monasteries of Obaku-san, near Kyoto. Regarding the two former our author tells us that

"As both these delicate little structures were originally but garden pavilions it is possible that they do not exactly represent the more dignified work of the time, but they certainly bear a close resemblance to the Chinese palaces as they are recorded for us in the screens painted by the great artists of the age. The grandeur and dignity of the Fujiwara Kyoto style has given place to a lightness and grace that are very charming. Originally one of these pleasure pavilions was entirely covered with gold leaf, the other with silver, and in this gorgeous innovation we find the first indication of the tendency that was to reach its climax under the Tokugawa."

Of the next or Ashikaga period we shall consider but a single example, the temple of the East Hongwanji, at Kyoto, typical of the constructions of the Shin sect of Buddhists, who continue even in recent times to build in this manner. Of these it is said

"That in their largeness of parts, their grandeur of proportion and their reliance on carving for their decoration, they hark back to the reserved work of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Hongwanji temples serve to show the grandeur, even the sublimity, of these mighty structures. The great gates in this particular style are perhaps the most noble of all the different buildings. It really seems as though the perfection of composition, the subtle relation of parts and rhythm of line, had been achieved in these monumental gates."

Of the productions of this period our authority says,"More than any other of the Japanese architectural styles this development of the Ashikaga model seems to be the perfect translation into visible form of the spirit of Japanese feudalism and the equally perfect development of structural form from the qualities of the natural environment. The connection between these brown and gray temples and the forests and fields, rocks and rivers and mountains, is intimate and exact; as the castles and abbeys of England blend with

her landscape and her air, as the nacreous palaces and shrines of Venice grow out of the opal sea, as the hot sandstone fortresses of Hindustan rear their blistered walls from the desert sands, or the marble miracles of tomb and pleasure house flash above still pools and in the midst of tropical gardens, so, and with equal intimacy, do these brown and weathered temples rest in the purple shadow of gnarled cryptomeria or lift themselves from the shoulders of deepwooded hills. With infinite craft, priests and artists and gardeners have wrought a perfect setting for their shrines, raising ramparts and terraces, training the willing trees into strange architectural forms, blending the whole as a painter blends his colors, composing the lines and masses as he builds his pictorial masterpiece."

In the final or Tokugawa period we shall find a decay in architectural form-the "Rococco period" of Japanese architecture as it was characterized to me by the Professor of Architecture in the University of Tokyo-redeemed in a measure by a wonderful development of decoration. This hectic evidence of final dissolution is well characterized by our authority in his treatment of its two phases. The temples most seen and accepted as typical by the tourist are those of this, the Tokugawa dynasty. Yet the refined beauty of the Horiuji and Yakushiji structures is so great by comparison that

"In them one sees at once how unjust must be a judgment of Japanese architecture founded on the shrines of Shiba and Nikko, and the crowded temples of the Tokugawa period that rise in every village in Japan. In every detail the early work has been coarsened and vulgarized; the low roofs with their wonderful curves have risen to gigantic sweeps of blue tile, steep, coarsely curved, and loaded with huge ridges; and bracketing has become a wilderness of tortured carving and joinery, tedious and overloaded; ornament is no longer constructional, it is arbitrary, and by its very prodigality it becomes cheap and tawdry."

With respect to the ambitious group at Nikko, with its

lavish color dramatically staged against the bronze green background of cryptomeria trees; "One is apt to be blinded by its extravagance to the actual shortcomings of its architecture; but once strip it of its carving, its lacquer, its gold leaf and polychromatic decoration, and compare it in detail with the work of the Korean period, or even of the Fujiwara and Ashikaga, and it is easy to see how great has been the fall: the roofs are heavy and often coarse in their curves, the roof ridges and ribs have become enormous, crude and meaningless, the bracketing is fantastic and irrational in its intricacy and has lost the last structural excuse. Above all, the following of the lines, the curve composition, is no longer inevitably good. In the work of the Nara and Kyoto period one may view a building from any point and by some magical power the architect has so composed his curves that there is not a discord, a lack of rhythm anywhere. Under the Tokugawa this is no longer true, and one is constantly shocked at some violent discord in the composition of line."

