Jinrikisha Days in Japan
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 kuges 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.
To the Ginkakuji retired the dignified Yoshimasa, eighth of the Ashikaga Shoguns, to found a monastery and to meditate, until with Murata Shinkio, the priest, and Soami, the painter, he evolved the minute and elaborate ceremonies of cha no yu. The weather-beaten boards and finely thatched roof of the first ceremonial
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