Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/35

 old castle gates to demolition, because, being placed at a right angle to each other and having their approaches masked by big stone parapets, they constituted a perpetual danger to safe traffic, it was found that the parapets, instead of being simply banks of earth faced and backed with blocks of granite, as was generally supposed, were composed almost entirely of stone, and the mass of material that resulted from even this fractional levelling proved embarrassingly immense. There were no quarries in the neighbourhood of Yedo when this huge work was projected: every fragment of building stuff had to be carried over-sea. Thus the enterprise ranks among the greatest of its kind ever imagined. And the construction of the Nikko Mausoleum stands almost on the same level as to grandeur of conception.

It has been affirmed that this work, as well as the rebuilding of the Osaka Castle and the construction of the Yedo moats and battlements, involved great suffering for the people, inasmuch as they were compelled to toil for starvation wages and to surrender their goods at nominal prices. Regulations issued in connection with the enterprises contradict any such theory. No severity was practised except for the purpose of preventing quarrels. If workmen were found righting, they were put to death at once without any inquiry into the merits of the dispute. But, on the other hand, goods and chattels belonging to the people might never be seized, and must