This avenue, leading to the palace, affords compensation for all the inartistic streets outside the walls. I am even glad that it is covered with snow, and that its sole inhabitants are a few gardeners shovelling the ice aside. The dark trees and the white snow, and these few men clad in straw capes looking very much like the back of a porcupine, and wearing hats like flat tea-trays, are so original and so typical. At last I have a real Japanese picture before me, and not one of those we get at home highly coloured and made partly for the cheap Western markets, but a picture full of harmony in an artistic setting, like one of those famous Kakomenos in black and white by the most celebrated disciples of the great Kano school.
A sharp turn brings us to an open space, and the palace is in front of us.
I am afraid "palace" is not the right expression, as it looks from the outside like a large Indian bungalow. It is only one storey high, mainly constructed of wood and beams, scarcely ornamental, and covered with a sloping roof of indifferent tiles. There is nothing striking about it, nothing that would attract attention, nothing that is at all imposing; it looks comfortable and nothing more.
The carriage stops before a flight of steps leading to a simple but spacious ante-room. There is a large table on which are the Imperial visiting-books, a few chairs; round the room stand some servants, dressed in ordinary French livery. I am shown through a long corridor, which is Japanese in character. It has no furniture at all; the beams are carved, and if not imposing are perfect in detail. The large drawing-room, where we sit down, is entirely modern.
The furniture is such as you would see anywhere in Europe, and specially in America—rich, but without any special style or individuality, the only exceptions being a fine cabinet of priceless old lacquer ware, and a large golden screen ornamented with an enormous dragon and signed "Kano Montonabu."
THE TOKAÏDO
"The avenue looks like a corner of the famous Tokaïdo highway"
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I was rather sorry that the decorations of the whole room did not adhere to the national taste. I should have liked to banish every gilded bracket and velvet lounge, and restore it to its original simplicity—such simplicity as is to be found in the Katsura Palace at Kioto.
The Emperor is a late riser, and until he is ready Baron S——a keeps me company. He speaks perfect English, having studied in England for many years; and, even more, he married an English lady whose house has become the meeting-place of all Western and local celebrities.
It is a charming villa, looking very much like an English cottage, and overlooking one of the prettiest corners of the Bay of Tokio; full of English books and Japanese art treasures—English comfort and Japanese taste—it is one of those homes that one remembers with pleasure, and looks forward to seeing again.