fabrics, and a lace school under her patronage supplies her with flounces and trimmings. At in-door state ceremonies, low bodices and court trains are prescribed, and the Empress wears a tiara, rivière, and innumerable ornaments of diamonds. The court ladies, who formerly wore no ornaments but the single long hair-pin and the gold balls and trifles on the obi cord, have been seized by a truly American craze for diamonds, and greatly covet the new Order with cordon and jewelled star lately established by the Empress.
In adopting the expensive foreign dress court ladies ruthlessly sacrificed irreplaceable heirlooms of rich old brocades and embroideries. For a long time their countenances and mien betrayed the discomfort of the new dress, but they soon acquired ease with familiarity, and no Japanese woman, in her first Parisian gown, was ever such a burlesque and caricature as are the foreign visitors who essay the kimono, and, blind to the ridiculous, are photographed with its folds and fulness all awry. Only two foreign women have I ever seen who could wear Japanese dress gracefully in the Japanese way, with full regard to the meaning which each color, fold, pucker, and cord implies.
Asahiko, the Empress Dowager, one of the Kujo family of kugés, and of Fujiwara descent, maintained the old order and etiquette and made few concessions to the new ways. She never appeared at state functions, but the ladies of her suite, in beautiful ceremonial dresses, were sometimes seen at Koyokwan No performances, when given for one of her state charities. She spent half the year at her summer palace at Hayama, and at her death in January, 1897, was buried beside the Emperor Komei at the Senyuji temple in Kioto with a midnight Shinto service. The most rigorous court mourning was observed for one year, even military bands being forbidden to play.
The Empress Dowager had nominal charge of the imperial nurseries in the Nakayama Yashiki, where the children of the Emperor and his inferior wives remain until their fourth or fifth years. These wives are all of kugé birth, and have establishments within the palace enclosure. They are an Oriental survival, of which little is said or definitely known, although they still have a fixed rank.
The Empress Haruko has no children, and Prince Haru, the Crown Prince, is the son of the Emperor and Madame Yanagiwara. Five imperial princesses are living, but ten imperial children have died. Prince Haru was born September 6, 1879, proclaimed heir apparent August 31, 1887, and elected Crown Prince November 3, 1889, dispossessing as heir to the throne Prince Arisugawa Takehito, a young cousin, who had been adopted by the Emperor in the absence of any direct heirs. Prince Haru attended the Nobles’ school, recited in classes with other boys, and enjoyed a more democratic life than his ancestors could have dreamed of. He is quick, energetic, and ambitious, progressive in all his views, enthusiastic and tireless in his occupations. With a naturally delicate constitution, his good health has been the unceasing object of the devoted German and Japanese court physicians, and he has always been exempt from court functions and the wearisome public duties of the heir apparent in other empires. His marriage to the Princess Sada, daughter of Prince Kujo, took place at the Imperial Palace in Tokio in May, 1900, and the birth of Prince Michi in April, 1901, was cause of rejoicing to the empire.
CHAPTER XII
TOKIO PALACES AND COURT
Thirty different places have been the capital and home of the Emperors of Japan, and Omi, Settsu, and Yamashiro were imperial provinces before the Tokugawa’s city of Yeddo (bay’s gate) became Tokio, the eastern capital and seat of imperial power. The Shogun’s old castle, the Honmaru, or the Shiro, was the imperial palace until destroyed by fire in May, 1873, and its interior is said to have been far more splendid than the Nijo castle in Kioto. The yashiki of the Tokugawa daimio of Kiushiu, on the high ground of the Akasaka quarter, next sheltered the imperial household, though ill adapted to its changing and growing needs.
At the end of 1888 the Emperor took possession of the new imperial palace, which had been six years in building, and which stands upon the ruins of the Shogun’s castle, protected by all the rings of moats. Two drawbridges and two ponderous old towered gate-ways defend the entrance to the front wing of the building, a long yellow brick edifice, with the conical towers and steep roof of a French château. The offices of the Imperial Household Department are assigned to this foreign wing, except for which the new structure is such a labyrinthine collection of temple-like buildings, as the old palace at Kioto. Built on sloping and uneven ground, there is a constant change of level in the innumerable roofs and floors. Before it was completed a tour of the palace occupied a full hour, and attendants and workmen were often lost in the maze. Combining Japanese and European architecture, decorations, furnishings, and ideas, the palace is a jumble of unsatisfactory incongruities, nobody being found to admire thatched roofs and electric lights, partition walls of sliding paper screens and steam-heating apparatus, a modern ball-room, and a No dance pavilion all side by side.
Each lofty state apartment is a building by itself, the outer galleries on the four sides being the corridors that touch other corridors at their angles. Plate-glass doors in maroon lacquer frames, with superb metal mountings, take the place of the usual paper shoji; but with the low eaves and the light entering from the level of the floor, the rooms need all their Edison lamps. Unfortunately, the best examples of national decorative art are not preserved in this national palace. Only the richly panelled ceilings are at all Japanese or worthy their place. The famous embroidered ceiling and embroidered wainscoting in the great drawing-room, and some makimonos in the private rooms, exhibit the best Kioto needle-work. This wonderful ceiling, costing ten thousand dollars, is panelled with yard-squares of gold-thread tapestry, upon which are embroidered crest-like circles of various flowers. The wainscoting is green damask wrought with fruits, and the walls of the drawing-room are hung with a neutral-tinted damask.