KAKEMONO 
 
 JAPANESE SKETCHES 
 
 A. HERB AGE -EDWARD;
 
 I LIBRARY^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 ! SAIN! DIEGO
 
 KAKEMONO
 
 Books on Japanese Subjects 
 
 A Handbook of Modern Jap an. By Ernest W. 
 Clement. With two maps and over sixty illus- 
 trations from photographs. Fourth Edition. 
 Cloth, I2mo, $1.40 net. 
 
 Japan As It Was and Is. A Handbook of Old 
 Japan. By Richard Hildreth. Edited by 
 Ernest W. Clement, with an Introduction by 
 William Elliot Griffis. With maps and numer- 
 ous rare illustrations. In two vols., cloth, 121110, 
 $3.00 net. 
 
 Arts and Crafts of Old Japan. By Stewart Dick. 
 With thirty illustrations. Gray boards, 8vo, 
 $1.20 net. 
 
 Far Eastern Impressions. Japan, Corea, and 
 China. By Ernest F. G. Hatch, M. P. With 
 three maps and eighty-eight illustrations from 
 photographs. Cloth, i2mo, $1.40 net. 
 
 Kakemono. Japanese sketches. By A. Herbage 
 Edwards. With frontispiece. Cloth, 8vo, 
 
 The Makers of Japan. By J. Morris. With 
 twenty-four illustrations. Large 8vo, $3.00 net. 
 
 McDonald of Oregon. A Tale of Two Shores. 
 The chronicle of the earliest Japanese refugees 
 to land in America, and of the first Americans 
 who visited Japan, later to act as interpreters 
 to Perry. By Eva Emery Dye. Illustrated by 
 W. J. Enright. 8vo, $1.50 
 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO. 
 
 CHICAGO
 
 KAKEMONO 
 
 JAPANESE SKETCHES 
 
 BY 
 
 A. HERBAGE EDWARDS 
 
 WITH FRONTISPIECE 
 
 CHICAGO 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO. 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 I9O6
 
 American Edition Published Sept. 15, 1906 
 
 Printed in Great Britain 
 Bound by Lakeside Press, Chicago
 
 TO MY TEACHERS 
 THE PEOPLE OF JAPAN
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 PAGB 
 
 I. DAI BUTSU 3 
 
 II. THE SHRINES OF ISE 5 
 
 III. THE TEMPLE OF NIKKO 8 
 
 IV. KANNON, LADY OF MERCY ...... 14 
 
 V. RINZAKI'S ALTAR IJ 
 
 VI. TWO CREEDS . IQ 
 
 VII. THE LEGEND OF THE NOSELESS JIZO .... 22 
 
 VIII. THE TEMPLES OF SHIBA .27 
 
 IX. AMIDA BUTSU 31 
 
 X. ST. NICHIREN 34 
 
 XI. BETWEEN EARTH AND HEAVEN 36 
 
 XII. INARI, THE FOX-GOD 39 
 
 XIII. THE ALTAR OF FIRE 42 
 
 XIV. FORGOTTEN GODS 48 
 
 LORD FUJI 
 
 I. PROLOGUE 55 
 
 II. THE ASCENT 57 
 
 III. EPILOGUE 99 
 
 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 I. GRACE BEFORE MEAT IO3 
 
 II. IN A CLOISONNE FACTORY IIO 
 
 HI. FLOWER ARRANGEMENT 114 
 
 IV. GOD'S MESSENGER Iig 
 
 V. THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 122
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE 
 
 I'AGE 
 
 I. THE MOAT 157 
 
 II. A RAINY DAY 159 
 
 in. MME (PLUM BLOSSOMS) 161 
 
 IV. WET LEAVES 163 
 
 V. ASAMAYAMA 165 
 
 VI. CAMELLIAS . * 176 
 
 VII. RAIN 178 
 
 VIII. THE BLACK CANAL l8l 
 
 IX. THE INLAND SEA 184 
 
 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 I. ACROSS THE LAGOON 193 
 
 II. TO KIZUKI igg 
 
 III. IZUMO'S GREAT TEMPLE 2O4 
 
 IV. KIZUKI'S BAY 211 
 
 V. IN MATSUE 214 
 
 VI. THE TWO SPIRITS 235 
 
 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 I. TOKYO 243 
 
 II. EAST AND WEST 255 
 
 in. YONE'S BABY 257 
 
 IV. THE GRAVES OF THE R5NIN 6o 
 
 V. THE DOLLS' FESTIVAL 263 
 
 VI. WITH DEATH BESIDE HER 266 
 
 vii. KYOTO'S SOIREE ........ 269 
 
 vin. NO 273 
 
 IX. A JAPANESE BANK-HOLIDAY 278 
 
 X. THE PALACE OF THE SON OF HEAVEN .... 282 
 
 XI. AND SHE WAS A WIDOW 285 
 
 GLOSSARY 293
 
 THE FAITH OF JAPAN
 
 " In my Father's house are many mansions." 
 
 John xiv. 
 
 Teushi ni kuchi nashi hito o motte iwashimu. 
 
 *' Heaven has no mouth, it makes men speak for it." 
 
 Japanese Proverb.
 
 I 
 
 DAI BUTSU 
 
 (GREAT BUDDHA) 
 
 THE great God Buddha sits peaceful and still, a line 
 of dark bronze against the blue sky, and the length of 
 the garden is flooded with light. Two tall pink cherry- 
 trees drop blushing snowflakes on to his broad 
 shoulders, and the sound of running water is a liquid 
 prayer. Under his heavy-lidded eyes he looks as one 
 who saw not, or saw too well, and his slow smile is 
 inscrutable and still. The mystery of it draws one 
 nearer. 
 
 What is thy secret, Great Lord Buddha ? 
 
 But the heavy-lidded eyes droop lower, and the slow 
 smile is still. Only the cherry-trees send their pale 
 pink petals floating downward into the bronzed lap. 
 And the murmuring water runs more swiftly. 
 
 Immutable he sits, and still ; enduring, unchanging, 
 though the sea destroy his temples and the earth- 
 quakes rock about his feet. Buddha on his lotus-leaf is 
 still. 
 
 And the generations of men rise up, and pass away, 
 fretted with life's fitful fever, and searching for his 
 secret. Buddha is still, his slow smile unchanging, his 
 heavy eyelids drooped. 
 
 Is that thy secret, Great Lord Buddha ? The
 
 4 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 mystery we passion-swept, ever-changing mortals can 
 never penetrate ? 
 
 " God is the same, for ever." The same, and for 
 ever? 
 
 And the murmuring water runs, the cherry-trees 
 bloom and fade, the centuries pass away. Still the 
 heavy-lidded eyes are drooped, the slow smile is 
 inscrutable and still. Lord Buddha keeps his secret. 
 
 Or is it only we who cannot read.
 
 II 
 
 THE SHRINES OF ISE 
 
 ON every side the circle of the hills shuts out all 
 sounds, and the vast forest stretches solemn, sombre. 
 
 The long two miles of white road from the village are 
 forgotten, the crude sunshine of the public gardens 
 fades away, the giant fir-trees stand as they stood two 
 thousand years ago when the shrine of the great Sun- 
 Goddess first was born. 
 
 The broad grey path of unhewn stone, unshadowed in 
 the darkness of the trees, bends downward to the river's 
 brink, where a grey still pool lies silent on the edge of 
 the rushing stream. It is the Pool of Purification where 
 all who go up to the temple stay and wash. Even the 
 kurumaya who daily draws the pilgrim or the stranger to 
 the shrine, stoops to plunge his hands and feet into the 
 still grey waters. And as he does so a great shaft of 
 sunshine hits the weltering circle of the hills beyond the 
 stream, and they quiver, blue as a distant mirage in the 
 blue sky ; while the forest is the darker for that light. 
 
 The grey stone path is long and wide, the forest 
 vast, unfathomable ; primaeval, untamed, and yet kept 
 with a care that leaves no trace behind ; the forest of 
 a dream where Death is not, nor decay, nor any sign 
 of man. From time to time the dark stern stems of 
 the cryptomerias are broken with the glossy deep-
 
 6 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 green leaves of a camphor-tree ; and each time my 
 Kummaya stays to pray, for camphor-trees are sacred, 
 and their bark thrown into the sea has power to calm 
 the waves. 
 
 And the forest stretches on and on. 
 
 In the distance the grey stone path broadens 
 into a flight of shallow steps, and passes beneath an 
 open gateway out of sight. A wooden wall, like the 
 sloughed bark of forest trees, stretches right and left ; 
 and against it, rigid in his discipline, the white uniform 
 of a modern soldier, bayonet fixed. 
 
 I stand on the threshold of the most sacred spot in 
 all Japan. 
 
 Beyond the gateway is another gate, where a pure 
 white curtain falls, fold on fold. It is the veil of the 
 great Sun-Goddess. All through the ages since first 
 the nation was, the shrine of the Sun-Goddess has 
 stood behind that veil. Every twenty years night 
 comes, her temple dies, and again is born, unchanged, 
 unaltered to the last least detail. And her priests 
 are the carpenters. So through all the ages, the body 
 of the great Sun-Goddess glows, in youth eternal, and 
 none save her far-off offspring, Tenshisama, the Son 
 of Heaven, may pass behind the veil. 
 
 The Japanese soldier stays to guard, for did the 
 stranger, sacrilegious in his foolish pride, so much as 
 touch those long white folds, evil might befall him. 
 Viscount Mori died beneath the sword of a samurai 
 for lifting but the edge of the curtain with his stick. 
 
 My knrumaya is on his knees before these fluttering, 
 mysterious folds, two claps, a bow, a little murmured 
 prayer ; another bow, two claps, and he rises. 
 
 Then he leads us along inside the wooden wall, and 
 another grey-green wooden wall, built as it were of
 
 THE SHRINES OF ISE 7 
 
 flattened tree-trunks, rises on the other side, leads us a 
 few yards, and then he stops. The outer wooden wall 
 runs round a huge imperfect square, then comes a 
 broad band of space where we are standing, and then 
 the inner wall rails out the world. Inside and opposite 
 the curtained gateway, but with the whole distance of 
 the sacred square between, stands the shrine itself, a 
 grey-brown wooden building, unpainted, unadorned ; a 
 grey-brown roof of thatch, with the cross-beams of its 
 roof-tree rising up through the thatch in two rough 
 wooden anchors bound with gold. A building that is 
 simple, with a simplicity more strange to modern 
 man than the strangest complexity, archaic, primaeval, 
 a ghost from man's dim past. 
 
