at
married. It is on account of such customs that we find the Imperial
capitals so frequently removed from one site to another in ancient days.
The rebuilding, every twenty years, of Ise Temple, the supreme shrine of
the Sun-Goddess, is an example of one of these ancient rites which still
obtain at the present day. The observance of these customs was only
possible with some form of construction as that furnished by our system
of wooden architecture, easily pulled down, easily built up. A more
lasting style, employing brick and stone, would have rendered migrations
impracticable, as indeed they became when the more stable and massive
wooden construction of China was adopted by us after the Nara period.

With the predominance of Zen individualism in the fifteenth century,
however, the old idea became imbued with a deeper significance as
conceived in connection with the tea-room. Zennism, with the Buddhist
theory of evanescence and its demands for the mastery of spirit over
matter, recognized the house only as a temporary refuge for the body.
The body itself was but as a hut in the wilderness, a flimsy shelter
made by tying together the grasses that grew around,--when these ceased
to be bound together they again became resolved into the original waste.
In the tea-room fugitiveness is suggested in the thatched roof, frailty
in the slender pillars, lightness in the bamboo support, apparent
carelessness in the use of commonplace materials. The eternal is to be
found only in the spirit which, embodied in these simple surroundings,
beautifies them with the subtle light of its refinement.

That the tea-room should be built to suit some individual taste is
an enforcement of the principle of vitality in art. Art, to be fully
appreciated, must be true to contemporaneous life. It is not that we
should ignore the claims of posterity, but that we should seek to enjoy
the present more. It is not that we should disregard the creations
of the past, but that we should try to assimilate them into our
consciousness. Slavish conformity to traditions and formulas fetters the
expression of individuality in architecture. We can but weep over the
senseless imitations of European buildings which one beholds in modern
Japan. We marvel why, among the most progressive Western nations,
architecture should be so devoid of originality, so replete with
repetitions of obsolete styles. Perhaps we are passing through an age of
democratisation in art, whil