Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/284

 During an interval so protracted, the city, of course, underwent many changes, but to this day its general plan remains on the lines of its earliest projection. It was built after the general scheme of Nara, but on a much grander scale. The outline was rectangular, 17,530 feet from north to south, and 15,080 feet from east to west. Moats and palisades surrounded the whole—the system of crenelated walls and flanking towers not having been yet introduced—and the Imperial Palace, its citadel, administrative departments, and assembly halls occupied the centre of the northern portion. The Palace was approached from the south, its main gate opening upon a long street 280 feet wide which ran right down the centre of the city. Thus the city was divided into two equal parts, of which the eastern was designated "left metropolis," and the western, "right metropolis." The superficial division was into districts, of which there were nine, all equal in size except those on the east and west of the Palace. An elaborate system of subdivision was adopted. The unit, or house, was a space measuring 100 feet by 50. Eight of these units made a row; four rows, a street; four streets, a division; four divisions, a district. The entire capital contained 1,216 streets and 38,912 houses, with a population of about two hundred thousand. The arrangement of the streets was strictly regular. They lay parallel and at right angles, like the lines on a checker-board. The Imperial citadel measured 3,840 feet from east to west, and 4,600 feet from north to south. On each side were three gates; in the middle stood the Palace, surrounded by the buildings of the various administrative departments, and in front were the assembly and audience halls. The nine districts were divided from each other by main streets, varying in width from 170 feet to 80 feet. They intersected the city from east to west; were numbered from 1 to 9, and were themselves intersected in turn by similar streets running north and south, and by lanes at regular intervals. The buildings were in general lowly and unpretentious. Even in the case of the Palace, the architects observed the austere canons of the Shintô cult, which prescribed purity and simplicity as the essential attributes of refinement; and in the case of the citizens' dwellings, every effort to obtain lightness, airiness, or ornamentation was reserved 