 The silent sombre trees stand thickly round. Beyond 
 the circle of blue hills shuts out all sounds. The folds 
 of the white curtain fall straight and close. 
 
 My kurumaya prays again. 
 
 And there behind her veil the great Sun-Goddess 
 dwells, untouched by time, of an age with the hills, 
 more primitive than the forest trees and sacred still.
 
 Ill 
 THE TEMPLE OF NIKKO 
 
 IN all the pomp of splendour and of power they buried 
 lyeyasu at Nikko, and the greatest artists of Old Japan 
 came and built in his memory a temple more beautiful 
 than any in all the length and breadth of the land. 
 For more than forty years they worked, and brains and 
 money and labour were poured out like mountain 
 water, until the temple stood complete, the mausoleum 
 of lyeyasu and the eternal monument of this artistic 
 race. 
 
 With Buddhist rites was the great Shogun buried, 
 and for many hundred years daily remembered in a 
 ritual as solemn as it is effective, but Buddha himself 
 has not anywhere a temple so splendid. 
 
 They buried lyeyasu at Nikko, not in the town of 
 his birth or of his death, not in the city over which he 
 ruled, but four days' journey from Yedo in the midst of 
 the mountains ; and they did it that Japan's greatest 
 ruler might lie amid the nation's best in nature as in 
 art, that to the splendour of the temple the Land her- 
 self might add the glories of her mountains and her 
 trees. 
 
 At Nikkd is the great Shogun buried, and for 
 twenty miles before his shrine a stately avenue of trees 
 leads up to the temple, and up this avenue prince and
 
 THE TEMPLE OF NIKKO 9 
 
 pilgrim yearly come ; prince and pilgrim, priest and 
 peasant they still come, up the great avenue of dark 
 thick-set cryptomerias, the giant pine-trees of Japan. 
 
 At the temple's foot a mountain stream rushes in a 
 deep green gorge, and two bridges cross the stream : 
 one bright red, the bridge of the Son of Heaven, one 
 painted green, for the rest of this world's humankind. 
 
 And the reason is that when the Buddhist saint Shodo 
 Shonin pursued the vision that had been sent to him, 
 he journeyed into the mountains many days until the 
 grey torrent of Nikko rushing tumuhuously across his 
 path barred the way ; but the vision abode with him, 
 and Shodo Shonin knew that he must cross the stream, 
 yet was there neither bridge, nor boat, nor crossing- 
 place. So the saint kneeled down and prayed. Then 
 there appeared to him an angel, clothed in black robes 
 and blue, wearing a string of skulls around his neck, 
 and holding in his hand two serpents, these he threw 
 across the stream, and they became a bridge firm and 
 strong. So Shodo Shonin passed over the torrent in 
 safety, but when he looked back, snakes, bridge, and 
 angel had vanished and only the rushing river re- 
 mained. Then for a memory the two bridges were 
 built in the very place of the crossing. 
 
 Of all the marriages of Art and Nature the Sacred 
 Red Bridge of Nikko is the most beautiful. Scattered 
 among hills and trees and river, beauty lay ; but this 
 people coming through the mountains saw the one 
 bond that had power to bind the pale blue hills, the 
 dark green gorge, the stone-grey stream together in 
 an ordered whole of deep-thought artistic loveliness, 
 planned, perfect, yet supremely natural. 
 
 Then the avenue goes on, up the foot of the hill, 
 till it widens and broadens into a great gravel circle
 
 io THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 before the entrance-gate of the temple. Here the 
 great trees of the mountains spread out and up on 
 either hand, with the temple in their midst sur- 
 rounded but not overwhelmed by the grace of the 
 wood. Under the granite tort, the first gateway is 
 guarded by two figures, the mythical lions gilded and 
 lacquered ; while above, the mysterious baku, with his 
 four ears and his nine tails, who has power to eat all bad 
 dreams that pass before sleeping eyes, crouches alert. 
 
 A flight of granite steps leads to the first courtyard, 
 set at right angles to the gateway, and paved with 
 rounded grey pebbles from the stream. Here are all 
 the minor buildings of the temple, the stable for the 
 sacred white horse, the library for the two thousand 
 sutra of the Buddhist scriptures, the tank-house for 
 the purification, the store-houses for the temple furni- 
 ture ; and stable and library, tank-house and store- 
 houses are jewelled gems of carving and design, so 
 rich, so splendid in the ordered magnificence of their 
 colouring that western senses stand amazed. A 
 blood-red lacquered fence aglow with coloured carvings 
 divides the temple from the sombre majesty of the 
 giant cryptomerias. 
 
 Then the pebbled space contracts into a flight of 
 granite stairs, and mounts between stone walls 
 that end in painted friezes of carved wood to a second 
 courtyard. This is almost square, and standing on 
 the wide grey sweep of rounded pebbles are three 
 bronze lanterns from the three tributary kingdoms 
 of Old Japan from Korea, Luchu, and Holland; 
 and there in serried rows and ranged against the blood- 
 red lacquered fence aglow with gilded carvings, stand 
 multitudes of bronze lanterns, which the dead daimyo 
 of Old Japan sent as offerings to the temple.
 
 THE TEMPLE OF NIKKO n 
 
 Beyond the lacquered fence the dark still stems of the 
 pine-trees range out of sight. 
 
 Then the pebbled space contracts again, and a flight 
 of granite steps leads between granite walls set with 
 coloured friezes of carved wood to the third courtyard ; 
 and the colourless pause of the second court, with its 
 bronze lanterns on grey stones, gains a new meaning 
 as one mounts, for in the third courtyard, between 
 the blood-red friezes with their riotous coloured 
 carvings, is the pure perfection of the Yomei-mon, a 
 double gateway, of white lacquer, cream-white and sup- 
 ported by four pillars of carved wood. And when they 
 put the fourth pillar in its place they planted it upside 
 down fearing if the beauty of the temple were all- 
 perfect, evil might befall the house of Tokugawa 
 through the jealousy of high heaven. 
 
 And the stranger as he draws near pauses in sheer 
 amazement ; the wild untamable beauty of the mighty 
 temple set in its giant framework of dark green trees 
 is strange beyond believing. 
 
 On either hand stretches the tropical splendour 
 of the blood-red lacquered fence, set with coloured 
 carvings as with shining jewels. Behind is the pale 
 glory of the Yomei-mon. All around the darkness 
 of the forest lies like a still quiet tomb. And in 
 front, rising in lines of sheer perfection, is the white 
 beauty of the Chinese gate, cream-white, adorned 
 with glittering yellow brass, brass in rounded sunken 
 medallions on the lintel and the gate-posts, brass in 
 quaint designs and shining points of yellow light, which 
 break about the whiteness as sunshine through a mist. 
 
 The carvings and the pattern, the picture-panels, 
 the decorated eaves, the chiselled heads and sculptured 
 birds and beasts, the growing, glowing flowers, the
 
 12 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 hanging lotus-bells that tinkle at the corners of the 
 tent-curved roof, and all perfect, are more than a 
 man's mind can perceive though he look for many 
 years. Brains and money and labour were poured out 
 here like mountain water, and like the rushing stream 
 of Nikko the drops go unperceived in the beauty of 
 the whole. 
 
 In the short space of forty years were the temple and 
 its fences, the gateways and the carvings, completed and 
 set up ; but forty short years from first to last, and the 
 carving of one gateway is more than a lifetime's work. 
 
 Then the splendour culminates. Beyond the 
 Chinese gateway is the actual shrine itself, its cream- 
 white gateway studded too with brass, while superb in 
 the utter beauty of their carving, two writhing dragons 
 stretch on either hand between the door-post and the 
 pillar. Inside is the temple of the memorial tablets, 
 where with daily rites the Buddhist priests prayed for 
 the soul of lyeyasu. To-day the Buddhist emblems 
 are all gone, the shrine is bare. A shinto rope of 
 rice-straw stretches from post to post, the mirror of 
 the Sun-Goddess shines above the altar for her son, 
 the " Son of Heaven " Tenshi, the Mikado, has come 
 back to his own. 
 
 All the magnificence of the temple now is in its walls, 
 walls of panel carvings where the springing phcenix 
 and the crouching lion rise like pale shadows from the 
 pale unstained wood, so little are they raised above the 
 surface. And yet the artist's hand that carved them was 
 without a rival in the world. They are real and living, 
 delicate and true, and so entirely beautiful that the heart 
 cries out with joy as at a long-lost good. Here is no 
 colour, the sweep of pale yellow matting, the panelled 
 walls of pale dust-coloured wood, are more light than
 
 THE TEMPLE OF NIKKO 13 
 
 colour. Here the rich joy of sense is laid aside : the 
 temple stands a beauty immaterial. 
 
 Through three hundred years they prayed for 
 lyeyasu daily with long rites, but his tomb is not here. 
 
 It lies beyond the temple and above it. One climbs 
 to it by a long, steep stair of grey-green granite, set in 
 the sombre hill. A stairway built of granite in long 
 slabs, so broad and thick that the balustrade with its 
 coping, base, and sculptured columns is all cut from 
 one solid block, with each block fourteen feet long. 
 And the stairway took thirteen years to quarry and 
 set up. 
 
 The hillside is steep, the stairs are many, and the 
 tall dark pines, the flame-red maples gather, gather 
 till the temple's roof, the sound of praying bell or 
 chanted hymn is lost. The little space which Art 
 stole from Nature is completely hidden, even the 
 forest has forgotten. 
 
 And the grey stair climbs, climbs among the dark- 
 green trees, then stops. 
 
 On the top of the hill is a rounded curve of stately 
 pines. Alone, solitary between sky and trees, stands the 
 tomb of lyeyasu, a domed pillar-box of bronze glinting 
 golden through the trees. A low stone wall surrounds 
 the tomb, a bronze door solid but uncarved is its gate- 
 way, and that is all. Here among the quiet trees, in 
 the stillness of the forest, above the splendour of the 
 temple, lie the ashes of the great lyeyasu. 
 
 All the days of his rule he dwelt among men, but 
 his soul climbed the steep stair of Life, casting off its 
 splendours and its glories, climbed above them, 
 climbed back into the eternal simplicity of Nature, and 
 there he laid him down to rest.
 
