ARCHITECTURE
As Chinese literature became familiar and as the arts of the Middle Kingdom and Korea were imported into Japan, the latter's customs naturally underwent some changes. This was noticeable in the case of architecture. Lofty buildings, as has been already stated, began to take the place of the partially subterranean muro. The annals make no special reference to the authors of this innovation, but it is mentioned that among the descendants of the Chinese, Achi, and the Korean, Tsuka, there were men who practised carpentry. Apparently the fashion of high buildings was established in the reign of Anko when (A.D. 456) the term ro or takadono (lofty edifice) is, for the first time, applied to the palace of Anko in Yamato. A few years later (468), we find mention of two carpenters,* Tsuguno and Mita, who, especially the latter, were famous experts in Korean architecture, and who received orders from Yuryaku to erect high buildings. It appears further that silk curtains (tsumugi-kaki) came into use in this age for partitioning rooms, and that a species of straw mat (tatsu-gomo) served for carpet when people were hunting, travelling, or campaigning.
*It should be remembered that as all Japanese edifices were made of timber, the carpenter and the architect were one and the same.
SHIPS
Occasional references have been made already to the art of shipbuilding in Japan, and the facts elicited may be summed up very briefly. They are that the first instance of naming a ship is recorded in the year A.D. 274, when the Karano (one hundred feet long) was built to order of the Emperor Ojin by the carpenters of Izu promontory, which place was famed for skill in this respect; that the general method of building was to hollow out tree-trunks,* and that the arrival of naval architects from Shiragi (A.D. 300) inaugurated a superior method of construction, differing little from that employed in later ages.
*Such dug-outs were named maruki-bune, a distinguishing term which proves that some other method of building was also employed.
VEHICLES
A palanquin (koshi) used by the Emperor Ojin (A.D. 270-310) was preserved in the Kyoto palace until the year 1219, when a conflagration consumed it. The records give no description of it, but they say that Yuryaku and his Empress returned from a hunting expedition on a cart (kuruma), and tradition relates that a man named Isa, a descendant in the eighth generation of the Emperor Sujin, built a covered cart which was the very one used by Yuryaku. It is, indeed, more than probable that a vehicle which had been in use in China for a long time must have become familiar to the Japanese at an early epoch.
MEDICAL ART
For relief in sickness supplication to the gods and the performance of religious rites were chiefly relied on. But it is alleged* that medicines for internal and external use were in existence and that recourse to thermal springs was commonly practised from remote times.