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424 EAST ASIA.
Tongking, means "Eastern Capital," and dates only from the year 1869, when it
became the residence of the Mikado. Nothing existed in this region except fishing
and rural villages until the close of the sixteenth century, when Toku-gava Yeyas,
founder of the last Shogun dynasty, built his stronghold here. Under one of his
successors all the daimios were ordered to reside in Yedo for half the year, and to
leave their families and most of their household in the place, as hostages for their
good behaviour. A multitude of nobles, soldiers, employes, and retainers of all sorts
thus came to be grouped round the hill on which stood the palace of the Shogun.
Trade followed in their wake, and at the height of its prosperity, about the middle
of the present century, Yedo certainly contained over a million inhabitants. In-
cluding the 800,000 armed retainers and attendants of the daimios, some authorities
have estimated their numbers as high as 2,000,000 and even 2,500,000. But the
civil wars, the departure of many nobles with their households, and the commercial
ruin caused by the fires and massacres, reduced a large part of Tokio to a wilderness.
But with the return of peace it has gradually recovered, and is now perhaps nearly
as populous as under the Shogun regime. Its commercial and industrial pre-
eminence is at the same time insured by its position as capital of the Empire.
Covering about as much space as Paris within the fortifications, Tokio occupies
the north-west extremity of the bay at the mouth of the Sumida-gava, which is
here connected with the Tone-gava by the Yedo-gava branch of that river. It is en-
circled south, west, and north, by low wooded hills, while a central eminence, sur-
rounded by grey walls and a moat 3| miles in circuit, is crowned by the On-siro, or
" Noble Castle," formerly residence of the Shoguns, now of the Mikado. The old
dwellings of the daimios have been mostly converted into government
offices and
schools, and beyond this middle zone, also enclosed by walls and canals, stretches the
city properly so called. The busiest commercial quarter lies eastwards, between the
Siro and the mouth of the " Kava," where stands the " Bridge of the "
Rising Sun
{Nip-pon Bail), regarded as the central point of all the imperial highways. Here
the Ginza boulevard has already begun to assume the aspect of a European city.
Within a small space, handsome brick houses stretch in a continuous line, broken
elsewhere by gardens, tea and mulberry plantations, and clusters of cryptomerirc.
But most of the 250,000 houses are still constructed in the old native style.
During the day these little houses, with their black tiled roofs and white ledges,
are open to the street, showing the kamidana, or sacred images and ancestral tablets,
disposed on their stands of honour. In a country like Japan, where earthquakes
are so frequent, these frail bamboo and cardboard structures are much safer than
stone buildings, but are also far more liable to the risk of fire. They are supposed
to have an average existence of about six years, and " fire," says a local proverb,
" is the blossom of Yedo." At the first signal of alarm the more costly objects are
carried off to the nearest fire-proof warehouses erected against such contingencies.
Some 10,000 houses were consumed by a conflagration in 1879. But a far more
terrible fire broke out in the year 1G57, when as many as 107,000 persons are said
to have perished in the flames. Over 500 palaces of the daimios, 770 residences
of other nobles and officials, 350 temples, and 1,200 streets of common houses were