 IV 
 KANNON, LADY OF MERCY 
 
 IT was \hefete of Kannon of Asak'sa, whose votaries 
 are many. They thronged the narrow paved pathway 
 set between the two long rows of red brick stalls, and 
 overflowed into the temple grounds behind, where the 
 iuggler and the wax-works, the two-headed porpoise, 
 and the headless man, and all the long scale of attrac- 
 tions in between shouted and drummed. All the fun 
 of the fair was here, with the advantage of ^ petit bout 
 de messe, to save the soul, over the way. 
 
 Kannon of Asak'sa is a popular lady, and her doors 
 stand wide open. You may go in with your boots on. 
 It is true that the goddess herself, on her gilded altar, 
 is railed off from public touch by a wire netting like 
 the animals in the menagerie outside. But that is all 
 the privacy she enjoys, and the rest of her temple is as 
 public as a railway station, and just about as sacred. 
 The people pour in up the steps on all sides, the 
 scraping of their gheta on the dirty wooden floor adding 
 its quota of noise to the chink of money and the buzz 
 of voices, the ringing of bells, and the hurry and bustle 
 of a surging railway crowd. There is the same wide- 
 open, doorless feel, the same discomforting, amphibious 
 sensation of neither open air nor closed house. A 
 large bookstall in the corner, selling the latest illus-
 
 KANNON, LADY OF MERCY 15 
 
 trated numbers of the goddess, and the whole stock 
 of Kannon literature adds to the illusion. Between 
 two pillars a temple clerk issues tickets at a substantial 
 booking-office. A shaven official appears and rings a 
 bell at intervals, reciting a prayer in the voice of a 
 railway porter proclaiming stations. There is the 
 same reasonless flux and reflux of the crowd, the same 
 rush and bustle, with its inseparable accompaniment 
 of underlying roar that rises and falls, sometimes 
 absorbing all the other sounds into itself, sometimes 
 leaving them distinct and clear, but never for a moment 
 ceasing. 
 
 A huge lacquered case like a square coffin, its lid 
 replaced by thick metal bars, stands between the book- 
 stall and the booking-office, right against the wire 
 netting. Into this each comer throws his coin before 
 reciting his prayer, and the chinking of the money as 
 it falls is as unceasing as the roar of the crowd. 
 
 Away in a corner behind the booking-office a worn- 
 out black statue sits huddled in rags. Around it, 
 bands of invalids await their turn to rub the featureless 
 figure with their hands, and transfer the charm by 
 rubbing themselves in the corresponding spot. As a 
 method of propagating disease, this treatment for 
 curing it can have few equals. But the coffers of the 
 temple profit greatly. 
 
 Business, indeed, is brisk to-day. The shaven- 
 headed booking-clerk is issuing tickets at a bank- 
 holiday rate, and the bookstall is besieged. Up from 
 all sides comes the tumult of the fair. Kannon must 
 be a paying investment. 
 
 As I stand on the steps with the din of the temple 
 behind me, a man in the crowd below buys a cage 
 of little birds at a stall, and, opening the door, throws
 
 1 6 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 them up into the air. The startled flutter of their 
 wings as they soar up over the heads of the crowd into 
 the blue carries me back to Ober-Ammergau, to 
 the memory of the overturned tables of the money- 
 changers, and the overthrown cages of those who sold 
 doves. 
 
 " My house shall be called the house of prayer, but 
 ye have made it a den of thieves." 
 
 Is human nature the same all the world over ? Are 
 priests ? Or is the fate of all religions alike ? 
 
 O Kannon of Asak'sa ! Kannon, Lady of Mercy ! 
 how long must thou wait for thy deliverer ? O Lord 
 Buddha, how long ?
 
 V 
 RINZAKI'S ALTAR 
 
 ON the edge of the dark hills is the temple of Rinzaki, 
 and the green sea of the rice-fields washes up to its 
 open doors. Overhead the grey sky of a sunless 
 summer's evening dims all the colours in the land, and 
 leaves them shadows. It is fresh and still, and the 
 wide, green bay sweeps in smooth curves to the foot 
 of the dark hills. On the pathway the hosts of little 
 green frogs hop like hailstones, and the startled splash 
 as they fall back into the rice-fields is sharp and clear. 
 
 Rinzaki stands alone, its shoji walls pushed back, 
 and the slender, square pillars at each corner are dark 
 against the greyness. The open matted spaces of the 
 temple are deserted, and the stillness is pure and clear 
 as freshly running water. In the sunless evening light 
 the sombre colours of the temple are but light and 
 shadow, a sweep of pale matting under a dark roof 
 framed in grey. And the stillness grows purer, clearer, 
 and more still. 
 
 Beyond the open spaces of the matting, between 
 altar wall and altar wall, the garden of the temple 
 hangs, a living picture on the wall. Two kneeling- 
 cushions on the matting mark the purpose of the 
 garden, and I stay to look. 
 
 A faintly running stream, stone-grey, a shaven slope
 
 1 8 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 of green, and on it three clipped azalea-bushes pink 
 with blossom. So still, so clear, I stretch my hand 
 to feel. 
 
 It is a garden a garden painted by an artist who 
 worked in earth and flowers. And the dim greyness of 
 the temple, the pale spaces of the matting, frame the 
 garden as a shell its pearl. I could but look. The 
 pale pink of the azalea-bushes, the soft curve of the 
 slope, the stone-grey of the running stream, were 
 painted with the loving care, the certain touch of a 
 master's hand. There was no fault. Between altar 
 wall and altar wall the living picture hung perfect. 
 
 Like David's harping to Saul distraught, the still- 
 ness of the garden, the dim greyness of the temple, 
 washed pure the heart. The sin-freed soul floated out 
 unfettered, and thought was not. 
 
 Alone the garden lay, an earthly Nirvana in the 
 stillness. 
 
 Rinzaki's true altar stood here.
 
 VI 
 TWO CREEDS 
 
 ABOVE the white cloud of the plum-blossoms, through 
 the dark wood of the cryptomerias, on the top of the 
 hill lies the temple of Ikkegami. The broad spaces 
 of its courtyards and its gardens are sunny and still, 
 and the blue sky above is a bed of celestial forget-me- 
 nots. Down each side the big, dark trunks of the 
 giant fir-trees stand straight and tall two rows of 
 sombre pillars, shutting in a sunny aisle. 
 
 In front, at the end of the wandering white path of 
 rounded stones sunk into the bare earth, is the Hondo 
 or main building with the tent curves of its roof, and 
 the polished floor of its veranda shining like a sword 
 in the sun. Behind is the big wooden gateway, and 
 the hundred stone steps which lead from the hilltop to 
 the village beneath. And scattered down the wide 
 earth courtyard, and half hidden under the dark 
 arches of the trees, are the innumerable little buildings 
 which form the complete whole of a Buddhist temple; 
 the belfry, with its bronze bell hung from the big 
 wooden beam of the ceiling to within three feet of the 
 ground, and the polished wooden spar with which it is 
 beaten ; the quaint revolving library like a dwarf 
 windmill without sails where the hundred volumes of 
 the Buddhist Scripture can be dimly seen through the
 
 20 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 thick wooden lattice ; the wide granite tank under its 
 tiled roof, all hung with lengths of brown temple 
 towels, where the faithful pour water over their hands 
 from bamboo dippers as a symbol of purification ; the 
 side chapels with their drums and offerings. All are 
 quiet to-day and deserted, only by the side of the 
 tank, in front of a worn-out stone statue, a peasant 
 mother is standing, her baby tucked in the back of her 
 kimono fast asleep. She claps her hands three times 
 to call the attention of the gods, and then she prays, 
 and the baby's shaven head nods heavily over her 
 shoulder. Then she takes the bamboo dipper and 
 pours water over the head of the stone statue, carefully, 
 that not a dry spot may remain, and prays again. 
 
 Between the dark pillars of the tree-trunks and the 
 stamped earth of the courtyard, a line of narrow, 
 pointed laths runs like a wooden fencing round the 
 temple precincts. I wonder what they are and leave 
 the stepping-stones of the pathway to see. 
 
 Tombstones ? Yes. Set close together, and some- 
 times three or four deep, the long line of thin pointed 
 laths closes in the temple and its courtyard with a 
 fence of graves. Not a rich man's graveyard this, 
 but the last home of the peasants from the rice-fields 
 and the fishermen from the sea. I look at the rows 
 of Chinese characters running lengthwise down the 
 narrow tombstones, and stop in wonder, for on one 
 the Roman letters with their familiar outlines stand out 
 plainly. 
 
 " To the Men of the Warship Onega" 
 
 That is all. 
 
 To the men of the Warship Onega ! It was true 
 then the story. The story of the loss of the Onega 
 in the bay below, and the sale of the sunken wreck
 
 TWO CREEDS 21 
 
 with all its contents to fishermen along the coast. 
 The story of the finding of the corpses of the 
 drowned sailors, all entangled among the wreckage, 
 and of how the Japanese fishermen collected them 
 reverently, saying, with the faith of the ancient 
 Greeks, that their souls would wander restless and 
 distressed unless they were laid in their graves and the 
 funeral prayers sung over them. So they sent a 
 petition to the great Ijin San in Tokyo praying him 
 to come to the temple of Ikk^gami, that his dead 
 brothers might have some one of their own race, if 
 not of their own family, to perform the last solemn 
 rites. And the Ambassador came to Ikkegami, and 
 the long line of weather-beaten Japanese fishermen 
 bore the western sailors up the hill to the temple, and 
 buried them in the courtyard, under the silent trees, 
 with all the rites of the Buddhist church. And they 
 set up the wooden lath as over the grave of a brother, 
 among the long lines of the tombstones of their fathers ; 
 but they wrote on it in the tongue of the stranger so 
 that God and their countrymen might know their own 
 again. 
 
 And all this they did out of their own hearts, and 
 with the money of their own earning. 
 
 So the men of Onega lie buried with Buddhist rites 
 in a Buddhist churchyard, and the wooden lath above 
 their graves is but another rail in the holy fence of the 
 Japanese dead which encloses the temple. 
 
 The long arches of the sombre trees are dark and 
 still. The blue sky above is without fleck or stain, 
 and the peace of God which passeth all understanding 
 is spread as a hand above the tree-tops. 
 
 The men of the Onega sleep well.
 
