mato, lies nearly due
south of Kyoto at a distance of twenty-six miles from the latter.
History does not say why it was selected, nor have any details of its
plan been transmitted. To-day it is celebrated for scenic beauties--a
spacious park with noble trees and softly contoured hills, sloping
down to a fair expanse of lake, and enshrining in their dales ancient
temples, wherein are preserved many fine specimens of Japanese art,
glyptic and pictorial, of the seventh and eighth centuries. Nothing
remains of the palace where the Court resided throughout a cycle and
a half, nearly twelve hundred years ago, but one building, a
storehouse called Shoso-in, survives in its primitive form and
constitutes a landmark in the annals of Japanese civilization, for it
contains specimens of all the articles that were in daily use by the
sovereigns of the Nara epoch.

JAPANESE COINS

There is obscurity about the production of the precious metals in old
Japan. That gold, silver, and copper were known and used is certain,
for in the dolmens,--which ceased to be built from about the close of
the sixth century (A.D.)--copper ear-rings plated with gold are
found, and gold-copper images of Buddha were made in the reign of the
Empress Suiko (605), while history says that silver was discovered in
the island of Tsushima in the second year of the Emperor Temmu's
reign (674). From the same island, gold also is recorded to have come
in 701, but in the case of the yellow and the white metal alike, the
supply obtained was insignificant, and indeed modern historians are
disposed to doubt whether the alleged Tsushima gold was not in
reality brought from Korea via that island. On the whole, the
evidence tends to show that, during the first seven centuries of the
Christian era, Japan relied on Korea mainly, and on China partially,
for her supply of the precious metals. Yet neither gold, silver, nor
copper coins seem to have been in anything like general use until the
Wado era (708-715).

Coined money had already been a feature of Chinese civilization since
the fourth century before Christ, and when Japan began to take models
from her great neighbour during the Sui and Tang dynasties, she
cannot have failed to appreciate the advantages of artificial media
of exchange. The annals allege that in A.D. 677 the first mint was
established, and that in 683 an ordinance prescribed that the silver
coins struck there should be superseded by copper. But this rul