Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/98

 the defensive capacities even of a log-hut, must have shrunk from the notion of building Cyclopean escarpments, battlements, and donjons. But nothing has ever deterred the Japanese. Hideyoshi not only planned this vast work with perfect assurance, but by requiring each of the great nobles to undertake the construction of a part, he succeeded in having the whole completed within a twelvemonth. It will be objected, perhaps, that Hideyoshi himself towered as high above his countrymen in mental stature as did Osaka Castle above the shanties of Tokiyori and Takauji. But Hideyoshi's castle was only a type. Other men of his generation erected strongholds not less remarkable in proportion to the smaller resources of their constructors and the greater inaccessibility of fine materials. Several of these castles stand intact to-day. They form not only grand but also picturesque features in the landscape, for while the diminishing storeys of their keeps soften the oppressive effect of their massiveness, the graceful curves of their salient roofs crowned with terminals of gold or copper in the shape of huge carp or rampant dragons, present a sky-line at once bold and interesting.

Hideyoshi's castle was probably the strongest from a military point of view ever erected in Japan; so strong that when Iyeyasu reduced it after a long siege, he caused the outer moat to be filled up lest the place should ever again fall into the hands of his enemies. But in his own