 VII 
 THE LEGEND OF THE NOSELESS JIZO 
 
 IT was a great many years ago, but the stone Jizo 
 stands there yet, just on the edge of the woods beyond 
 the rice-fields. The blue cotton bib around his neck 
 is new, the odd little piles of stones that balance on his 
 shoulders, cuddle in his arms, or lie around his feet are 
 larger, for kindly hearts have passed by since then, to 
 pick up a stone and carry it to Jizo, who helps the souls 
 of the little dead children crying naked on the banks of 
 the Sai-no-Kawara, because the old hag Shozuka-no- 
 Baba has taken their clothes away, and will not let 
 them pass over into the happy land beyond, but keeps 
 them piling stones on the banks of the Buddhist Styx, 
 and crying bitterly. 
 
 And Jizo sits there by the roadside still, the same 
 benevolent smile on his shaven face, still holding the 
 pilgrim's staff with its metal rings in one hand, and 
 the jewel which brings all wisdom in the other. Only 
 he has no nose. He lost it thirty years ago, the day 
 little Dicky James came running up the road, his new 
 hatchet clutched in his hand. 
 
 Now Dicky was the son of a missionary, and he had 
 been brought up on good books and Sunday schools, 
 and the night before he had been taken to hear the 
 wonderful experiences of a " brother " from China, who
 
 THE LEGEND OF THE NOSELESS JIZO 23 
 
 had filled his little head full of "glorious martyrdom," 
 "sinful heathen," "the overthrowing of idols," and 
 "the abomination of desolation," which Dicky didn't 
 understand but thought meant the long stretch of 
 muddy rice-fields down beyond Negishi. And that 
 put Jizo into his head. And besides, there was the 
 new hatchet. 
 
 All the morning he had played Red Indians, until, 
 in an access of realism, he had almost brained the 
 baby. The threatened loss of his hatchet and the 
 great idea that was working in his head made him 
 quiet and subdued all through dinner. 
 
 He was sorry about baby, "poor little martyr," as 
 his mother called her ; and the idea grew and grew. 
 Why shouldn't he be a martyr too, and return to his 
 family covered with glory ? Then the thought of Jizo 
 jumped into his head. He would go out, like the 
 "brother" from China, into the "abomination of 
 desolation," and "overturn the idol " of the "sinful 
 heathen." Or, at least, if he couldn't overturn it, the 
 new hatchet would cut off its head, and Dicky's fingers 
 itched to try. He had no idea martyrdom was so 
 interesting. 
 
 So, dinner over, Dicky seized his hatchet, and started 
 off, away from the settlement, across the canal, up by 
 the racecourse, and down the hill towards Negishi. 
 Here he took to the shore, to avoid complications in 
 the village ; for Dicky was used to showing his 
 Christian superiority by cuffing the heads of the 
 heathen, and the boys of Negishi were his particular 
 enemies. So the tide being out he kept to the shore 
 until he was past the village, and the long stretch of 
 rice-fields, nothing but solid ponds of black mud, each 
 surrounded by a little, low, mud bank, came into sight.
 
 24 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 " The abomination of desolation," said Dicky. 
 
 And it did look like it. He went on along the narrow 
 path towards the hills, with the wide stretch of muddy 
 ponds on each side of him. They dwindled away 
 gradually as Dicky went up the valley, dwindled away 
 until they only looked like a kind of mud river running 
 between the green hills. And there beyond the last one, 
 on the edge of the hill, was Jizo. Jizo, with his broad 
 smile and his funny little bib. 
 
 Dicky looked about him nervously ; the great 
 moment had come. No, there was no one in the rice- 
 fields, and no one coming after him from the village ; 
 and Jizo's smile was tempting. Up went the little 
 hatchet and smash down with all Dicky's strength. 
 But Jizo's head did not roll in the dust, as it ought to 
 have done, so Dicky tried again. He was getting 
 excited now. It was so beautiful to feel his dear 
 hatchet coming down smash, smash, smash, and to 
 know he was doing the "good work" at the same 
 time. 
 
 Smash, smash! This time something had 
 smashed, and Jizo's stone nose lay at his feet. 
 Dicky stooped to pick it up, exultant, and in the 
 momentary pause heard angry voices among the fields, 
 and feet coming swiftly up the road behind him. 
 Then Dicky forgot all about "martyrdom" and ran 
 as fast as he could go, across the bank of the rice- 
 field in front of him, up the hill beyond, his hatchet 
 clutched in one hand, and Jizo's stone nose in the 
 other. 
 
 It was the rice-field that saved him, because the 
 men had to go round, but their shouts brought out 
 the village, and the sight of Jizo, noseless, sent all the 
 angry "heathen " up the hill in chase. I do not think
 
 THE LEGEND OF THE NOSELESS JIZO 25 
 
 they would have hurt him if they had caught him, for 
 the Japanese are not fanatical, and they are very kind 
 to children. 
 
 It was just this feeling that made them so angry 
 now. To think that any one could injure Jizo; Jizo the 
 friend of those in trouble, the comforter of women in 
 travail, and the keeper of the baby souls crying naked 
 on the dark banks of the Sai-no-Kawara. I do not 
 think they would have hurt Dicky, but the whole 
 village came out to see, and the men and boys ran up 
 the hills around shouting : 
 
 " Nan des ka ? Nan des ka ? What is it ? What 
 is it?" 
 
 And Dicky in his terror ran until his little legs gave 
 way under him, and panting he threw himself on the 
 ground under the trees. 
 
 The shouts had died away a long while, and it was 
 growing dark in the wood before Dicky stirred. It 
 was darker still when at last he crept cautiously down 
 the hill and over the rice-fields towards the stone 
 statue of Jizo. He was very tired now, and very 
 hungry, but the memory of the angry voices calling 
 after him in the hills made him afraid to go back 
 through the village, and by this time the tide was up. 
 So Dicky sat down by the side of Jizo in the growing 
 darkness and waited. And all his nurse's stories of 
 Jizo and the little children came into his mind. He 
 looked up at Jizo, smiling still his large benevolent 
 smile, and crept nearer. 
 
 It was quite dark that evening when they found 
 Dicky, his head peacefully laid to sleep on Jizo's feet, 
 utterly worn out with the pangs and the excitement of 
 his martyrdom, his little hatchet fallen on the ground,
 
 26 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 but one grubby fist fast clutching something that even 
 in his sleep he held tight. 
 
 But Dicky's taste for martyrdom had gone, and 
 once, to his father's horror, he was heard to declare 
 that he " wished he was a heathen because he would 
 like to say his prayers to Jizo." 
 
 In the deepest depths of his pocket, next to his 
 clasp-knife and his favourite ally taw, there lived for 
 many years a small stone object that he sometimes 
 took out and looked at when he was quite alone. And 
 Dicky had serious doubts at times about the goodness 
 of the martyrs, and the sinfulness of the heathen, while 
 his ideas on idols underwent a radical change. 
 
 It is thirty years ago now. But the legend of the 
 noseless Jizo and his fight with the Onigo (the devil in 
 the shape of a child) is still told in the villages around 
 Negishi. 
 
 The other day Richard heard it himself.
 
 VIII 
 THE TEMPLES OF SHIBA 
 
 A MATCHLESS blue sky overarches the world, pale, clear, 
 intense, and the twisted green boughs of the Japanese 
 pine throw their gaunt, black arms up into the blue, in 
 the vain endeavour of a hundred years to reach it. 
 The hush of cloistered calm in which the trees grew 
 up is still here, although the Tokyo citizen walks and 
 rides where once none but Buddhist priests might 
 linger. The Red Gateway, with the tent curves of its 
 roof petrified into grey tiles, still claims for all within 
 Buddha as its master. 
 
 And the hush of cloistered calm grows stiller. 
 
 Through a wide space open to the sky, a space paved 
 with rounded pebbles, water-washed for many years 
 ere they floored the courtyard of the House of God, 
 believing and unbelieving feet have beaten smooth a 
 wide, brown pathway. All around, and arranged in 
 serried rows, stand a myriad grey-stone lanterns, the 
 pious gifts of dead daimyo. Between these tall stone 
 emblems of the five elements the pathway runs ; 
 cupola, crescent, pyramid, sphere, cube ether, air, 
 fire, water, earth and the crude shapes of the primi- 
 tive elements, touched and altered by generations of 
 artists, are turned to curves of quaintest beauty. 
 Diagonally across the space goes the black pathway,
 
 28 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 the standing rows of tall lanterns thickly set on either 
 side, until beneath another gate it makes a pause. A 
 gate of red lacquer this, with carvings of gilded wood 
 on ceiling and wall. Carvings full of that oriental 
 luxuriance of colour and line which half shocks our 
 sober northern senses ; so shocks them sometimes that 
 we call it scornfully " barbaric," until we grow wiser 
 with much looking and learn to see the truth and beauty 
 of this exuberant splendour. 
 
 Beyond the gateway, the black path leads out under 
 the blue sky, a pebbled square on either hand, set 
 round with stately rows of bronze lanterns, the pious 
 gifts of yet greater daimyo. Another gate stands 
 waiting at the end of the pebbled square, a gateway 
 with rounded wooden columns of red lacquer, like its 
 fellow, and carvings of gold. But the beams of its 
 ceiling have been smoothed away, and in the centre a 
 much twisted and curled dragon, which, like Joseph's 
 coat, is of many colours, writhes across the ceiling. A 
 carved and gilded gallery stretches away on either side 
 past the gateway. Another yet more beautiful, with 
 its slender square pillars of red lacquer bound at base 
 and crown with beaten brass, leads a rainbow shadow 
 through the sunny court to the cool dark door of the 
 temple itself. In the shade of the gilded galleries, 
 suspended from the red-lacquered cross-beams, hangs 
 a row of still bronze lanterns. Dimly in their exquisite 
 shapes can one trace the symbolised elements. 
 
 Behind a wooden barrier five steps lead straight to 
 the temple's front, closed now with dark blinds of split 
 bamboo bound together with a silken thread. The 
 tiled eaves of the curving roof overhang the steps, 
 and between door and lacquered pillar writhes in 
 many wriggles of green and golden carving two royal
 
 THE TEMPLES OF SHIBA 29 
 
 dragons, the Ascending and the Descending the 
 going-up and the coming-down. 
 
