XVIII.] 



THE OLD I:MPEEIAL PALACE GOSHO 



677 



to see whatever Avas remarkable in the town. I was not much 

 (leHghted at this, because I feared that the whole day would 

 be taken up with inspecting the whole or half-European 

 public offices and schools, which had not the slightest interest 

 for me. My fear however was quite unjustified. The Governor 

 was a man of genius, who, according to the statements of 

 my companions, was reckoned among the first of the con- 

 temporary poets of Japan. He immediately declared that he 

 supposed that the new public offices and schools would in- 

 terest me much less than the 

 old palaces, temples, porcelain 

 and faience manufactories of 

 the town, and that he there- 

 fore intended to employ the 

 day I spent under his guidance 

 in showing me the latter. 



We made a beginning with the 

 old imperial palace Gosho, the 

 most splendid dwelling of Old 

 Japan. It is not however very 

 grand according to European 

 ideas. A very extensive space 

 of ground is here covered with 

 a number of one-story wooden 

 houses, intended for the Em- 

 peror, the imperial family, and 

 their suite. The buildings 

 are, like all Japanese houses, 

 divided by movable panels into 

 a number of rooms, richly 

 provided with paintings and 

 gilded ornamentation, but 

 otherwise without a trace of 

 furniture. For the palace now 

 stands uninhabited since the noble in antique dre&s. 



Mikado overthrew the Shogun 



dynasty and removed to Tokio. It already gives a striking 

 picture of the change which has taken place in the land. Only the 

 imperial family and the great men of the country were formerly 

 permitted to enter the sacred precincts of Gosho* Now it 

 stands open to every curious native or foreigner, and it has 

 even as an exhibition building been already pressed into the 

 service of industry. Alongside the large buildings there are 

 several small ones, of which one was intended to protect 

 the Emperor-deity during earthquakes ; the others formed 

 play-places for the company of grown children who were then 

 permitted to govern the country. 



