Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/81

 of his wishes, as "I want such and such a verse from the 'Hundred Poets' Songs,' or I desire a copy of this or that section of the 'Ise Tales.'" After a certain number of days the commission was sure to be executed. At night the dim light of the apartment where the Palace Ladies lived could be seen from Sanjo Bridge. So wretched and lowly had everything become.

Much the same story might be told of Kamakura, the capital of the Minamoto and the Hōjō; of Odawara, the second capital of the Hōjō, and of Yamaguchi in the south, where the Ouchi family sat ruling the six provinces of Suo, Nagato, Buzen, Chikuzen, Aki, and Iwami, and growing rich by means of their monopoly of the country's foreign trade; and whither many of the Court nobles fled when Kyōtō ceased to be habitable by any but strong soldiers. The cities of Japan have invariably grown to greatness under the shadow of the Government.

The great vicissitudes mentioned above convey a fact which must not be lost sight of in studying the Military epoch, namely, that it extended over a period of nearly four centuries, and that, during the social and political convulsions which marked its course, many of the customs and institutions of the nation underwent changes almost as violent as the events amid which they occurred.

As to the dwellings of the aristocratic classes in Kyōtō during the first two hundred years of the Military epoch—the "illustrious houses,"