 Leaning on the barrier, the glory of those golden 
 dragons, of those red columns, of the carved beams 
 and inlaid porch rushed riotously into the soul. And 
 now one understood the preparation of those succes- 
 sive gateways, set each between a sunny space of 
 pebbled court ; for the first had shown but red and 
 gold, up in the ceiling of the second lingered lines of 
 azure blue, the third added green to the other three, 
 the gallery gave glances of mauve and violet, while 
 here, under the eaves of the temple roof, the rainbow 
 itself is glorious in carved wood. 
 
 A culminating point of colour and splendour, what 
 can the temple hold within ? 
 
 Cool spaces of matted floor set round with black 
 boxes on black stools, each box holding its portion of 
 Buddhist Scripture ; sombre pennants of dark blue 
 and green brocade upon the walls ; a sober light clear 
 but colourless ; and which is more beautiful, the rain- 
 bow porch of many colours riotous in carving and 
 scrolls, or the sober quiet of the temple, a beauty of 
 spaces and restraint ? 
 
 The colourless matted room is wide and low. In 
 front between the sombre pennants is the inner 
 sanctuary. Gods on either side on lacquered tables set 
 against the walls ; at the end, beyond more lacquered 
 tables, two brocaded masses rise like square coffins on 
 a raised dais ; between stand figures of the gods, white- 
 faced Benten and Kannon, Lady of Mercy. The red 
 tables bear many-coloured sweets and biscuits heaped 
 high on metal plates, in metal cups ; offerings to the 
 spirits of the dead Shogun whose tablets lie enshrined 
 behind those masses of brocade. A bronze bowl on
 
 30 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 the floor filled with grey ash sends forth filmy clouds 
 of incense. There is no sound. 
 
 Behind the temple, through two open spaces of 
 pebbled squares, each reached by a score of granite 
 steps, is the tomb ; a smooth, round mass of stone 
 encircled with a breast-high parapet of bronze ; all 
 around a sweep of grey pebbles. 
 
 That is all. 
 
 And yet standing here I wonder whether the dead 
 Shogun have not rightly chosen ? Whether their 
 resting-place is not more truly beautiful than the 
 beauty of sombre ornament in the temple, than the 
 riotous carving of the gateways. 
 
 The porch was Beauty's body, arrayed, adorned; 
 here lies Beauty's soul, naked and eternal.
 
 BUDDHISM is not one but many ; the same faith and 
 the same nation which produces the squalor, dirt and 
 commercial profanity of Asak'sa can create the peace 
 and purity of Rinzaki, while Shiba's riot of impossible 
 colouring is born of the same religion and the same 
 people as the stern beauty of the Hongwanji ; for the 
 temples of the Shin sect are severe as a Protestant 
 cathedral, as a Presbyterian church, only they are built 
 by a race of artists. 
 
 Kannon of Asak'sa is popular, but the beautiful 
 Hongwanji at Kyoto, finished a few years ago, at a 
 cost of eight million yen, was built mainly by the 
 peasants, who contributed not only in money but in 
 kind, sending their most beautiful trees to be cut into 
 beams, offering themselves to hew and to build, giving 
 always of their best. And each beam was raised to its 
 place by long hawsers made of women's hair, the soft 
 black hair of youth or womanhood, with here and there 
 the shrivelled grey hairs of age. And the hawsers 
 are suspended in the temple for men and missionaries 
 to ponder on. 
 
 Buddhism is not dead but living. The old, the 
 weary, and the poorest poor creep into the Hongwanji 
 in Japan, and the pale matting of these temples is
 
 32 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 covered with the square-holed copper coins worth a 
 quarter of a farthing, which they roll over the matting 
 towards the altar from the corners where they kneel 
 and pray. 
 
 Nagoya's Hongwanji is the glory of the town. It 
 stands in the thick of the city, in a great wide court- 
 yard of stamped earth set round with trees. Its sculp- 
 tured gates of bronze are always open, and once inside 
 them the busy town with its factories and its work- 
 shops, its quarter of a million of inhabitants, is gone, 
 for the wide courtyard sets a lavish space of stillness 
 between the city and the shrine. A space so wide and 
 ample that the temple's curves stand out clear and 
 sharp as a solitary tower on an empty plain. 
 
 Built all of wood, unpainted, unstained ; and so faded 
 by the sunshine, so worn with age, and weather beaten 
 with the wind and rain, that in the glow of the 
 summer's sun the temple stands against the brilliant 
 light faded and grey, a beauty of pathos, not of joy. 
 
 Under the eaves the saints and sacred animals are 
 carved in tender lines of love. Age has touched and 
 left them colourless, and the infinite pity of the Buddha 
 which enwraps creation, enfolding man and his brother 
 the beast, looks from their eyes. 
 
 Inside there is peace and sober quiet. A wide low 
 space suggestively divided into three with slender 
 square pillars of wood, and behind, along the whole 
 width of the temple a blaze of gold, sombre and rich. 
 No riot of impossible colouring here, no profusion of 
 design and decoration ; sober, almost stern in its beauty, 
 the centre and the two side altars shine in the dim light. 
 
 A bronze figure of Buddha, dead black against the 
 gold, stands on his lotus-leaf with uplifted hands.
 
 AMIDA BUTSU 33 
 
 It is Buddha as the God of Mercy, the living, loving 
 god, Amida Butsu Eternal Buddha. 
 
 Dull gold and black, alive in the altar, shadowly 
 repeated in the pale yellow matting and in the grey 
 age-stained wood, are all the decoration of the temple, 
 save perfect purity and peace, and an atmosphere of 
 quiet, enduring charity. For the Shin sect teaches that 
 the law cannot be altered, that the eternal chain of cause 
 and effect goes always and for ever on, that the wages 
 and more than the wages of sin is death, that an act 
 and its consequences roll ever onward through the world, 
 and neither man nor time can stay them ; it teaches that 
 a man's sorrows are made by his sins, but that Buddha 
 is merciful and just, that he who is love gives love ; 
 love knows no sin, nor sin's child, sorrow ; without sin 
 and sorrow is the world at rest. 
 
 Outside, the city labours, toils. Within, the workers 
 kneel on the pure pale matting, and praying, roll their 
 square-holed coins towards the image of Eternal 
 Buddha, whose hand is raised to bless.
 
 SAINT NICHIREN 
 
 UP a hundred steep stone steps lies the temple of the 
 Lord Buddha, for Nichiren, his servant, whose head 
 the executioner's sword refused to cut off, died here. 
 
 Now Nichiren was a man of faith. And his faith 
 was the faith of the average man he knew he was 
 right. But Nichiren did more, for he had the courage 
 of his opinions ; and he said, " I alone am right ; the 
 rest are all wrong, unfaithful servants of the Lord- 
 kill them." 
 
 And the people believed Nichiren, for is not such 
 faith in one's own opinion a sign of divine inspiration ? 
 And did not the Lord Buddha send lightning from 
 Heaven to turn the edge of the executioner's sword 
 and save his pious servant ? 
 
 So they followed after Nichiren and despised the 
 rest of the church, and built temples of the true faith 
 throughout the length and breadth of the land. And 
 the priests of Nichiren walked in the steps of their 
 master, and are for the tolerant Japanese almost 
 bigoted and fanatical. 
 
 Now the Nichiren priests delight in noise. Perhaps 
 they think like many a politician that it takes the 
 place of argument. And so their temples for ever 
 re-echo with the banging of big drums, the clapping of 
 wooden clappers, the booming of big bells, and the
 
 SAINT NICHIREN 35 
 
 eternal chanting of the Namu-myoho-rengekyo, the 
 formula of the faith of Nichiren. 
 
 In the little side temple to the left, wreathed with 
 paper flowers and cheap ornaments for Nichiren has 
 even strength to blur the national sense of art they 
 are busy now. 
 
 A priest in the middle crouches on the ground ; on 
 either side, before a big drum like a yellow barrel lying 
 horizontally on the ground, sit two believers. Behind 
 are grouped three more, all provided with clappers or 
 bells. The drumming is incessant, the clapping nearly 
 so, while all, priests and people, keep up one never- 
 ending drone of 
 
 ' ' Namu- myoho-rengekyo, Namu - my oho - rengekyo, 
 Namu-myoho- rengekyo. " 
 
 I can only see the backs of the group, and the arms 
 of the two drummers as they raise them up above 
 their heads to beat the big barrels in front of them. 
 Suddenly, from round the corner of the drum, an old 
 face peers priest by its costume and its cunning. An 
 unshaven, unkempt face that blinks dirty, ignorant, 
 bigoted. It crouches there on the matting, the old 
 cunning eyes opening and shutting with each repetition 
 of the never-ending formula, 
 
 ' ' Namu- my oho- rengekyo, Namu - my oho - rengekyo, 
 Namu-myoho-rengekyo" until sense and meaning are 
 lost in a wave of wild, brute fanaticism. 
 
 The drums bang louder, the clappers clap shriller, 
 the bells boom quicker and quicker, and I stand there 
 convinced. 
 
 Namu - mydho - rengekyo, Namu - myoho - rengekyo^ 
 Namu-myoho-rengekyo. 
 
 I too am of the faith of Nichiren, for I know that I 
 am right. All these are wrong, unfaithful servants of 
 the Lord kill them.
 
 XI 
 BETWEEN EARTH AND HEAVEN 
 
 FIVE HUNDRED feet of wall, and the temple's courtyard 
 hangs a balcony above the world. 
 
 The thousand steps by which I climbed are hidden,and 
 the cha-ya, in the width of the brown road that touches 
 cliff and sea, is so beneath my feet that its roof seems 
 resting on the ground. My kurumaya, in his white hat, 
 is a growing mushroom on a dark blue stalk. The man 
 is but a human atom crushed between two immensities. 
 
 From cliff to distant sky the wide sea spreads out, 
 a vast still plain of shimmering blue. This ball of 
 earth is rolled out flat before my eyes, and its 
 mysterious ends are a far-off rim, dark blue and 
 clear. Overhead the burnished sky shuts down a 
 domed cover on the flattened earth. The very sea 
 seems hot. My kurumaya, sitting on the slender 
 shafts of \\isjinriksha, fans himself with his hat, and I 
 am startled to see how perfectly the three-inch figure 
 works. 
 
 The world lies all spread out below me, here is nothing 
 but the temple and the sun. 
 
