Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/43

 interstices. So long, however, as the Japanese sits and sleeps upon the floor, he must have mats. And he must also have the charcoal-burning brazier, which is undoubtedly an unwholesome element in his life, whether he bends over it inhaling its carbonic-acid fumes, or places it under his quilt to warm his feet. The brazier (hibachi) became a choice article of household furniture during the Tokugawa epoch. It was made sometimes of bronze elaborately chiselled, sometimes of gold lacquer with richly chased mountings of silver or silver-gilt, and sometimes of pure paulownia wood with shakudo or shibuichi metal-work. To banish it from a Japanese house would be a most unwelcome deprivation, and to substitute for it a stove or fireplace in Occidental style is out of the question, for neither of these apparatus emits a heat endurable to people seated on the ground. The mat and the brazier go together, and both will remain until the Japanese house is replaced by the European,—a change of which there are as yet no indications. Two things appear to find little favour in Japan, the female costume and the architectural style of the Occident. A few ladies occasionally wear the frock, the petticoat, and the corset of the West; a few wealthy men have dwellings with chairs, tables, and carpets. But no lady adopts such habiliments of deliberate choice, and no gentleman permanently inhabits such a house. The one dons foreign garments for spe-