partitions between the other rooms, are simply
screens of wooden lattice-work, covered with white paper, and sliding in
grooves; so that a person walks in or out at any part of the wall he
thinks proper to select or finds convenient. This arrangement
necessarily dispenses with doors and windows. If you wish to look out,
you open a little bit of your wall, or a larger bit if you step out.
Instead of carpets, the floor is strewn with several thicknesses of very
fine mats, each about six feet long by three feet broad, "deliciously
soft to walk upon." All Japanese mats are of the same size, and they
constitute the standard by which everything connected with
house-building or house-furnishing is measured. Once you have prepared
your foundations and woodwork of the dimensions of so many mats, you may
go to a shop and buy a ready-made house, which you can then set up and
furnish in the light Japanese fashion in a couple of days; but then such
a house is fitted only for a Japanese climate.

In the room into which Lady Brassey was introduced was raised, on one
side, a slight dais, about four inches from the floor, as a seat of
honour. A stool, a little bronze ornament, and a China vase, in which a
branch of cherry-blossom and a few flag-leaves were gracefully arranged,
occupied it. On the wall behind hung pictures, which are changed every
month, according to the season of the year. Four comely Japanese girls
brought thick cotton quilts for the visitors to sit upon, and braziers
full of burning charcoal that they might warm themselves. In the centre
they placed another brazier, protected by a square wooden grating, with
a large silk eider-down quilt laid over it, to keep in the heat. "This
is the way in which all the rooms, even bedrooms, are warmed in Japan,
and the result is that fires are of very frequent occurrence. The
brazier is kicked over by some restless or careless person, and in a
moment the whole place is in a blaze."

In due time brazier and quilt are removed, and dinner makes its
appearance. Before each guest is placed a small lacquer table, about six
inches high, with a pair of chopsticks, a basin of soup, a bowl of rice,
a saki cup, and a basin of hot water; while in the middle sat the four
Japanese Hebes, with fires to keep the saki hot, and light the long
pipes they carried, from which they wished their visitors to take a
whiff after each dish. Saki is a kind of spirit, distilled from rice,
always drunk hot out