 Across the burning courtyard where the sun smites 
 the rounded pebbles with hard shafts of light, and 
 through the open doorway in the temple's wall, I 
 go, and then the silent shadows of the trees fall all
 
 BETWEEN EARTH AND HEAVEN 37 
 
 around. The sky above their tops is bluer, the very 
 sunlight brighter for the shade. 
 
 The temple's shrine is built upon a polished raft of 
 wood, moored three feet above the ground. Its walls 
 are dark with matted blind. Only the square door- 
 posts stand clear against the light, and through them 
 I see the bareness of the shrine a sweep of pale mat- 
 ting on the floor, and then dim space. Alone, the 
 burnished mirror of the great Sun-Goddess hangs above 
 the altar. 
 
 On the threshold of his temple stands the high 
 priest, attended by two acolytes. He wears a head- 
 dress of black lacquer like a perforated meat-cover, 
 but the face beneath is old and very calm. He bows 
 as I mount the shallow polished steps which lead up 
 from the ground, takes from the black-robed acolyte a 
 slender silver vase, and a shallow terra-cotta bowl. 
 Standing shoeless on the threshold of the naked 
 shrine he slowly pours the sacred sakd from the 
 silver vase into the terra-cotta bowl, and gives me to 
 drink. The bowl is black with age, the sakt thick, 
 like distilled honey ; and I notice, as I drink, the 
 carved figures running round the rim, and the faint 
 scent of plum-blossom. 
 
 Without a word the white-robed priest takes back 
 the cup, and offers me a thin rice-wafer which I 
 break and eat. I wonder what the rite may mean that 
 I, a stranger, may partake, and look up to see the 
 calm old eyes looking down at me, at my outlandish 
 clothes and foreign face ; but he does not speak. 
 Then with a gesture which is almost a blessing, the 
 white-robed priest is gone, and the acolytes follow after. 
 
 The temple's shrine stands bare and bare, only the 
 burnished mirror of the great Sun-Goddess glitters.
 
 38 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 Was it a Passover that we have eaten together ? 
 Or a Eucharist ? Or merely the symbol of our human 
 brotherhood ? 
 
 We are all children of the Sun ; and Faith is One. 
 
 Yet it needed a Shinto priest in far Japan to 
 show me a religion above nation, beyond race, above 
 sect. But his shrine is bare. The Mirror of Truth 
 hangs solitary above his altar, and his temple's doors are 
 open to the Sun.
 
 XII 
 INARI, THE FOX-GOD 
 
 THE green tongue of the rice-fields thrusts itself deep 
 into the blue sea, and its tip is lacquered red. 
 
 Haneda-no-Inari is a temple whose gateways have 
 swallowed up its shrine, and on the low, flat, head- 
 land its many thousand tori in rows of scarlet 
 dolmens walk inland from the sea. The green point 
 lies a henna-stained finger in the lap of the ocean. 
 
 Beyond the red tip, a ridge of pearl-grey sky rests on 
 the water, while overhead the clouds, like piled-up 
 snowflakes, melt into the blue. 
 
 It is the end of September, and wide through the 
 land the rustle of ripening rice-ears comes and goes. 
 Haneda-no-Inari, the Rice-God, is calling the peasants 
 to his shrine. And they come ; broad-shouldered, 
 bullet-headed men, in short, blue tunics and dark 
 lue hose, with brown weather - beaten faces, 
 seamed and lined ; and always their hard hands, half 
 shut, half open, as though still holding hoe or 
 plough. Old most of them, and with that half-deaf 
 look which years of fieldwork brings. Intelligences 
 half shut too, shutting fast on the primary ideas 
 of life, on the traditions of their fathers ; for a 
 thought, like the hoe or plough, is too precious a 
 thing to be lightly laid aside ; it is bequeathed from
 
 40 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 generation to generation as are the rice-fields beneath 
 their feet. 
 
 Inari calls, and the peasants come. Not only for the 
 sake of the Rice-God, though the rustle of the ripen- 
 ing rice-ears is a music in the land, but because the 
 image of the fox has dwelt so long in the Rice- God's 
 temple that to the peasant Inari is both Fox- and Rice- 
 God. And the fear of the Kitsun6 is a power in 
 Japan. The Kitsun6 t who can take a woman's shape 
 and bewitch you ; the Kitsunt, who can beguile a man 
 that he follow to the fox's very hole and stay there 
 living on snails and worms. The KitsunJ, who, enter- 
 ing a man's body under his finger-nails, will possess 
 it, so that he howls like a fox, slowly changes into one, 
 and dies. And so they come to the temple, up from 
 the rice-fields, up under the scarlet tunnels of the tori, 
 for the passing through each tunnel means a wish 
 fulfilled. 
 
 The gateways indeed have swallowed up this shrine. 
 There is no temple, only a low matted booth ; at the 
 back two white china images of the Fox-God, his 
 tail curled high above his head, and a priest on the 
 matting, as a shopman at his stall, selling charms, 
 multitudes of miniature china foxes, words on rice- 
 paper, and mounds of earth, a whole shopful of charms 
 and amulets. 
 
 Opposite is a row of rabbit burrows, each roofed 
 with a shelving stone; just a hole in the ground, 
 but full of meaning to the peasant, for it is the home 
 of the Kitsund, and he crouches on the ground 
 in front of it, his head between his knees, or thrust 
 far into the big burrow in the eagerness of his 
 prayer. And his face works ; the priest behind him 
 watches. Kitsunt, is a reality to him, a force strong
 
 INARI, THE FOX-GOD 41 
 
 as Nature's laws, but capricious ; so he prays. Then 
 half in fear, half in reverence, he thrusts one arm 
 as far as it will go into the hole, and scraping softly 
 brings back a handful of brown earth. His face lights 
 up, and the priest behind leans forward. 
 
 Still on his knees the peasant wraps the magic earth 
 in layers of clean rice-paper and puts it carefully away in 
 the breast of his patched tunic. Then he gets up. He 
 has his charm, a remedy against sickness and disaster, 
 a charm for his rice-fields and himself. The priest 
 behind reaches out his hand. He makes a keen shop- 
 keeper, and his celestial wares are never stolen. The 
 temple terms are " cash down, and prayers not taken 
 in exchange." 
 
 Through the long scarlet tunnels of the tort, back 
 to the ripening rice-fields the peasants go. The green 
 point lies a henna-stained finger in the lap of the 
 ocean. Haneda-no-Inari, the temple of the supersti- 
 tious, glows a living tip of red. 
 
 For its sins are as scarlet.
 
 XIII 
 THE ALTAR OF FIRE 
 
 IT all happened in a suburban temple in the town of 
 Tokyo, at the time of the blossoming cherry-trees ; 
 and the prosaic din of a modern city full of trains and 
 tramcars hemmed us round. We had been conscious 
 of it dimly throughout the long ceremonial within the 
 temple, where Shinto priests in brocaded robes chanted 
 in twos and threes, in solo and in chorus ; where the 
 old High Priest had blessed with long strange rites 
 the four elements, earth, which is the mother of all 
 things, fire, water, air ; had blessed the rice by which 
 the people live, salt, and sake ; but now that we were 
 all assembled in the outer courtyard the noise of a busy 
 city came distinctly to the ear. Tokyo was working 
 hard this April afternoon, and the cries of the news- 
 paper boys pierced up shrilly from the street below. 
 
 In the courtyard the ancient vestments of the 
 priests showed strangely beside the modern frocks of 
 American visitors, the tweed suits of a party of 
 Cook's tourists, even beside the kimono of the Japanese 
 crowd, so markedly Tokyo and Meiji (age of enlighten- 
 ment), in their felt hats, cloth caps, and " bowlers." 
 
 The courtyard was big, the native crowd railed in 
 at one end left a large space bare, and here in the 
 centre of the stamped brown earth a great pile of
 
 THE ALTAR OF FIRE 43 
 
 burning charcoal was heaped. Twenty feet long, and 
 nearly as many broad, it glowed a solid mass of 
 quivering heat, while priests at each corner stood 
 fanning the sullen red to an ever fiercer flame. It was 
 not hot enough yet, and in the sunshine of that April 
 afternoon we waited. 
 
 At the further end of the courtyard a broad band 
 of salt lay on the brown earth like a white step to 
 the altar. The great fans of the fanning priests sent 
 puffs of heat across the_court that made the distin- 
 guished guests shrink back. And yet the glowing 
 charcoal pyre was not hot enough. 
 
 Behind us, in a corner of the courtyard, stood a 
 bamboo ladder, whose every rung was made of the 
 razor-blade of a Japanese sword, set edge upwards. 
 As we all stood waiting, watching the solid altar of 
 red flame grow redder, a young man came out of the 
 temple and crossed the court. He was dressed in the 
 short white tunic of religious festivals, and his legs 
 and feet were bare. He bowed to the party of dis- 
 tinguished guests, to the priests, to the old High 
 Priest, and from his manner I judged him not a priest, 
 but a temple attendant. 
 
 Among the crowd there was a murmur, a sway of 
 intense excitement, and then a dead stillness. In the 
 stillness the young man put his bare foot upon the 
 lowest rung of the ladder, and an involuntary shudder 
 went through us all. A large-checked tourist, pushing 
 every one aside, rushed up to the ladder, and felt a 
 sword-rung with his hand. Then he came back, and 
 across his open palm a ruled red line of blood rose up 
 swiftly. 
 
 There was a whispering among the priests, a com- 
 motion in the crowd, but the polite expressions of
 
 44 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 regret from the old High Priest were courtly with 
 honorifics. The large-checked tourist tied his hand up 
 clumsily in his own pocket-handkerchief, and looked 
 annoyed. The fanning priests, with rhythmic move- 
 ments of their hands and bodies, chased the living 
 heat across the court, and did not pause. 
 
 Again there was a murmur in the crowd, a stretching 
 of necks to see, and a dead silence. 
 
 The white-tuniced attendant, who had stood quite 
 still beside the ladder, placed his bare foot upon the 
 lowest rung, and I saw the large-checked tourist wince as 
 though his injured hand were there instead. Lightly as 
 a sailor climbs, the young man ran up the ladder rung by 
 rung, and neither hands nor feet grew red. On the 
 top he stayed, looking down, and a shudder like a cry 
 of pain went through the courtyard. Then he turned, 
 hanging for one brief moment by his knees on the 
 topmost rung turned, and came down again. 
 
 In the April sunshine the sword-blades, from top 
 to bottom of the ladder, glittered spotless. 
 
