Except the greater elevation and whiteness of the roofs, there is nothing to distinguish the palace from the adjacent streets. That the Emperor should be thus housed probably involves a great state principle. The houses of Daimios and high officers are built in a much more durable manner. The Shiogoon’s residences at Osaka, Miako, Yedo, and other places, are generally built more like fortifications or places of great strength. In similar style are raised the houses, palaces or forts of the Daimios in their respective provinces. It cannot, therefore, be from any fear of earthquakes that this style of a plain wood-and-paper house is adopted, but it is probably founded on the same principle as that on which the imperial pedigree is drawn up; viz., with the view of giving to it the appearance of a temple, and surrounding the Emperor with the circumstances and attributes of a god. This palace in Miako appears to be the only one now used by the Emperor. He is supposed to move from it temporarily only upon rare occasions. When he is obliged to change his residence, as when the palace is burned down, he occupies apartments in some one of the many temples in the neighborhood. Any display of splendor in building is reserved for the Shiogoon, who has several palaces of great size and strength, as at Miako, Osaka, Fusimi, Yedo, Kofoo, Soonpoo, all of which are laid out on the plan of forts and built with a view to defense from military attacks. [Illustration: JAPAN AND HER ISLANDS] It has been stated, and often repeated, that the Emperor of Japan sits on a throne all day without moving his hands, or even his eyes; that he is treated as a god, and that his subjects believe that the empire totters if he is unsteady. These are the exaggerations of the lower classes. There is no doubt that he is treated with the greatest reverence and respect--that he is, as it were, an ideal abstraction, a thing apart, necessary to the empire--that he is the Lord’s anointed, and not to be touched, and that no subject, however great he may be, or however firmly he may have grasped the power of the empire in the convulsions of a revolutionary period, may contemplate placing himself upon that seat; and we shall find that two of the greatest men who rose to the highest power did not dare to take such a step, though one, and perhaps both, proposed it to himself, and broached the idea to his followers. Though Nobunanga set up a representation of himself to be worshiped, he did not set aside the Emperor; and though Taikosama proposed to depose the Emperor, his followers would not allow it, or at least dissuaded him from making the attempt. Still the Emperor is not altogether looked upon as the spiritual being he is generally represented in modern books. Indeed, in the first periods of the history of the country the head of the empire was the commander, the leader of the army. Zinmu led his army to victory; and long after him the Empress Jinku Kogoo led her army into Corea. Her