At Fushimi we were met by a perfect nightmare in the shape of a guard of Tosa men—wild-looking fellows, clad in armour with their faces hideously masked and long elf locks of black or white horsehair hanging down from their helmets over their shoulders. With this weird escort of pantomimic demons we marched into Kiōto along a road which was really one long, continuous village full of shops doing a brisk trade in gods and dolls—fairings to be taken home by pious pilgrims to the shrines of the sacred city. The road was in a very bad state, having been much cut up by the passing of artillery. _Cosas d’España!_ When we reached our destination we found that we need have been in no such violent hurry. Nothing had been prepared for our reception, and we were kept waiting for several hours in a very shabby outlying building, apparently a sort of guard-room for soldiers. At last, when our patience was almost exhausted, we were conducted in all solemnity to the Prince’s residence, one of those long, rambling, bungalow-like buildings, or rather groups of buildings, surrounded by a wall, and containing quarters for a whole army of retainers and soldiers. Very white wood without a knot or flaw in it, vast roomy apartments without a decoration or ornament of any kind, except one picture hung by silken strings in the Tokonoma, the raised dais at one end of the room, composed the magnificent simplicity of a great noble’s dwelling in the days of the old Japan. Furniture there was none save a sword rack; the fair white mats served as bed, tables and chairs; such cupboards as were needful were let into the wall; paper sliding screens, open at the tops, divided the rooms; there was no privacy, and if a confidential talk was needed the profane had to be sent away out of ear-shot, which, luckily, implied no offence. The palace occupied by the Prince had been, until the revolution, occupied by the Prince of Aidzu. It was spoil of war. When we had been shown to our apartments, which were the state guest suite of the house, the ex-Prince sent to beg that, as he was too ill to welcome us otherwise, we would go to see him. Such a ramble through an interminable maze of passages all alike! Even our guides were sometimes puzzled, for they, of course, were hardly yet posted in the topography of this recent acquisition. At last we came to the outside of the great man’s rooms, where his retainers, all of them, no matter how high their rank might be, laid aside their dirks (_wakizashi_), for no man must enter his lord’s presence armed. The sword (_katana_) must always be taken out of the girdle on entering a house.