 Firmly on his bare, brown feet the young man walked 
 across the court, bowed to the party of distinguished 
 visitors, to the priests, to the old High Priest, and 
 disappeared within the temple. 
 
 The crowd behind the railings exclaimed in admira- 
 tion, but the distinguished visitors were above surprise. 
 The party of Cook's tourists who had just " done " India 
 were full of explanations. It was " mere jugglery," they 
 said, though each man differed in his theory. One was 
 eloquent on hypnotic suggestion, and though the 
 damaged tourist, his hand still bound up, " couldn't 
 go so far as that, sir," was not to be persuaded. The 
 injured tourist had apparently only been hypnotised 
 a little more effectually than the rest of us. The
 
 THE ALTAR OF FIRE 45 
 
 American guests favoured " acrobatic training from 
 infancy," which " made the bones just like jelly." 
 Somebody said he had heard it was " done with oil," 
 but was quite vague as to the how, and all the more 
 insistent in consequence. And so we explained and 
 argued while the level rays of sunshine fell on the 
 spotless sword-rungs of the ladder, and on the vest- 
 ments of the Shinto priests. They had watched and 
 were impassive. The climbing of the ladder was not 
 a sacred ceremony, not a rite, rather an amusement 
 allowed the multitude, as the Catholic Church offered 
 jongleries in the Middle Ages. 
 
 But as the sun fell lower and lower in the April 
 sky, a hush came among the little group of priests, 
 and growing, travelled slowly over the courtyard. 
 Even the damaged tourist stopped his explanations. 
 The great red altar of heat that lay a fallen pillar of 
 fire across the courtyard was glowing now white-hot 
 with life. The fanning priests at each corner had 
 moved further back to escape the scorch of the flames, 
 but still they fanned. In waves and gusts the heat 
 was borne across the court, to flicker, as it were, upon 
 the air, steady itself and then drive solidly forward. 
 The Cook's tourists who had seized upon the front 
 row of seats, twisted uneasily on their chairs, un- 
 willing to give up their " best places," unable to endure 
 the burning. But the fierce scorch of the heat came 
 steadily onwards, and before it the tourists ran, 
 dragging their chairs after them. 
 
 Still the fanning priests fanned on, chasing the 
 quivering flames on the red altar of heat, till it pulsed 
 with a white-hot breath like a thing alive. 
 
 In the pale April sky the swift sun was dropping 
 golden through the last arcs of heaven to a grey band
 
 46 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 of clouds upon the horizon. In half an hour it would 
 be night. 
 
 There was a stir in the crowd beyond the barriers ; 
 the fanning priests beat out their rhythm slowly, and 
 with the shadows the gathering sense of awe deepened. 
 Only the altar of heat burned brighter, gathering to 
 itself all the colour from the world. 
 
 Apart from the crowd the High Priest stood, the 
 gold on his vestment gleaming, and he watched the 
 sun. The peace upon his face was like an unsaid 
 prayer. Did his soul go out to Amaterasu, the great 
 Sun-Goddess ? 
 
 Swiftly the sun dropped through the bank of clouds 
 leaving them golden, showed a red circle on the 
 horizon, and passed beneath. The faintest flicker of 
 emotion stirred for a moment the grave reverence of 
 the old man's face. Then he turned. The rhythmic 
 beating of the fanning priests died into silence. The 
 red altar stood a burning fiery furnace in the courtyard, 
 where already twilight was. He spoke no word, but 
 the religious calm of a perfect trust was in all his 
 being. It touched the straining multitude behind the 
 barriers, even the tourists in their chairs. Breathless 
 we stayed gripped by the powers of an awed suspense, 
 of a great belief, as he came on. There was no hurry, 
 no tremor in his movements, on through the hot 
 scorched air he came, on, over the threshold of strewn 
 salt, and on, over the altar of heat. With naked feet 
 he trod from end to end the white-hot pathway, and 
 the burning charcoal snapped beneath his tread. With 
 naked feet he walked, unscathed, over that fiery 
 furnace ; and the breath of a passionate prayer passed 
 like a sob through the courtyard. 
 
 Then one by one the priests in their embroidered
 
 THE ALTAR OF FIRE 47 
 
 vestments stepped from the threshold of salt on to the 
 fire. From end to end of the altar they too trod that 
 white-hot pathway slowly, unhurt, and the living 
 charcoal glowed like a thousand suns in the twilight. 
 
 Slowly behind their distant barriers the crowd stirred 
 irresolute. An old man whose face showed rapt in the 
 circle of firelight approached the priests. Hesitating 
 he was led up to the altar, over the white salt step, and 
 faltering, he too trod the white-hot pathway. Then a 
 coolie came through the shadows, he too stepped up 
 to the altar, passed over the threshold of salt on to the 
 living charcoal. 
 
 In twos and threes the crowd was coming now. 
 Some of them hesitated on the white salt step, some 
 hurried along the fiery pathway. A few, a very few, 
 walked away as though their feet were singed. But 
 all came, even the children. The big children who 
 went resolutely alone, the little children whom the 
 priests led. 
 
 And the twilight in the courtyard deepened into 
 night. The broad altar of heat glowed ruddy, a deep 
 sun-red as its life pulsed slower. The tourists were 
 all quiet on their chairs, not one of them would 
 venture, though the little children went before. The 
 Faith was not in them, nor the power of that great 
 Belief. But those behind the barriers, this Tokyo 
 crowd in kimono and "bowler," they believed. With 
 the sounds of a modern city humming in their ears, 
 fresh from the western education ot their Board 
 Schools, they, as their forefathers for two thousand 
 years, passed over the fire. This burning symbol of 
 a spiritual purification had meaning for them. They 
 had faith and were not afraid. 
 
 Unto such is the Dominion of the Earth ; unto such 
 is the Kingdom of Heaven.
 
 XIV 
 FORGOTTEN GODS 
 
 NEGLECTED by the river side the Buddhas sit, in one 
 long silent row. The rain is beating on their unpro- 
 tected heads, and down their granite faces little rills 
 of water trickle. The river at their feet runs swift 
 and strong, grey among the boulders, as it rushes down 
 to Nikko. And they sit forsaken. 
 
 The moss is thick upon their shoulders, the granite 
 faces are all scarred and battered, blotched with pallid 
 growths, spotted with dusty accumulations. But the 
 Buddhas smile. Beneath their heavy-lidded eyes they 
 smile, a slow, still, changeless smile. 
 
 On the green bank above the tumultuous river there 
 is no shrine, no priest ; the forgotten gods sit still, in 
 one long silent row, and the rain beats down relent- 
 less. Over their battered heads it runs, and down 
 their moss-grown shoulders ; the soiled stone laps are 
 full of it, and it stands in ever widening pools about 
 the lotus-leaves of each pedestal. For in Nikko the 
 rain, tropical in vehemence, is persistent, as in the 
 Outer Hebrides. It lies to-day in slanting lines, 
 thick as willow-switches, across the dull grey sky. 
 
 I could not well be wetter, so I stop to look, and the 
 whole long silent row of Gods Forgotten smiles gently 
 back at me.
 
 FORGOTTEN GODS 49 
 
 Remindful of the legend which calls them number- 
 less, I try to count. Once, twice, several times ; but 
 the legend is right. Each time my total varies. Per- 
 haps the rain confuses me ; the willow-switches lie so 
 thick across the sky. So I give it up and look at 
 the long desolate row of the numberless Buddhas. I 
 wonder if they envy the Buddha who fell from his 
 pedestal into the stream and was carried down to 
 Imaichi, where the villagers, finding him uninjured, 
 reverently set him up with his face towards Nikko. 
 Now the country-side adores him, and he wears a large 
 pink bib. 
 
 Across the madly rushing river, churned grey 
 between the boulders, the Buddhas smile. ... It is 
 a smile of understanding. Yes, the slow, still smile of 
 One Who Understands, who understands All Things, 
 and understanding, is content. 
 
 And who should understand, and understanding 
 rest content, if not the Eternal Buddha? Is not the 
 Godhead wise ? Does it not see the meaning and the 
 path of All Things ? And seeing, were it not then 
 content the Devil triumphs ? 
 
 " God's in His Heaven, 
 All's right with the world." 
 
 If God be in His Heaven, and God be God, then 
 must the Godhead understanding smile. 
 
 Through the thick-falling rain the long still row of 
 granite Buddhas smile back at me. I have thought so 
 long upon that smile, which strikes on western senses 
 oddly, almost irreverently. Do we ever conceive of a 
 smiling God? In all the long picture galleries of 
 Europe I have never seen a Christ who smiled. With
 
 50 THE FAITH OF JAPAN 
 
 sword-pierced side and thorn-crowned head He hangs 
 before us suffering, always sad. The Man of Sor- 
 rows; yet He redeemed the world; He saved man- 
 kind. For pure joy a soul could smile at such a 
 thought. Yet with us the Redeemer suffers ; He never 
 smiles. 
 
 The peasant Sogoro, from his cross where he had 
 watched the killing of his children, laughed gaily as 
 he bade his dying wife farewell ; for he had saved 
 three hundred villages from unjust taxation. In his 
 intensest suffering a Japanese is taught to smile. He 
 comes to tell you that his child is dying, and he smiles. 
 Perhaps his eyes are red, but he smiles, that the sight 
 of his suffering may not pain another. It is the sub- 
 limest unselfishness and self-control. Sogoro dying 
 on the cross bade his crucified wife farewell, laughing 
 gaily, and no Japanese would praise or wonder at the 
 fact. Sogoro died as a martyr. Yes, I have seen a 
 smile on the faces of our martyrs, rarely, it is true. 
 Sodoma's St. Sebastian smiles ; it is a smile of the 
 eyes. He sees a vision the Lamb of God and all the 
 choirs of the angels. But Christ never smiles. I 
 cannot think of one picture, one conception of a 
 smiling God. Sad, weighed down with the sins of 
 mankind ; pitiful, pleading ; or stern, implacable, the 
 Just Judge, the Ruler of the Universe, immovable 
 Omnipotence, scales in hand. Can either Godhead 
 smile ? 
 
 Buddha suffered much and endured much, but still 
 he smiles. He too is merciful and full of pity. He 
 too suffers with each sin man sins. Here too the 
 Just Judge judgeth the World. And the patient 
 Buddha suffers till the wicked are redeemed. There 
 is no end to his suffering till all are saved. Only when
 
 FORGOTTEN GODS 51 
 
 the wicked cease from troubling, cease because they 
 are the good, is mortal life completed, till then the 
 complex worlds spin on and on. Yet Buddha smiles. 
 For man's birthright is not sin, not sorrow, but Joy. 
 The Godhead smiles. 
 
