anted along the streets of Kyoto relieved
this stiffness of the great city. Landscape-gardening became an art.
Gardens were laid out in front of the row of buildings that made up
the home of each noble or Court official.

Convention was nearly as rigid here as it was in Court etiquette. In
the centre of this formal garden was a miniature lake with bridges
leading to an island; there was a waterfall feeding the lake, usually
at its southern end; and at the eastern and western limits of the
garden, respectively, a grotto for angling and a "hermitage of spring
water"--a sort of picnic ground frequented on summer evenings. The
great artist, Kanaoka, of the end of the ninth century worked at
laying out these rockeries and tiny parks. A native school of
architects, or more correctly carpenters, had arisen in the province
of Hida. There was less temple building than in the Nara epoch and
more attention was given to the construction of elegant palaces for
court officials and nobles. But these were built of wood and were far
from being massive or imposing. As in other periods of Japanese
architecture, the exterior was sacrificed to the interior where there
were choice woodworking and joinery in beautiful woods, and
occasionally screen-or wall-painting as decoration. There was still
little house-furnishing. Mats (tatami), fitted together so as to
cover the floor evenly, were not used until the very close of the
period; and then, too, sliding doors began to be used as partitions.
The coverings of these doors, silk or paper, were the "walls" for
Japanese mural paintings of the period. As the tatami came into more
general use, the bedstead of the earlier period, which was itself a
low dais covered with mats and with posts on which curtains and nets
might be hung, went out of use, being replaced by silken quilts
spread on the floor-mats. Cushions and arm-rests were the only other
important pieces of furniture.

COSTUME

In the Heian epoch, Court costume was marked by the two
characteristics that we have seen elsewhere in the
period--extravagance and convention. Indeed, it may be said that
Chinese dress and etiquette, introduced after the time of Kwammu were
the main source of the luxury of the period. Costume was extreme, not
alone in being rich and costly, but in amount of material used.
Princely and military head-dresses were costly, jewelled, and
enormously tall, and women wore their hair, if possible, so that it
trailed belo