But  remarkably  little  is  necessary.  Cross-beams
are  added,  not  to  support  the  roof,  but  the  walls,
which  are  made  of  paper,  and  slide  between  the
beams  and  the  platform  raised  a  foot  above  the
ground,  which  does  duty  for  the  floor.  A  .Japanese
house  is  generally  all  on  one  floor  ;  in  fact,  one
might  say  it  is  all  one  floor.  And  in  the  daytime
it  is  all  one  room  if  it  is  a  small  house.  The
number  of  rooms  in  it  depends  on  the  number  of
bedrooms  the  owner  requires.  They  are  divided
for  the  night  by  paper  shutters  fixed  in  grooves
like  the  divisions  of  an  old-fashioned  workbox.
There  are  no  doors  or  passages.  Your  bedroom
acts  as  a  passage,  and  when  you  want  a  door  you
slide  back  the  nearest  panel.  It  does  not  matter
having  handles  in  every  shutter  frame,  because  the
handles  go  in  instead  of  sticking  out.  A  Japanese
handle  is  nothing  but  a  hole  with  a  metal  lining.
Two  sets  of  shutters  go  round  the  outside  ;  the
inside  set  are  of  paper  on  the  ofF-chance  of  the
owner  using  them  for  privacy  during  the  day,  and
the  outside  are  of  wood.  These  outside  shutters
cannot  be  slid  in  the  same  promiscuous  fashion  as
the  others.  Each  is  held  in  its  place  by  the  next,
and  the  last  one  is  secured  mth  a  bolt  —  of
wood.  There  are  plenty  of  Japanese  houses  which,
when  secured  for  night,  would  hardly  stand  a
drunken  man  leaning  against  them.  An  Knghsh-
2


HOW   THE   JAPANESE   LIVE

man's  house  may  be  his  castle,  a  Japanese's  house
is  his  bedroom,  and  his  bedroom  is  a  passage.
