is indeed not one, but multiform. There is the rabbit-warren style, exemplified in the streets at the back of the Ginza in Tōkyō. There is the wooden shanty or bathing-machine style, of which the capital offers a wealth of examples. There is the cruet-stand style, so strikingly exemplified in the new Tōkyō Prefecture. The Brobdingnagian pigeon-house style is represented here and there both in wood and stone. Its chief feature is having no windows, at least, none to speak of. After all, these things are Japan's misfortune, not her fault. She discovered Europe, architecturally speaking, at the wrong moment. We cannot with any grace blame a nation whom we have ourselves misled. If Japan's contemporary efforts in architecture are worse even than ours, it is chiefly because her people have less money to dispose of. Moreover, Nature herself confines them to the flat and the little:—three storeys are a dangerous experiment in this earthquake-shaken land.
Books recommended. Japanese Homes, by Prof. E. S. Morse.—Domestic Architecture in Japan, and Further Notes on Japanese Architecture, by Josiah Conder, F.R.I.B.A., printed in the "Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects," 1886-7. Both the above authors have illustrated their works profusely, Prof. Morse giving representations, not only of architectural details proper, but of all the fittings and domestic articles of a middle-class Japanese household. Mr. Conder gives drawings of temples and palaces.—The Feudal Mansions of Yedo, by T. R. H. McClatchie, in Vol. VII. Part III. of the "Asiatic Transactions." This is a full description of the ancient yashiki, or Daimyōs residences.—For what the doctors have to say about Japanese houses from a sanitary point of view, see Drs. Seymour and Baelz, in Vol. XVII. Part II., pp. 17-21. of the "Asiatic Transactions." There are other papers by Messrs McClatchie, Brunton, and Cawley, more or less concerned with Japanese architecture, scattered through the publications of the same Society.
Armour. Japanese armour might serve as a text for those authors who love to descant on the unchanging character of the East. Our own Middle Ages witnessed revolutions in the style of armour as complete as any that have taken place in the Paris fashions during the last three hundred years. In Japan, on the contrary, from the beginning of true feudalism in the twelfth century down to its extinction in 1871, there was scarcely any change. The older specimens are rather the better, rather the more complete; the newer are often rather heavier, owing to the
