s city residence, and also to the barracks
occupied by his retainers, both in city and country. In the city the
barracks of the samurai were built as a hollow square, in the centre of
which stood the palace and grounds of their lord, and this whole place
was the daimi[=o]'s _yashiki_. In the castle towns the daimi[=o]'s
palace and gardens stood within the castle inclosure, surrounded by a
moat, while the _yashikis_ of the samurai were placed without the moat.
They in turn were separated from the business part of the village
sometimes by a second or third moat. By life in castle and _yashiki_ we
mean the life of the daimi[=o], whether in city or country.

The Emperor's court, with its literary and aesthetic quiet, its
simplicity of life and complexity of etiquette, was the centre of the
culture and art of Japan, but never the centre of luxury. After the
growth of the Tokugawa power had secured for that house and its
retainers great hereditary possessions, the Emperor's court was a mere
shadow in the presence of the magnificence in which the Tokugawas and
the daimi[=o]s chose to live. The wealth of the country was in the hands
of those who held the real power, and the Emperor was dependent for his
support upon his great vassal, who held the land, collected the taxes,
made the laws, and gave to his master whatever seemed necessary for his
maintenance in the simple style of the old days, keeping for himself and
for his retainers enough to make Yedo, the Tokugawa capital, the centre
of a luxury far surpassing anything ever seen at the Emperor's own
court. While the _kuge_, the old imperial nobility, formerly the
governors of the provinces under the Emperors, lived in respectable but
often extreme poverty at Ky[=o]to, the landed nobility, or daimi[=o]s,
brought, after many struggles, under the sway of the Tokugawas, built
for themselves palaces and pleasure gardens in the moated city of Yedo.
At Yedo with its castle, its gardens, its _yashikis_, and its
fortifications, was established a new court, more luxurious, but less
artistic and cultivated, than the old court of Ky[=o]to. In the various
provinces, too, at every castle town, a little court arose about the
castle, and the daimi[=o] became not only the feudal chief, but the
patron of literature and art among his people, as the years went by
filling his _kura_ with choice works of art, in lacquer, bronze, silver,
and pottery, to be brought out on special occasions. These nob