But the decorative achievements of this period are of the very highest order, for

"Leave out the question of pure architecture and the Nikko shrines, together with those of Shiba and Uyeno in Tokyo, are marvels of exquisite art. The decoration is masterly, the dramatic and pictorial effect triumphant, but it is the triumph of prodigal decoration, not of architectural achievement." "Internally the Tokugawa temples are less susceptible of adverse criticism, many of them, like Chion-iff and Nishi Hongwanji in Kyoto, being models of religious grandeur and solemn splendor. In this respect, as examples of interior decoration, the Nikko shrines and those at Shiba may be placed beyond criticism. Every period in Japan has had its fitting artistic expression, sculpture, architecture, religious, historic, and genre painting, and decoration, and the last is the true manifestation of the Tokugawa Shogunate."

Mr. Cram continues to say that

"Apart from St. Mark's in Venice and the Capella Palatina in Palermo, I know of no religious interiors that can vie with

such caves of glory as Chion-in. Words simply fail when an attempt is made to describe the unparalleled splendor of such temples. Black lacquer and gold and cinnabar; chiseled baldachinos of exquisite metal work; massive ropes and tassels of blood-red silk; censers of gold and silver bronze; great lotus plants sheeted with beaten gold; vestments of stiff brocade heavy with massed embroidery; deep-tongued bells, sonorous drums; strange, unearthly chanting of tonsured bonzes; clouds of pale incense-it is all like some vision out of the mysterious, intangible past, aloof, unapproachable."

But the religious buildings of Japan do not constitute its full inventory of architectural examples, for there are also great castles and splendid palaces, those imposing domiciles of the feudal establishments of royalty and nobility.

Yet the fidelity of the Japanese to truth in architecture; their sensitiveness to beauty and unerring good taste are nowhere more clearly in evidence than in that humble building unit the domestic house. To us comfortless, at least in cold weather and inconvenient at all times, it yet suits the needs of the people who build and live in it and so must be accepted as theirs-the true standard of practical values. As to its æsthetic character-an indispensable attribute of architecture-allow me to ask your attention to the opinion of the author I have elsewhere so freely quoted:

"For the courtesy and simplicity of Japanese home life, the domestic architecture forms a faultless setting. It is absolutely frank and straightforward in construction, perfectly simple in its forms, and reserved and refined in its decorations; all the ornament is rigidly constructional, while the furnishings are of the simplest quality and only such as the nature of the life demands. There is no ornament for the sake of ornament, no woodwork or carving not demanded by the exigencies of construction, no striving for picturesque effect through fantastic irregularity, no overloading of unnecessary decoration, no confusion of furnishings, no litter of trivial and embarrassing accessories. The spirit of ornamented construction and no other ornament whatever that characterized Greek architecture

finds its echo in Asia. As a result the effect is more reserved, refined, gentlemanly, almost ascetic, than is to be found elsewhere. No greater contrast to our own fashion could be imagined. With us the prime object appears to be the complete concealment of all construction of whatever nature by an overlay of independent ornament. With wainscot and marble and tiles, plaster, textiles, and paper hangings, we create a perfectly fictitious shell that masks all construction and exists quite independently of it.

"We pile up our immutable little cells in superimposed courses, cut narrow openings in the walls and fill them with flapping doors that are always in the way. We perforate the outer walls with awkward holes and fill them with plate-glass in order that we may gaze on a narrow back garden or a narrower street where nothing that is worth seeing ever occurs. With wainscot and drapery and paper hangings we strive for an effect of protection and then nullify it by our plate-glass windows that afford only garish light, and, in most cases, a view of things not worth looking at.

"As the result the rooms are chilly and without sense of protection in winter, and stuffy and oppressive in summer. The Japanese house is a revelation of the possibilities of exactly the opposite course. It is a permanent lesson in the value of simplicity, of modesty, of frankness, of naturalness in art."

Not alone in its furnishings but equally in its finish is the Japanese house the acme of simplicity and good taste. The chief structural material, always of wood, is itself exposed and beautified and all other materials, although required for practical use, are none the less chosen and treated with equal regard to their possibilities of texture and color.

As witness:

"To the Japanese, wood, like anything that possess beauty, is almost sacred, and he handles it with a fineness of feeling that at best we only reveal when we are dealing with precious marbles. For all wood that may be seen close at hand (except such as is used as a basis for the rare and precious lacquer) paint, stain, varnish, anything that may obscure the