work wood instead of stone for their houses, temples, and fences, they do it so beautifully that we cannot complain.
Walls made of strong and heavy wood, such as is used in the construction of temples, are employed rather more often than stone for surrounding important parks and gardens whose owners are people of distinction. The timber is generally used as a framework, and the walls are filled in with tiles and clay, and are stoutly plastered. The top has a graceful roof of handsome tiles, and, with the great covered gateways with ornamental roofs, they are very suggestive of Chinese pleasure palace walls, from which they were doubtless copied. Of this sort many are to be seen in Tokio and Kyoto, in and around palace and temple grounds.
Others, more modest, but of the same general construction, are built for places less grand and also less important, and, descending in scale, we finally see the same sort of wall, lower, not roofed even with shingles, but simply encased in slabs of wood at the top, around very humble places in central Japan. Miyajima has many, the walls washed white or a warm delicious yellow, which, somehow, always suggested Italy. One very un-Japanese note was, perhaps, accountable for this—the woodwork was painted, and instead of the soft silvery greys and warm purple-browns of old, time-beautified wood, a neat coat of reddish
