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den. This a restoration[1] of one of three buildings anciently called Naorai dono, which were set apart for the entertainments of the envoys sent by the Mikado, after the celebration of the great annual harvest festival called Kannamé no matsuri. Advancing through a torii, called the ko-torii, in a straight line for a distance of 99 feet, he comes to a third gateway, likewise covered in with a thatched roof (formerly called Tuma-gushi go mon, but in the plan Uchi-tamagaki go mon), which admits him to the interior of a third enclosure, called the Uchi-tamagaki. This palisade is formed of narrow planks, of about the height of a man, placed close together. Just within this is a small wooden gateway called the Bangaki go mon, and immediately beyond the latter a third thatched gateway, which forms the entrance to the fourth and last enclosure. The palisade, called Midzugaki, is formed of broad planks, and is almost a perfect square, the north and south sides being each 134 feet in length, the east and west 131 feet in length.
Within the enclosure thus formed stand the Shôden, or Shrine of the gods, at the back, and two hôden, or treasuries, right and left of the main entrance.
Japanese antiquarians tell us that in early times, before carpenter’s tools had been invented, the dwellings of the people who inhabited these islands were constructed of young trees with the bark on, fastened together with ropes made of the rush Sugé (scirpus maritimus), or perhaps with the tough shoots of the wistaria (fuji), and thatched with the grass called kaya. In modern buildings the uprights of a house stand upon large stones, laid on the surface of the earth, but this precaution against decay had not occurred to the ancients, who planted the uprights in holes dug in the ground.
The ground plan of the hut was oblong, with four corner uprights, and one in the middle of each of the four sides, those in the sides which formed the ends being long enough to support the ridge-pole. Other trees were fastened horizontally from corner to corner, one set near the
- ↑ Gunsho ruijin. Vol. I. p. 712.
