The Palace of the Mikado—­a title by the way which is never used among Japanese—­is hidden from sight.  That is the first remarkable thing about it.  The gesture of Versailles, the challenge of “l’etat c’est moi,” the majestic vulgarity which the millionaire of the moment can mimic with a vulgarity less majestic, are here entirely absent; and one cannot mimic the invisible.

Hardly, on bare winter days, when the sheltering groves are stripped, and the saddened heart is in need of reassurance, appears a green lustre of copper roofs.

The Goshoe at Tokyo is not a sovereign’s palace; it is the abode of a God.

The surrounding woods and gardens occupy a space larger than Hyde Park in the very centre of the city.  One well-groomed road crosses an extreme corner of this estate.  Elsewhere only privileged feet may tread.  This is a vast encumbrance in a modern commercial metropolis, but a striking tribute to the unseen.

The most noticeable feature of the Palace is its moats.  These lie in three or four concentric circles, the defences of ancient Yedo, whose outer lines have now been filled up by modern progress and an electric railway.  They are broad sheets of water as wide as the Thames at Oxford, where ducks are floating and fishing.  Beyond is a glacis of vivid grass, a hundred feet high at some points, topped by vast iron-grey walls of cyclopean boulder-work, with the sudden angles of a Vauban fortress.  Above these walls the weird pine-trees of Japan extend their lean tormented boughs.  Within is the Emperor’s domain.

Geoffrey was hurrying homeward along the banks of the moat.  The stagnant, viscous water was yellow under the sunset, and a yellow light hung over the green slopes, the grey walls and the dark tree tops.  An echelon of geese passed high overhead in the region of the pale moon.  Within the mysterious enclave of the “Son of Heaven” the crows were uttering their harsh sarcastic croak.

Witchery is abroad in Tokyo during this brief sunset hour.  The mongrel nature of the city is less evident.  The pretentious Government buildings of the New Japan assume dignity with the deep shadows and the heightening effect of the darkness.  The untidy network of tangled wires fades into the coming obscurity.  The rickety trams, packed to overflowing with the city crowds returning homeward, become creeping caterpillars of light.  Lights spring up along the banks of the moat.  More lights are reflected from its depth.  Dark shadows gather like a frown round the Gate of the Cherry Field, where Ii Kamon no Kami’s blood stained the winter snow-drifts some sixty years ago, because he dared to open the Country of the Gods to the contemptible foreigners; and in the cry of the tofu-seller echoes the voice of old Japan, a long-drawn wail, drowned at last by the grinding of the tram wheels and the lash and crackle of the connecting-rods against the overhead lines.