Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/47

Rh graph on Japanese architecture the title of Japanese Homes, the interest of Japanese buildings lying less in the buildings themselves than in the neat domestic ways of their denizens, and in the delightful little bits of ornamentation that meet one at every turn,—the elaborate metal fastenings, the carved friezes (ramma), the screens both sliding and folding, the curiously ornamental tiles, the dainty gardens with their dwarfed trees. What is true of the dwelling-houses is true of the temples also. Nikkō and Shiba are glorious, not as architecture (in the sense in which we Europeans, the inheritors of the Parthenon, of the Doges Palace, and of Salisbury Cathedral, understand the word architecture), but for the elaborate geometrical figures, the bright flowers and birds and fabulous beasts, with which the sculptor and painter of wood has so lavishly adorned them.

The ordinary Japanese house is a light frame-work structure, whose thatched, shingled, or tiled roof, very heavy in proportion, is supported on stones with slightly hollowed tops resting on the surface of the soil. There is no foundation, as that word is understood by our architects. The house stands on the ground, not partly in it. Singularity number two: there are no walls—at least no continuous walls. The side of the house, composed at night of wooden sliding doors called amado, is stowed away in boxes during the day-time. In summer, everything is thus open to the outside air. In winter, semi-transparent paper slides, called shōji, replace the wooden sliding doors during the day-time. The rooms are divided from each other by opaque paper screens, called fusuma or karakami, which run in grooves at the top and bottom. By taking out these sliding screens, several rooms can be turned into one. The floor of all the living-rooms is covered with thick mats, made of rushes and perfectly fitted together, so as to leave no interstices. As these mats are always of the same size,—six feet by three,—it is usual to compute the area of a room by the number of its mats. Thus you speak of a six mat room, a ten mat room, etc. In the dwellings of the middle classes, rooms of eight, of six, and of four and a half mats are those oftenest met with. The