Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/77

 decorated with paintings by a celebrated artist, and the whole interior of the third storey, ceiling, walls, floor, balcony-railing, and projecting rafters, covered with gilding which was thickly applied over varnish composed of lacquer and hone-powder. Traces alone of the gold can now be seen, but the effect when the edifice was in full preservation must have been dazzling. Yoshimasa, who succeeded to the Shōgunate in 1449 and is remembered as Japan's foremost dilettante, erected a Silver Pavilion (Ginkakuji) in imitation of his predecessor's foible, but never carried it to completion. Of Kyoto as it was in his days, at the middle of the fifteenth century, before long years of war reduced it once more to ruins, only a faint conception can be formed from the descriptions of subsequent writers, for they employ adjectives of admiration instead of recording intelligible facts. Here is what one of them says:—

The finest edifices were, of course, the Imperial Palaces. Their roofs seemed to pierce the sky and their balconies to touch the clouds. A lofty hall revealed itself at every fifth step and another at every tenth. No poet or man of letters could view these beauties unmoved. In the park, weeping willows, plum-trees, peach-trees, and pines were cleverly planted so as to enhance the charm of the artificial hills. Rocks shaped like whales, sleeping tigers, dragons or phœnixes, were placed around the lake, where mandarin ducks looked at their own images in the clear water. Beautiful women wearing perfumed garments of exquisite