Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/146

 the new palace, it is visited upon presentation of special cards of admission issued by the legations.

For the support of these palaces and the expenses of the imperial family the Imperial Household Department’s expenditures were 3,000,000 yens in 1889.

Tokio court circles have, of course, their factions and cliques, their wars and triumphs, and the favor of the sovereign is the object of perpetual scheming and intriguing.

The peerage of Japan numbers ten princes, twenty-five marquises, eighty counts, three hundred and fifty-two viscounts, and ninety-eight barons. All the old kugé families are enrolled in this new peerage, and such daimios of the Shogun’s court as gave aid and allegiance to the Emperor, or made honorable surrender in the conflict of 1868. Rank and title were conferred upon many of the samurai also, the leaders in the work of the Restoration, and the statesmen, who have advised and led in the wonderful progress of these last twenty years; but the old kugés have never brought themselves to accept the pardoned daimios and ennobled samurai of other days. It is the Oriental version of the relations between the Faubourg St. Germain, the aristocracy of the empire, and the bureaucracy of the present French republic.

The imperial princes of the blood, all nearly related to the Emperor, rank above the ten created princes, who head the list of the nobility. Five of these ten princely houses are the old Gosekke, the first five of the one hundred and fifty-five kugé families comprising the old Kioto court. With the Gosekke, which includes the Ichijo, Kujo, Takatsukasa, Nijo, and Konoye families, rank, since 1883, the houses of Sanjo, Iwakura, Shimadzu, Mori, and Tokugawa, sharing with them the privilege of offering the bride to the heir-apparent.

The Emperor visits personally at the houses of these 130