Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/144

 is a separate suite of rooms for the Emperor’s toilet and wardrobe, a robing and disrobing room, and an exquisite Japanese bath-room with inlaid floor and walls. The sovereign uses the regular oval wooden tub of his people, which is filled from a well in the adjoining court by means of the primitive bucket and rope. The screens in these private rooms are undecorated, or at the most only flecked with gold-leaf. From time to time, by special command, artists will decorate these, and squares of colored paper put here and there upon them invite the autograph poems of the tea-drinking improvisators.

Somewhere in the recesses of the palace is a chapel or Shinto shrine, but the officials are very reticent concerning it. It is known that the mortuary tablets of the Emperor’s ancestors are there, simple ihai, or pieces of pine wood, upon which are written the posthumous names of the deceased rulers. Official bulletins often announce that a newly appointed minister of the cabinet, or a diplomatic officer about departing for his post is “ordered to worship the cenotaphs in the imperial chapel,” before an audience with the Emperor. Presumably, such devotions are a form equivalent to the oath of allegiance in other countries. Upon the anniversaries of the death of certain of his ancestors, on the days of the spring and autumn festival, when the first rice is sown and harvested, as well as before any great ceremonial, it is announced that the Emperor will worship in the imperial chapel. The aged Prince Kuni Asahiko is conductor of divine services to the imperial family; but everything about that simple, formal state religion is baffling and incomprehensible, and no one knows what form the Shinto services in the palace assume.

The Emperor used to give a Japanese banquet on the morning of his birthday to princes, ministers, and envoys. Chopsticks were used, and the imperial health was drunk from saké-cups of fine egg-shell porcelain, 128