swans added grace and beauty to the peaceful scene. It was forbidden to fire a gun within five ri of the castle. I wondered how foreign sportsmen could resist the temptation.

Let the reader imagine a space of several miles square covered with yashikis. To walk through the streets inside the castle enceinte was a monotonous and gloomy task. There was nothing to break the dull uniformity of black or white tiles and windows, except here and there a sworded samurai or a procession. Occasional variety was obtained in a very large yashiki by erecting a wall around the entire inclosure, and building the houses inside. This made the monotony worse, since the eye had no relief in looking at windows, in which, perchance, might be a pot of flowers, or peeping eyes. It scarcely added to the cheerfulness to meet no common folk, but only proud and pompous men with two swords, the mark of the Japanese gentleman of feudal days.

The winter head-dress of the Japanese of both sexes is a black cloth cap, fitting close to the skull, with long flaps, which were tied around over the neck, mouth, and nose, exposing only the eyes. The wearing of this cap made a most remarkable difference, according to sex. The male looked fiendishly malignant, like a Spanish brigand, the effect of two scowling eyes being increased by the two swords at his belt. The phrase "he looked daggers at me" had a new significance. With the women, however, the effect was the reverse. A plump, well-wrapped form lost no comeliness; and when one saw two sparkling eyes and a suggestion of rosy cheeks, the imagination was willing to body forth the full oval of the Japanese beauty.

A dinner given in my honor by the ex-prince of Echizen, in his own yashiki, enabled me to see in detail one of the best specimens of this style of mansion. Like all the large clans and kokushiu daimiōs, Echizen had three yashikis-the Superior, Middle, and Inferior. In the second lived the ordinary clansmen, while to the third the servants and lower grade of samurai are assigned. Some of these yashikis covered many acres of ground; and the mansions of the Go Sanké families and the great clans of Satsuma, Kaga, Chōshiu, and Chikuzen are known at once upon the map by their immense size and commanding positions. Within their grounds are groves, shrines, cultivated gardens, fish-ponds, hillocks, and artificial landscapes of unique and surpassing beauty. The lord of the mansion dwelt in a central building, approached from the great gate by a wide stone path and grand portico of kéyaki-wood. Long, wide corridors, laid with soft

mats, led to the master's chamber. All the wood-work, except certain portions, stood in virgin grain like watered silk, except where relieved here and there by a hard gleam of black lacquer-like enamel. The walls, gorgeously papered with gold, silver, or fanciful and colored designs, characteristic of Japanese art-among which the pine, plum, and cherry tree, the bamboo, lily, the stork, tortoise, and lion, or fans, were the favorites. The sliding doors, or partitions, of which three sides of a Japanese room is composed, were decorated with paintings. Some of the finest specimens of Japanese art I ever saw were in the yashikis of Tōkiō.

The plan of the city of Yedo, conceived by Iyéyasu, was simply that of a great camp. This one idea explains its centre, divisions, and relations. In the heart of this vast encampment was the general's head-quarters-a well-nigh impregnable castle. On the most eligible and commanding sites were the tents of his chief satraps. These tents were yashikis. The architectural prototype of a yashiki is a Japanese tent. In time of war, the general's head-quarters are surrounded by a roofless curtain of wide breadths of canvas stretched perpendicularly on posts, presenting a square front like a wall outside, and a roomy area within, having in its centre the general's tent. In place of this tent put a house; instead of the canvas stretch continuous long houses, forming a hollow square inclosing the mansion, and you have the yashiki. Shallow observers-foreigners, of courseon first seeing these stretched canvas screens, supposed they were "forts," and the crests (mon) of the general, "port-holes" for cannon! Yedo, the camp city of the East, was full of these tents, amplified and made permanent in wood and stone.

These edifices made the glory of old Yedo, but Tōkiō sees fewer year by year and fire by fire. They were the growth of the necessities of feudalism. The new age of Japan does not need them, and the next decade, that shall see thousands swept away, will see none rebuilt; and the traveler will look upon a yashiki as one of the many curiosities of Old Japan. Yedo was the city of the Tokugawas, and the camp of clans. Its architectural products sprung from the soil of feudalism. Tōkiō is the national capital, the city of the mikado, and its edifices are at once the exponents of modern necessities and enlightened nationality.

