as carried to extravagant
lengths. The camera Court in particular organized magnificent picnics
to see the cherry-trees of Hosho-ji and the snowy forest at Koya.
There were spring festivals of sunrise at Sagano and autumn moonlight
excursions to the Oi River. The taste of the time was typified in
such vagaries as covering trees with artificial flowers in winter and
in piling up snow so that some traces of snowy landscapes might still
be seen in spring or summer. Such excess reminds the student of
decadent Rome as portrayed by the great Latin satirists.

Other favorite amusements at Court were: gathering sweet-flag in
summer and comparing the length of its roots, hawking, fan-lotteries,
a kind of backgammon called sugoroku, and different forms of
gambling. Football was played, a Chinese game in which the winner was
he who kicked the ball highest and kept it longest from touching the
ground.

Another rage was keeping animals as pets, especially cats and dogs,
which received human names and official titles and, when they died,
elaborate funerals. Kittens born at the palace at the close of the
tenth century were treated with consideration comparable to that
bestowed on Imperial infants. To the cat-mother the courtiers sent
the ceremonial presents after childbirth, and one of the
ladies-in-waiting was honoured by an appointment as guardian to the
young kittens.

ENGRAVING: SKETCH OF "SHINDENZUKUBI" (Style of Dwelling House of
Nobles in the Heian Epoch)

MUSIC AND DANCING

With the growth of luxury in the Heian epoch and the increase of
extravagant entertainment and amusement, there was a remarkable
development of music and the dance. Besides the six-stringed harp or
wagon, much more complex harps or lutes of thirteen or twenty-five
strings were used, and in general there was a great increase in the
number and variety of instruments. Indeed, we may list as many as
twenty kinds of musical instruments and three or four times as many
varieties of dance in the Heian epoch. Most of the dances were
foreign in their origin, some being Hindu, more Korean, and still
more Chinese, according to the usual classification. But imported
dances, adaptations of foreign dances, and the older native styles
were all more or less pantomimic.

ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE GARDENING

Except in the new capital city with its formal plan there were no
great innovations in architecture. Parks around large houses and
willows and cherry-trees pl