The beautiful Japanese woods and the marvellous Japanese carvers were set aside, that the steam factories of Hamburg might supply the cheap and ugly oak furniture of the banquet-hall. The state table, seating one hundred people, surrounds three sides of a square. The imperial arm-chairs are at the middle of the board, facing elaborate buffets, framing painted tapestry-panels of the most tawdry German design. The ball-room has a costly inlaid floor, and is decorated in white and gold. The throne-room has nothing Japanese but the crests in the panelled ceiling. A large gilded arm-chair stands on a red-carpeted dais, with canopy and curtains of red plush, the sacred sword and seal resting on lacquer tables beside it. At court functions the Empress stands on a dais below and to the right of the throne, with the imperial princes and princesses grouped about her. The members of the diplomatic corps are placed at the Emperor’s left, the ministers and higher officials fill the space facing the throne, and the imperial guard line the gallery corridors that surround the throne-room.
In the private apartments of the Emperor and Empress moquette carpets, plush furniture, and easy-chairs confess foreign influence and etiquette. The old rules of the simplicity of a Shinto shrine in the sovereign’s dwelling are observed in leaving all the wood-work unpainted, while wax-candles and open grates replace the electric bulbs and gilded radiators of the official parts of the palace. Some of the private rooms display exquisite panelled and coffered ceilings of pure white pine, or the beautiful gray bog-wood. Each suite has one room in pure Japanese style, and a tiny box for celebrating the rites of cha no yu with a favored four. The Emperor’s sleeping-room is the same unlighted, unventilated dark closet which his ancestors used. This sleeping-room is E in the accompanying diagram, surrounded by rooms occupied at night by his attendants and guards.
Above this floor is a suite of studies, libraries, and secretaries’ rooms, all finished in the same exquisite woods, that show their natural grain and color. There is a separate suite of rooms for the Emperor’s toilet and wardrobe, a robing and disrobing room, and an exquisite Japanese bath-room with inlaid floor and walls. The sovereign uses the regular oval wooden tub of his people, which is filled from a well in the adjoining court by means of the primitive bucket and rope. The screens in these private rooms are undecorated, or at the most only flecked with gold-leaf. From time to time, by special command, artists will decorate these, and squares of colored paper put here and there upon them invite the autograph poems of the tea-drinking improvisators.
Somewhere in the recesses of the palace is a chapel or Shinto shrine, but the officials are very reticent concerning it. It is known that the mortuary tablets of the Emperor’s ancestors are there, simple ihai, or pieces of pine wood, upon which are written the posthumous names of the deceased rulers. Official bulletins often announce that a newly appointed minister of the cabinet, or a diplomatic officer about departing for his post is “ordered to worship the cenotaphs in the imperial chapel,” before an audience with the Emperor. Presumably, such devotions are a form equivalent to the oath of allegiance in other countries. Upon the anniversaries of the death of certain of his ancestors, on the days of the spring and autumn festival, when the first rice is sown and harvested, as well as before any great ceremonial, it is announced that the Emperor will worship in the imperial chapel. The aged Prince Kuni Asahiko is conductor of divine services to the imperial family; but everything about that simple, formal state religion is baffling and incomprehensible, and no one knows what form the Shinto services in the palace assume.
The Emperor used to give a Japanese banquet on the morning of his birthday to princes, ministers, and envoys. Chopsticks were used, and the imperial health was drunk from saké-cups of fine egg-shell porcelain, decorated with chrysanthemums and broken diaper patterns in gold, which the guests carried away with them as souvenirs. That celebration and the New-year breakfast are now state banquets, served in foreign fashion, with sovereign and consort seated at the head of the room. Indeed, the entire service of the palace and of the Emperor’s table is European; silver, porcelain, and glass being marked with the imperial crest of the sixteen-petalled chrysanthemum, and the kiri mon of the Paulownia imperialis appearing in the decorative design woven in the white silk napery and traced on the delicate porcelain service. The palace lackeys are uniformed in dress-coats with many cords and aiguillettes, striped vests, knee-breeches, white silk stockings, and buckled shoes. Their costume resembles that of the Vienna palace, colored sketches of which Prince Komatsu sent home during his winter stay on the Danube. The palace tiring-women wear the garb of Kioto days, purple hakama and russet silk kimonos, and are the most fascinating and almost the only Japanese spectacle in the imperial precincts. In all modifications the usages of the Berlin court have been followed, and no Prussian military martinet or court chamberlain could be more punctilious in matters of etiquette than the Japanese court officials.
IMPERIAL SAKÉ-CUP
Of the Empress Dowager’s palace only its gate-way is known. The Hama Rikiu palace is a sea-shore villa, owing its beautiful garden to the Shoguns, but it is occupied only when the ministers of state give balls, or foreign guests of the Emperor are domiciled there, as was General Grant. An imperial garden-party is held in its confines each spring, and, with the Fukiage gardens adjoining the new palace, is a supreme example of the Japanese landscape gardener’s art.
For the support of these palaces and the expenses of the imperial family the Imperial Household Department’s expenditures were 3,000,000 yens in 1889 and 1899.