Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/142

 and European architecture, decorations, furnishings, and ideas, the palace is a jumble of unsatisfactory incongruities, nobody being found to admire thatched roofs and electric lights, partition walls of sliding paper screens and steam-heating apparatus, a modern ball-room, and a No dance pavilion all side by side.

Each lofty state apartment is a building by itself, the outer galleries on the four sides being the corridors that touch other corridors at their angles. Plate-glass doors in maroon lacquer frames, with superb metal mountings, take the place of the usual paper shoji; but with the low eaves and the light entering from the level of the floor, the rooms need all their Edison lamps. Unfortunately, the best examples of national decorative art are not preserved in this national palace. Only the richly panelled ceilings are at all Japanese or worthy their place. The famous embroidered ceiling and embroidered wainscoting in the great drawing-room, and some makimonos in the private rooms, exhibit the best Kioto needle-work. This wonderful ceiling, costing ten thousand dollars, is panelled with yard-squares of gold-thread tapestry, upon which are embroidered crest-like circles of various flowers. The wainscoting is green damask wrought with fruits, and the walls of the drawing-room are hung with a neutral-tinted damask.

The beautiful Japanese woods and the marvellous Japanese carvers were set aside, that the steam factories of Hamburg might supply the cheap and ugly oak furniture of the banquet-hall. The state table, seating one hundred people, surrounds three sides of a square. The imperial arm-chairs are at the middle of the board, facing elaborate buffets, framing painted tapestry-panels of the most tawdry German design. The ball-room has a costly inlaid floor, and is decorated in white and gold. The throne-room has nothing Japanese but the crests in the panelled ceiling. A large gilded arm-chair stands 126