s finished in December,
805.

The city was laid out with mathematical exactness in the form of a
rectangle, nearly three and one-half miles long, from north to south,
and about three miles wide, from east to west. In each direction were
nine principal thoroughfares, those running east and west crossing
the north and south streets at right angles. The east and west
streets were numbered from 1 to 9, and, although the regularity of
structure and plan of the city has been altered by fire and other
causes in eleven hundred years, traces of this early system of
nomenclature are still found in the streets of Kyoto.* Running north
from the centre of the south side was a great avenue, two hundred and
eighty feet wide, which divided the city into two parts, the eastern,
called "the left metropolis" (later Tokyo, "eastern capital"), and
"the right metropolis" (or Saikyo, "western capital"),--the left, as
always in Japan, having precedence over the right, and the direction
being taken not from the southern entrance gate but from the Imperial
palace, to which this great avenue led and which was on the northern
limits of the city and, as the reader will see, at the very centre of
the north wall. Grouped around the palace were government buildings
of the different administrative departments and assembly and audience
halls.

*The Kyoto of today is only a remnant of the ancient city; it was
almost wholly destroyed by fire in the Onin war of 1467.

The main streets, which have already been mentioned as connecting the
gates in opposite walls, varied in width from 80 feet to 170 feet.
They divided the city into nine districts, all of the same area
except the ones immediately east of the palace. The subdivisions were
as formal and precise. Each of the nine districts contained four
divisions. Each division was made up of four streets. A street was
made up of four rows, each row containing eight "house-units." The
house-unit was 50 by 100 feet. The main streets in either direction
were crossed at regular intervals by lanes or minor streets, all
meeting at right angles.

The Imperial citadel in the north central part of the city was 4600
feet long (from north to south) and 3840 feet wide, and was
surrounded by a fence roofed with tiles and pierced with three gates
on either side. The palace was roofed with green tiles of Chinese
manufacture and a few private dwellings had roofs made of
slate-coloured tiles, but most of them were shingle