Jinrikisha days in Japan

by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

For the thousand years during which this ancient Saikio remained the home of the Emperor, and of his nominal subject, the Shogun, its western half was crowded with the life centering about the two rulers. The ancient Emperors were hidden within the vast palace enclosure, the centre of other large demesnes, whose yellow walls were marked with the five horizontal white lines which indicate imperial possessions. This collection of palaces and the yashikis of the kugés, or court nobles, were then surrounded by one exterior wall and moat, making an immense imperial reservation—a small isolated city. Within a few years this exterior wall has been destroyed, streets have been opened, and much of the space has been turned into a public park. The imperial palace buildings cover ten acres of ground, and are surrounded by twenty-six acres of ornamental park. In each of the four yellow outer walls is a richly roofed and gabled gate-way, as stately as a temple, the ends of the beams, the ridges, and eaves decorated with golden chrysanthemum crests. The great gate, opened only for the Emperor and his train, and through whose central passage only the sacred being himself may be borne, faces south, as does the throne, in accordance with the old superstitions of the East. The evil influences always threatening from the north-east are guarded against by many temples beyond that side of the palace.

In these days of departed greatness only the Daidokoro Mon (the august kitchen gate), a fine gabled structure in the western wall, is used. After the visitor presents the elaborate official permit, obtained by his legation from the Imperial Household Department of Tokio, and stamped after a personal inspection of the holder by the Kioto bureau of that department, there is much running to and fro of ancient officials, much restamping and recording, before he is led through the precinct by an attendant. Even with this guarantee, the severe and stately old guardians, in their ancient dress and tonsure, seem to look on the intruder with suspicion.

The Japanese gosho is not exactly translated by the word “palace,” and is merely a greater yashiki, or spread-out house, constituting the sovereign’s residence. This gosho consists of so many separate roofed, one-story wooden buildings as to make a small village. Each room, or suite of rooms, occupies a distinct building, its outside gallery or veranda forming the corridor, and its sliding screens the inner walls. Each building has the great sweeping roof of a temple, the belief in the divinity of the Emperor, and his headship of the Shinto faith, requiring that his actual dwelling should be a temple, rigidly simple as a Shinto shrine, with thatched roof and unpainted woods. These clustered houses are the survival of the old nomad camps of Asia, as the upward curving gables of the roof are a permanent form of their sagging tent-tops. The palace has suffered from many fires, the last occurring in 1854, but each rebuilding has followed the original models, and the gosho looks just as it did centuries ago. The same straw mats, open charcoal braziers, and loose saucers of oil in paper lamp-frames, inviting a conflagration there as in the humblest Japanese home.

The walk around the outer galleries and connecting corridors takes half an hour, and one must go stocking-footed, or in the curious slippers furnished by the guardians. In summer the recessed and sunless apartments are cool and dim, but winter makes them bitterly cold and forlorn. Except for two thrones, there is nothing to be called furniture in the palace. The silk-bordered mats of the floor, the paintings on the sliding screens, the fine metal plates on all the wood-work, the irregularly-shelved recesses, quaint windows, curious lattices, and richly-panelled ceilings constitute its adornments. All the wonderful kakemonos, vases, and curios were stored in godowns when the Emperor left Kioto, and the seals have not since been broken. On the screens in the private apartments are many autograph poems, written by court poets or imperial improvisators. The tea-rooms and the garden tea-houses show how important were the long-drawn ceremonies of cha no yu in those leisurely days of the past.

The courts surrounding the state apartments are sanded quadrangles, their surfaces scratched over in fine patterns by the gardeners’ bamboo rakes for the easy detection of strange footprints. In the court-yard before the old audience hall a cherry-tree, a wild orange-tree, and a sacred bamboo, all emblematic, grow at either side of the broad steps. In the middle of the wide, temple-like apartment commanding this court stands the sacred white throne of past centuries, a square tent or canopy of white silk, with rich red borders at the edges of the overlapping curtains. Two antique Chinese dogs guard the throne. On New-year’s Day, and at rare intervals when the Emperor gave audience to his vassal jailer, the Shogun, he sat on a silk cushion within the closed tent, and only his voice was heard, speaking in the quavering, long-drawn tones still used by the actors in the No dance. The imperial princes stood at either side of the throne, the kugé and officials of the highest rank knelt on the steps, and the lowest officials in attendance, the jige or “down to the earth” subjects, prostrated themselves on the sands of the court, while the mournful and muffled tones of the sacred voice sounded.

