knew how to render a picturesque effect which should be
imposing without being either gaudy or glaring.

I am afraid that the results of Western civilisation have been, and
will continue to be, fatal to Japanese architects. Judging by the
buildings which have been erected in the country since Western
influences have reigned supreme Japanese architecture is not only dead
but buried. These edifices--hotels, Government buildings, railway
stations and so on, are an attempt to combine Western and Japanese
styles. The result is an incongruity, to express it mildly, sufficient
to cause the artistic mind to shudder. The men who built the temples
at Shiba, at Nikko, and in various other parts of the country, and the
pagodas which dot the land, are dead, and have left no successors.
There is nothing, in my opinion, that is more likely to be influenced,
and more injuriously influenced, by Western ideas than the
architecture of Japan. There is a tendency in the country to erect
European buildings, and I suppose it is one that it is impossible to
complain of. The Japanese houses, although they have advantages in the
summer-time, are undoubtedly not well fitted to withstand the rigours
of winter; and I have no doubt that, from the standpoint of material
comfort, a replacement of them by buildings erected on European lines
might be an advantage. But from the artistic point of view such a
change is one impossible to contemplate without a feeling of regret.

There is, of course, no human possibility of temples such as those at
Shiba and Nikko ever again being erected in Japan. As I have
previously remarked, buildings such as these are something more than
mere material constructions; they are the embodiment in material form
of a living faith which the designers and builders attempted to set
forth in their work. An age of disbelief, of indifference, of
agnosticism, is not conducive to the construction of such edifices. We
need not go to Japan for evidence of that obvious fact. The hideous
monstrosities in the shape of cathedrals, churches, and chapels that
have been built in this country during the past century or two are
abundant proof, were any needed, that the faith and piety whose
outward and visible manifestation is to be seen in Westminster Abbey,
Canterbury Cathedral, York Minster, and various other noble
architectural fanes is no longer with us; it has gone, and,
apparently, inspiration with it. We can now only construct walls,