whenever heavy rain makes it necessary to shut up one or more sides of the house,—to these and various other enormities Japanese houses must plead guilty. Two things, chiefly, may be said on the other side. First, these houses are cheap, an essential point in a poor country. Secondly, the people who live in them do not share our European ideas with regard to comfort and discomfort. They do not miss fire-places or stoves, never having realised the possibility of such elaborate arrangements for heating. They do not mind draughts, having been inured to them from infancy. In fact an elderly diplomat, who, during his sojourn in a Japanese hotel, spent well-nigh his whole time in the vain endeavour to keep doors shut and chinks patched up, used to exclaim to us, "Mais les Japonais adorent les courants d'air!" Furthermore, the physicians who have studied Japanese dwelling-houses from the point of view of hygiene, give them a clean bill of health.
Leaving this portion of the subject, which is a matter of taste, not of argument, let us enquire into the origin of Japanese architecture, which is a matter of research. Its origin is twofold. The Japanese Buddhist temple comes from India, being a modification of the Indian original. The other Japanese styles are of native growth. Shinto temples, Imperial palaces, and commoners dwelling-houses are alike developments of the simple hut of prehistoric times. Persons interested in archaeological research may like to hear what Sir Ernest Satow has to say on the little-known subject of primeval Japanese architecture. He writes as follows[1]:—
"Japanese antiquarians tell us that in early times, before carpenter's tools had been invented, the dwellings of the people who inhabited these islands were constructed of young trees with the bark on, fastened together with ropes made of the rush suge (Scirpus maritimus), or perhaps with the tough shoots of wistaria (fuji), and thatched with the grass called kaya. In modern buildings the uprights of a house stand upon large stones laid on
- ↑ We quote from a paper entitled The Shintō Temples of Ise, printed in Vol. II. of the "Asiatic Transactions."