THE THRONE OF 1868.

When the Emperor gave his first audiences after the Restoration, in 1868, he occupied a newer throne in the Shishinden, a large audience hall with a lofty ceiling supported by round wooden columns. On the lower part of the rear wall are some very old screens painted with groups of Chinese and Korean sages. The floor is of polished cedar, and the throne is like that of his ancestors, but with the curtains rolled up from the front and two sides. It stands on a dais, guarded by the Chinese dogs brought as trophies from Korea, and holds within it a simple lacquered chair, with lacquer stands for the sacred sword and seal. After those audiences of 1868 the Emperor travelled to Tokio in a gold-lacquered norimon, or closed litter, guarded by a train clad in the picturesque dress and armor of centuries before, and equipped with curious old weapons. He, himself, wore voluminous silk robes and a stiff lacquer hat, and the faithful kugés were attired in gorgeous brocades and silks. When the Emperor and court returned to Kioto in 1878, to open the railway to the seaport of Hiogo-Kobé, he was dressed like a European sovereign, alighted publicly from his railway car, and drove to the palace in a smart brougham, escorted by troops with western uniforms and weapons.

The Shiro, or Nijo castle, half a mile south of the palace, where the Shoguns flaunted their wealth and power, is a splendid relic of feudal days. The broad moat, drawbridge, strong walls, and tower-topped gate-ways and angles date from the middle of the sixteenth century. The great gate-way inside the first wall is a mass of elaborate metal ornament, from the sockets of the corner posts to the ridge-pole, but the many trefoils of the Tokugawas have been everywhere covered by the imperial chrysanthemum. All the rooms, but especially the two splendid audience-chambers, with a broad dais before each tokonoma, are marvels of decorative art, rich in gilded screens, with exquisite paintings and fine metal work, wonderfully carved ramma, and sunken ceiling panels, ornamented with flower circles, crests, and geometric designs. But, alas! a hideous Brussels carpet, a round centre-table, and a ring of straight-backed chairs have crowded their vulgar way into these stately rooms, as into every government building and office, large shop, and tea-house in Kioto.

The Shoguns had the Kinkakuji, the Ginkakuji, and other suburban villas to which they might resort, and in which many of them ended their days as abbots and priests. The Emperors had only the exquisite Shugakuin gardens at the foot of Mount Hiyeizan for their pleasurings, until the Restoration gave all such rebel property to the crown. The Kinkakuji (the gold-covered pavilion) and the Ginkakuji (the silver-covered pavilion) stand at opposite sides of the city, each surrounded with landscape-gardens, from which nearly all Japanese gardens are copied. Both are as old as the Ashikaga Shoguns, and both are now monasteries. The Kinkakuji is the larger, and was even more splendid before it was despoiled of so many rare and historic stones and garden ornaments, but the place is still a paradise. Yoshimitsu, third of the Ashikaga Shoguns, built the Kinkakuji, and thither the great Ashikaga retired to end his life. This refuge figures in the many novels of the time of the Ashikagas, when the War of the Chrysanthemums, the Japanese War of the Roses, raged, and the Emperors with the kugés suffered actual want and privation. The memory of this third Ashikaga is abhorred, because he paid tribute to China and accepted from that country in return the title of “King of Japan;” but he so fostered luxury and art that some of his other sins are forgiven him. The pretty little palace at the lake’s edge, with its golden roof and lacquered walls, has successfully withstood the centuries, and is still intact. In the monastery buildings near the gate-way are shown many wonderful kakemonos and screens, and in one court is a pine-tree trained in the shape of a junk, hull, mast, and sail perfectly reproduced in the feathery, living green needles of the tree. It is most interesting to see how the patient gardeners have bent, interlaced, tied, weighted down, and propped up the limbs and twigs to produce this model, with the slow labor of a century.