Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/34

 The system of voluntary contribution derived much of its efficacy from inter-fief rivalry. Each great feudatory sought to outdo his colleagues in the value and rarity of the articles sent by him to the Shōgun for the purposes of a public work. When a park had to be made, strange stones for rockeries and trees of special beauty were sent; when a mausoleum was planned, bronze pedestal-lamps and granite cisterns were presented; when a residence was under construction, timbers of exceptional scantling and fine grain arrived from the provinces. Supplemented by the law of forced labour, these offerings enabled the Yedo authorities to undertake works which would have been scarcely possible without such aids. The digging of the triple tier of moats surrounding the castle and the construction of their colossal scarps, counter-scarps, and battlements could never have been otherwise achieved, and it remains to this day a marvel that the Shōgun Iyemitsu, who was content with a cheap wooden shanty for his own residence, should have had the sublime courage to undertake such an enterprise as the building of the Nikko Mausoleum. The latter stands almost intact to this day, a splendid evidence of the greatness of Japanese architectural decorative genius at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but it is only within the past twelve months that the quality of the castle fortifications has been appreciated. For when the municipality of Tokyo condemned the