Japan and the Japanese

FAMILIAR RECEPTION. 369
of state and other officers of the court sit in the open rooms in their
usual and elegant order. As soon as the captain had paid his
homage, the emperor retired into his apartment, and not long after
we three Dutchmen were likewise called up and conducted, together
with the captain, through several apartments, into a gallery curi-
ously carved and gilt, where we waited about a quarter of an hour,
and were then, through several other walks and galleries, carried
further into a large room, where they desired us to sit down, and
where several courtiers with shaved heads, being the emperor's
physicians, the officers of his kitchen, and some of the clergy, came
to ask after our names, age and the like ; but gilt screens were
quickly drawn before us, to deliver us from their throng and
troublesome importunity.
" We staid here about half an hour ; meanwhile the court met in
the imperial apartments, where we were to have our second audi-
ence, and whither we were conducted through several dark galleries.
Along all these several galleries
there was one continued row of
life-guardsmen, and nearer to the imperial apartments followed in
the same row some great officers, who lined the front of the hall
of audience, clad in their garments of ceremony, bowing their heads
and sitting on their heels.
" The hall of audience consisted of several rooms looking towards
a middle place, some of which were laid open towards the same,
others covered by screens and lattices. Some were of fifteen mats,
others of eighteen, and they were a mat higher or lower, according
to the quality of the persons seated in the same. The middle place
had no mats at all, they having been taken away, and was conse-
quently the lowest, on whose floor, covered with neat varnished
boards, we were commanded to sit down. The emperor and his
imperial consort sat behind the lattices on our right. As I was
dancing, at the emperor's command, I had an opportunity twice of
seeing the empress through the slits of the lattices, and took notice
that she was of a brown and beautiful complexion, with black Euro-
pean eyes, full of fire, and from the proportion of her head, which
was pretty large, I judged her to be a tall woman, and about thirty-
sis years of age. By lattices, I mean hangings made of reed, split
exceedingly thin and fine, and covered on the back with a fine,
transparent silk, with openings about a span broad, for the persona