TOKIO PALACES AND COURT
Thirty different places have been the capital and home of the Emperors of
Japan, and Omi, Settsu, and Yamashiro were imperial provinces before the
Tokugawa’s city of Yeddo (bay’s gate) became Tokio, the eastern capital
and seat of imperial power. The Shogun’s old castle, the Honmaru, or the
Shiro, was the imperial palace until destroyed by fire in May, 1873, and
its interior is said to have been far more splendid than the Nijo castle
in Kioto. The yashiki of the Tokugawa daimio of Kiushiu, on the high
ground of the Akasaka quarter, next sheltered the imperial household,
though ill adapted to its changing and growing needs.
At the end of 1888 the Emperor took possession of the new imperial
palace, which had been six years in building, and which stands upon the
ruins of the Shogun’s castle, protected by all the rings of moats. Two
drawbridges and two ponderous old towered gate-ways defend the entrance
to the front wing of the building, a long yellow brick edifice, with
the conical towers and steep roof of a French château. The offices of
the Imperial Household Department are assigned to this foreign wing,
except for which the new structure is such a labyrinthine collection of
temple-like buildings, as the old palace at Kioto. Built on sloping and
uneven ground, there is a constant change of level in the innumerable
roofs and floors. Before it was completed a tour of the palace occupied
a full hour, and attendants and workmen were often lost in the maze.
Combining Japanese 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 on a red-carpeted dais, with
canopy and curtains of red plush, the sacred sword and seal resting on
lacquer tables beside it. At court functions the Empress stands on a
dais below and to the right of the throne, with the imperial princes and
princesses grouped about her. The members of the diplomatic corps are
placed at the Emperor’s left, the ministers and higher officials fill
the space facing the throne, and the imperial guard line the gallery
corridors that surround the throne-room.
[Illustration]
In the private apartments of the Emperor and Empress moquette carpets,
plush furniture, and easy-chairs confess foreign influence and etiquette.
The old rules of the simplicity of a Shinto shrine in the sovereign’s
dwelling are observed in leaving all the wood-work unpainted, while
wax-candles and open grates replace the electric bulbs and gilded
radiators of the official parts of the palace. Some of the private
rooms display exquisite panelled and coffered ceilings of pure white
pine, or the beautiful gray bog-wood. Each suite has one room in pure
Japanese style, and a tiny box for celebrating the rites of cha no yu
with a favored four. The Emperor’s sleeping-room is the same unlighted,
unventilated dark closet which his ancestors used. This sleeping-room is
E in the accompanying diagram, surrounded by rooms occupied at night by
his attendants and guards.
Above this floor is a suite of studies, libraries, and secretaries’
rooms, all finished in the same exquisite woods, that show their natural
grain and color. There 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,
decorated with chrysanthemums and broken diaper patterns in gold, which
the guests carried away with them as souvenirs. That celebration and the
New-year breakfast are now state banquets, served in foreign fashion,
with sovereign and consort seated at the head of the room. Indeed, the
entire service of the palace and of the Emperor’s table is European;
silver, porcelain, and glass being marked with the imperial crest of the
sixteen-petalled chrysanthemum, and the _kiri mon_ of the _Paulownia
imperialis_ appearing in the decorative design woven in the white silk
napery and traced on the delicate porcelain service. The palace lackeys
are uniformed in dress-coats with many cords and aiguillettes, striped
vests, knee-breeches, white silk stockings, and buckled shoes. Their
costume resembles that of the Vienna palace, colored sketches of which
Prince Komatsu sent home during his winter stay on the Danube. The palace
tiring-women wear the garb of Kioto days, purple hakama and russet silk
kimonos, and are the most fascinating and almost the only Japanese
spectacle in the imperial precincts. In all modifications the usages of
the Berlin court have been followed, and no Prussian military martinet or
court chamberlain could be more punctilious in matters of etiquette than
the Japanese court officials.
[Illustration: IMPERIAL SAKÉ-CUP]
Of the Empress Dowager’s palace only its gate-way is known. The Hama
Rikiu palace is a sea-shore villa, owing its beautiful garden to the
Shoguns, but it is occupied only when the ministers of state give balls,
or foreign guests of the Emperor are domiciled there, as was General
Grant. An imperial garden-party is held in its confines each spring, and,
with the Fukiage gardens adjoining the new palace, is a supreme example
of the Japanese landscape gardener’s art.
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 and 1899.
