Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/33

 of the bamboo, etc.,—and others were distinguished in accordance with their special use or position, as the "waiting-room," the "great corridor," etc. It is not necessary to derive conceptions of this palace solely from the vague eulogies of contemporary wonder. Much more definite information is incidentally furnished by the records of a fire in 1838 which destroyed the western wing of the castle, where the ex-Shōgun, Iyenari, resided. The ladies in waiting, whose apartments were invaded by the conflagration, numbered three hundred and fifty, and they had two hundred and fifty attendants, so that when Iyenari moved to the inner section of the castle, he was accompanied by six hundred females. From the same records it appears that experts estimated the cost of rebuilding this west wing at about fifteen hundred thousand pounds sterling, and that the money was obtained by levying a forced contribution on a sliding scale from every feudatory with an income of over one hundred pounds annually. This produced a sum of over a million pounds sterling, and fully half a million was obtained by voluntary contributions, in addition to large presents of timber and other building materials, not only from the feudal chiefs but also from temples and shrines. The palace in which the Emperor of Japan resides to-day did not cost more than one-third of the sum required to restore one wing of the Tokugawa Castle in 1838.