Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/41

 most striking feature of Yedo in Tokugawa times, and next in importance ranked an artistic and massive style of gateway that came into vogue in the seventeenth century, differing more or less in design and dimensions according to the status of the baron to whose yashiki it gave admittance, but having always on either flank watch-houses with heavily latticed windows, projecting from long lines of barracks (nagaya) that served as residences for guards. These nagaya had foundations of cut stone, and being solidly constructed and plastered in a picturesque design of diamond diaper which assorted well with their latticed windows, they lent an air of neatness and compactness to the city. Strikingly conspicuous was the contrast between buildings with such an appearance of solidity and seclusion, and the slight structures in which tradesfolk carried on their business: wooden edifices, generally of two storeys and occasionally of three, their front-room completely exposed to the street, or separated from it by a curtain formed of strips of linen, and their back-rooms opening, by means of paper-covered sliding-doors, on a miniature garden. At night these houses were hermetically sealed by wooden sliding-doors, so that whatever might be claimed for their method of construction as allowing the atmosphere to percolate freely during the day-time, they became oppressively close and insanitary when closed for the night. Strange to say, too, the members of the