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 eleven princes, thirty-four marquises,
eighty-nine counts, three hundred and sixty-three viscounts, and two
hundred and twenty-one barons. All kugé families are in this new peerage,
and such daimios of the Shogun’s court as give 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 ten princes, and
recently the Tokugawas entertained him with a fencing-match and a No
dance in old style, the costumes and masks for which had been used at
Tokugawa fêtes for centuries. In accordance with other old customs,
a sword by a famous maker was presented to the guest of honor, and a
commemorative poem offered in a gold lacquer box. Yet the head of the
Tokugawa house is a grandson of the Shogun who first refused to treat
with Commodore Perry, and son of Keiki, the arch rebel and last of
the Shoguns, who for so long lived forgotten as a private citizen on
a small estate near Shidzuoka, keeping alive no faction, awaking no
interest—attaining, in fact, a political Nirvana.
Under new titles the old fiefs are lost sight of and old associations
broken up. The marquises, counts, and barons of to-day are slender,
dapper little men, wearing the smartest and most irreproachable London
clothes, able to converse in one or two foreign languages on the subjects
that interest cosmopolitans of their rank in other empires, and are with
difficulty identified with their feudal titles. The Daimio of Kaga has
become the Marquis Maeda, his sister married the Emperor’s cousin, and
the great yashiki of their ancestors has given way to the buildings of
the Imperial University. The Daimio of Satsuma is now Prince Shimadzu. It
is not easy to associate these modern men-about-town, who dance at state
balls, who play billiards and read the files of foreign newspapers at
the Rokumeikwan, who pay afternoon calls, attend teas, garden-parties,
dinners, concerts, and races; who have taken up poker and tennis with
equal ardor, and are victimized at charity fairs and bazaars, with their
pompous, stately, two-sworded, brocade and buckram bound ancestors.
There are great beauties, favorites, and social leaders among the ladies
of the court circle, and the change in their social position and personal
importance is incredible. Japanese matrons, who, a few years ago,
led the most quiet and secluded existence, now preside with ease and
grace over large establishments, built and maintained like the official
residences of London or Berlin. Their struggles with the difficulties of
a new language, dress, and etiquette were heroic. Mothers and daughters
studied together with the same English governess, and princesses and
diplomats’ wives, returning from abroad, gave new ideas to their friends
at home. Two Japanese ladies, now foremost at court, are graduates of
Vassar College, and many high officials are happily married to foreign
wives; American, English, and German women having assumed Japanese names
with their wedding vows. The court has its reigning beauty in the wife
of the grand master of ceremonies, the richest peer of his day, and
representative of that family which gave its name to the finest porcelain
known to the ceramic art of the empire.
Tokio society delights in dancing, and every one at court dances well.
Leaders of fashion go through the _quadrille d’honneur_, with which state
balls open, and follow the changes of the lancers with the exactness
of soldiers on drill, every step and movement as precise and finished
as the bending of the fingers in cha no yu. The careless foreigner who
attempts to dance an unfamiliar figure repents him of his folly. Japanese
politeness is incomparable, but the sedateness, the precision, and
exactness of the other dancers in the set will reproach the blunderer
until he feels himself a criminal. The ball is the more usual form of
state entertainments. The prime-minister gives a ball on the night of
the Emperor’s birthday, and the governor of Tokio gives a ball each
winter. From time to time the imperial princes and the ministers of state
offer similar entertainments, and every legation has its ball-room. The
members of the diplomatic corps are as much in social unison with the
higher Japanese circles as it is possible to be with such subjects at any
capital, and the round of tiffins, dinners, garden-parties, and small
dances makes Tokio very gay during the greater part of the year.
The first formal visiting of the season begins in October, and by May
social life is at an end until hot weather is over. Lent makes little
break in the social chain. Great seriousness and exactness in social
usage is inherent in this high-bred people. Visits of ceremony are
scrupulously paid within the allotted time, and a newly-arrived official
in Tokio finds no diminution of the card-leaving and visiting which
awaits him in any other capital. At the houses of the imperial princes
cards are not left, the visitor inscribing his name in a book in the
hall. After each state ball, a guest must call at once upon the princess,
or minister’s wife, who presided, and any remissness strikes his name
from her list.
Garden-parties are the favorite expression of Tokio hospitality. All
official residences in the city have fine grounds, and many ministers of
state own suburban villas. A few of the legations are able to entertain
in the same way, and many military officers make the garden of the old
Mito yashiki, now the Arsenal grounds, the scene of their courtesies.
There is a stately court journal, which is the official bulletin, but
Tokio has not yet set up a paper of society gossip and scandal for the
rigorous censorship of the Japanese press to expunge; nor are there books
of court memoirs. Yet what memoirs could be more interesting than those
that might be written by the men and women who were born in feudal times,
who have lived through the exciting days of the Restoration, and have
watched the birth and growth of New Japan.