fibrous stems of climbing plants, such as Pueraria thunbergiana (kuzii] and Wistaria sinensis (fuji). The floor must have been low down, so that the occupants of the building, as they squatted or lay on their mats, were exposed to the stealthy attacks of venomous snakes, which were probably far more numerous in the earliest ages, when the country was for the most part uncultivated, than at the present day … There seems some reason to think that the yuka, here translated floor, was originally nothing but a couch which ran round the sides of the hut, the rest of the space being simply a mud-floor, and that the size of the couch was gradually increased until it occupied the whole interior. The rafters projected upward beyond the ridge-pole, crossing each other, as is seen in the roofs of modern Shintō temples, whether their architecture be in conformity with early traditions (in which case all the rafters are so crossed) or modified in accordance with more advanced principles of construction, and the crossed rafters retained only as ornaments at the two ends of the ridge. The roof was thatched, and perhaps had a gable at each end, with a hole to allow the smoke of the wood-fire to escape, so that it was possible for birds flying in and perching on the beams overhead, to defile the food, or the fire with which it was cooked. "
To this description of Sir Ernest Satow's, it should be added that fences were in use, and that the wooden doors, sometimes fastened by means of hooks, resembled those with which we are familiar in Europe rather than the sliding, screen-like doors of modern Japan. The windows seem to have been mere holes. Rush-matting and rugs consisting of skins were occasionally brought in to sit upon, and we even hear once or twice of "silk rugs" being used for the same purpose by the noble and wealthy.
Since 1870, the Japanese have begun to exchange their own methods of building for what is locally termed "foreign style," doubtless, as a former resident[1] has wittily observed, because foreign to all known styles of architecture. This "foreign style"
- ↑ Mr. E. G. Holtham, in his Eight Years in Japan.