VI.

AMONG THE MEN OF NEW JAPAN.

I SPENT from January 3d to February 16th, 1871, in the new capital of Japan, visiting the famous places in the city and suburbs, seeing the wonderful sights, and endeavoring by study and questioning to reduce to order the myriad impressions that were made upon all my senses like a mimic cannonade. During two weeks I taught as a volunteer in the Imperial College. At the house of the superintendent I met many of the officials in the educational and other departments, learning their ideas and methods of thinking and seeing. Among my novel employments was, upon one occasion, the searching of Wheaton's and other works on international law for rules and precedents covering an imminent case of hostilities in Yokohama harbor. The captain of a French man-of-war, resurrecting one of the exploded regulations of the republic of 1795, was threatening to seize a German merchant ship, which had been sold to the Japanese, and the officials of the Foreign Office had come to their long-trusted American friend for advice and the law's precedents. It came to nothing, however. No seizure was made, nor hostile gun fired. The furore of traveling abroad was then at fever-heat, and thousands of young men hoped to be sent to study abroad, at government expense, where tens only could be chosen. I made a call on Terashima Munénori, the Vice-minister of Foreign Affairs, then in Tsukiji: presenting letters from Mr. Hatakéyama Yoshinari, I was received very kindly. Iwakura (to whom I bore letters from his son) and Mr. Okubo at that time were on an important political mission to Satsuma, Chōshiu, and Tosa, sent thither by the mikado. The ex-Prince of Echizen gave an entertainment in my honor at his mansion. The daimiōs of Uwajima and Akadzuki, and several of their karōs (ministers), were present at the dinner. He presented me with his photograph, with some verses, of the making of which he was very fond. Mr. Arinori Mōri, a young samurai of the Satsuma clan, and a great friend of Iwakura, called to see me, and received letters of introduction to my friends in America. He was then in na

tive dress, wearing the traditional two swords, the abolition of which he had in vain advocated some months before. He had just received his appointment as chargé d'affaires of Japan in the United States. Messrs. Mōri, and Saméshima-since chargé d'affaires at Paris, now (1876) Vice-minister of Foreign Affairs in Tōkiō-stood so high in the confidence of Iwakura that they were dubbed, in the political slang of the capital," the legs of Iwakura." Mr. Katsŭ Awa, though absent in Shidzŭöka, sent me a very pleasant letter of welcome to Japan. I enjoyed a delightful call on Mr. Kanda, the ex-President or Speaker of the House of Assembly, in which Mr. Mōri had argued reforms, the second deliberative body that had been called into existence, according to the oath of the mikado in Kiōto, in 1868, that representative institutions should be formed. I found Mr. Kanda a student of English and American literature, and an earnest thinker. His son, a bright lad, was to accompany Mr. Mōri to America. I also met a number of the prominent and rising men of the country, especially those who had been active in the late revolution. The mikado was beginning to ride out in public; and I saw at various times a number of the kugé, both ladies and gentlemen, in their ancient, gorgeous costumes, with their retainers and insignia. I witnessed, also, a grand review of the imperial army, a wrestling-match, exhibitions of acrobatics and jugglery, theatrical performances, and many things in the political, social, and military world that will never again be seen in Japan. I visited the first hospital opened in Tōkiō, by Matsumoto, and the excellent school of Fukuzawa, rival of the Imperial College. None of the large modern buildings in European style, which now adorn the city, were then built. The city was then more Yedo than Tokio.

I repeatedly visited Ōji, so often described by Oliphant and others; Méguro, near which are the graves of the lovers, "Gompachi and Komurasaki;" Takanawa, the Mecca of Japanese loyalty, where are the tombs and statues of the forty-seven ronins, and of their lord, whom they died to avenge; Kamé Ido, the memorial of the deified martyr, Sugawara Michizané; Shiba, Uyéno, Mukōjima, and the places so well known to residents and tourists, the sight of which but added zest to an appetite for seeing all that is dear to a Japanese, which a residence of years failed to cloy. I was several times at Zempukuji (Temple of Peace and Happiness), one of the oldest shrines of the Shin sect of Buddhists, founded by Shinran himself, who with his own hands planted the wonderful old jinko-tree, which still flourishes. Within the temple grounds were the buildings of the legation of the