 This long silent row of granite gods, fashioned by 
 the hands and the hearts of this nation, smile. And 
 all the bronze and granite statues, all the gilded 
 images, all the Buddhas of this island smile too, for 
 the people who made them and conceived them believe 
 in Joy, in the innate as in the ultimate goodness of 
 man ; in the innate as in the ultimate Joy of the God- 
 head. Verily these are forgotten Gods in western 
 lands. 
 
 Across the raging mountain river, through the fast- 
 falling rain, on the desolate green bank the numberless 
 Buddhas battered and forsaken smile, that slow still 
 smile of One Who Understands, who understands All 
 Things, and understanding is content. 
 
 Great Buddha, Dai Nippon, teach us.
 
 LORD FUJI
 
 " Where on the one hand is the province of Kai, 
 And on the other the province of Suruga, 
 Right in the midst between them 
 Stands out the high peak of Fuji. 
 The very clouds of Heaven dread to approach it ; 
 Even the soaring birds reach not its summit in their flight. 
 Its burning fire is quenched by the snow ; 
 The snow that falls is melted by the fire. 
 No words may tell of it, no name know I that fits it, 
 But a wondrous Deity it surely is. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Of Yamato, the Land of Sunrise, 
 
 It is the Peace-Giver, it is the God, it is the Treasure. 
 
 On the peak of Fuji, in the land of Suruga, 
 
 Never weary I of gazing." 
 
 Japanese poet, eighth century. 
 (" Japanese Literature," by W. G. Aston.)
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 FROM Pole to Pole the waters of the wide Pacific 
 surge, unending and alone. Over the shifting plain 
 the silence of the ocean broods. Here is man nothing ; 
 for the endless spaces of the ocean, the self-sufficiency 
 of the unresting sea remain for ever outside of man, 
 coldly non-human. A river or a hill can be loved into 
 companionship, but the sea stays always strange. 
 
 Without ends or boundaries, the shifting waters 
 sweep from Pole to Pole, solitary, changeless. Only 
 the curve of the earth itself, or the weakness of man's 
 eyesight draws imaginary boundaries on the horizon. 
 And the waste of the waters lies empty and still. 
 
 Coldly blue is the sea below, and the sky shutting 
 down is blue too and bare. Two empty infinities 
 which meeting set bounds to each other. 
 
 And within there is nothing. Only space ; blue, 
 bare space. 
 
 "In the beginning," says the Scripture, " the waters 
 below were separated from the waters above," and out 
 of the void came this world of two dimensions, so 
 cold, blue and beautiful. It is immensity empty. 
 
 Then did the spirit of God move on the face of the 
 waters, move slowly and pass. 
 
 Into the empty blue came a white, still splendour.
 
 56 LORD FUJI 
 
 Softly it grew in the dome of the sky, unreal in its 
 beauty. But two pale curves that stayed in the 
 heavens, as the wandering snowflake seems to rest on 
 its fall. Midway between blue and blue it stayed, 
 this soft white splendour, stayed dreaming a pause. 
 
 For the spirit of God had passed ; and the empty, 
 blue vastness was filled with a sense of joy and elation. 
 Earth's fairest presence had risen high to the heavens. 
 And it lay, two curving lines of exquisite splendour, 
 breathed light on the sky ; and white as the wing of a 
 gull in the gleam of the sunshine, all shining with 
 whiteness. 
 
 And the infinite plane of the waters stretches on to 
 the Poles. And the endless space of the sky wraps 
 the water around. 
 
 But the empty, blue vastness is gone. 
 
 It is blue sea. It is sky. They are framing a 
 world, for Lord Fuji has come.
 
 II 
 
 THE ASCENT 
 
 GEOLOGISTS state that Fuji San is a volcano, a young 
 volcano, 12,365 feet high. Philologists add that San 
 is derived from a Chinese term meaning mountain, 
 and is not the familiar Japanese title which we render 
 by Mr., Lord, or Master ; while Fuji is, they declare, 
 a word of Aino origin. And then they all fall silent. 
 
 These are the facts : the material, provable facts, such 
 as western text-books publish. But to Japan, Fuji San 
 is much more, and most of this is not text-book fact. 
 
 National tradition says that Fuji arose in a single 
 night, and at the same time Lake Biwa, one 
 hundred and forty miles away, was suddenly formed. 
 There is a legend that, in those far-away days of 
 mukaski, mukashi once upon a time the Elixir of 
 Life was taken to the top of the mountain, where it 
 still remains. And popular belief declares that all 
 the cinders and ashes brought down by the pilgrims' 
 feet are carried each night back to the summit of 
 Fuji. 
 
 To the people, Fuji is sacred; holy to some as the 
 abiding-place of the Goddess Ko-no-hana-saku-ya- 
 hime, She who makes the Blossoms of the Trees to 
 Bloom, but sacred to all for its majesty, its unutterable 
 beauty. The peasants of the country-side call Fuji
 
 58 LORD FUJI 
 
 Oyama, Honourable Mountain ; and to the people 
 Fuji San is Lord and Master. Deep in their hearts, 
 and unassailable by western facts, the worship ol his 
 beauty and his power lies throbbing. During that 
 brief six weeks of summer when Fuji's wind-swept 
 sides alone are climbable, the pilgrims come in 
 thousands, in ten thousands. They dress themselves 
 in white from head to foot. They carry long staves 
 of pure white wood in their hands, each stamped with 
 the temple crest, and in bands and companies they 
 climb the mountain. And always the leader at their 
 head, his staff crowned with a tinkling mass of bells, 
 like tiny cymbals, chants the hymn of Fuji. From 
 base to summit, as the white-clad pilgrims climb, the 
 tinkling cymbals clash, and the voice of the leader 
 rises loud at each refrain : 
 
 " We are going, we are going to the top." 
 
 Above the clash of the bells the chorus echoes : 
 
 " To the top, to the top, to the top." 
 
 " We are going," chants the leader, and the tiny 
 cymbals clash "We are going, we are going to the 
 top." 
 
 The western facts of modern text-books cannot 
 touch the meaning of this mountain ; the love of its 
 long curving line which permeates the nation's art, 
 the adoration of its beauty, and the reverence of its 
 power. 
 
 Already in a time which to us upstart western nations 
 is almost mukashi, mukashi, in the days before King 
 Alfred burnt the cakes, a Japanese poet had caught and 
 expressed the feeling of the nation for its mountain : 
 for he wrote of Fujiyama as 
 
 " A treasure given to mortal man 
 The God Protector watching o'er Japan."
 
 THE ASCENT 59 
 
 And to-day the God Protector watches still, and yearly 
 the people come, in the white garb of pilgrims, 
 chanting to his shrine. 
 
 For six short summer weeks they come. Then the 
 winds rush down, the snow falls, the tempests rage, and 
 Lord Fuji lives alone. No human being has yet stayed 
 a winter on his summit, and even in the summer weeks 
 the winds will blow the lava blocks from the walls of 
 the rest-houses, and sometimes the pilgrim from the 
 path. For Fuji stands alone, not one peak among a 
 range, but utterly alone. Rising straight out of the sea 
 on one side, and from the great Tokyo plain on the 
 other, his twelve thousand three hundred and sixty- 
 five feet, in two long curving lines of exquisite grace, 
 rise up and up into the blue, and not one inch of one 
 foot is hidden or lost ; it is all there, visible as a tower 
 built on a treeless plain. It dominates the landscape. 
 It can be seen from thirteen provinces ; and from a 
 hundred miles at sea the pale white peak of Fuji floats 
 above the blue. 
 
 It was a day in the beginning of August, in the very 
 middle of those hot three weeks which are the great 
 festival of Fuji San, in the simmering dawn of a 
 summer's day that we left Tokyo for Subashiri. As 
 the train approached Gotemba the whole crowded 
 carriageful of Japanese looked eagerly for Fuji. The 
 train was climbing slowly by a mountain stream, and we 
 were all looking, looking, beyond the dark green pine- 
 trees of the river's bank. Suddenly, for one dazzling 
 moment, the deep blue cone of Fuji lay pillowed on a 
 bank of clouds in the middle of the clear blue sky. 
 Then, swiftly, the clouds rolled up a/id up. Puji San 
 was gone. The whole carriageful gave vent to those
 
 60 LORD FUJI 
 
 long strangled Jis of admiration and delight, and with 
 a murmured "Fuji San seeing have" sank back on 
 their heels on the cushions. 
 
 Gotemba is the nearest railway station to Fujiyama, 
 and the highest. It lies a thousand feet up. Being 
 the most accessible, it is the most usual starting- 
 point for the climb, but it is not the most picturesque. 
 A wonderful line of trams now connects Gotemba with 
 Subashiri, and even with Yoshida, a place half round 
 the base of the mountain. We were to start from 
 Subashiri and come down to Yoshida, and return by 
 the lakes. So from the station we walked up the 
 straggling, badly kept street of Gotemba, where every 
 house is a hotel and every hotel hangs out many adver- 
 tisements in the shape of cotton streamers twelve 
 feet long and six inches wide, which are attached by 
 rings to bamboo poles. So through groves of white 
 and blue and brown banners all adorned with 
 beautiful Chinese symbols we walked to the tramway. 
 
 A dive through a wooden archway between two 
 tea-houses, where a ticket-hole and a wooden barrier 
 composed the station, and we were there. The 
 trams stood under the archway ; the lines were lost in 
 the black cindery mud and they were both Japanese 
 the tram-lines, just rows of knitting-needles and 
 laid very close together, the trams diminished by 
 the national taste for the national needs to a little 
 oblong box like a stunted bathing-machine. Our tram 
 stood from ground to roof perhaps some five feet high. 
 By taking off our hats we could just manage to sit 
 down, and by judiciously fitting our knees into one 
 another like elaborate dovetailing we got in width-ways, 
 and we only got in at all by entering the door side- 
 ways. Fat people do not travel in Japanese trams
 
 THE ASCENT 61 
 
 not unless they have a ladder and sit on the roof. The 
 only way to insinuate luggage is to coax it through 
 the window-frames, which, as there were only two 
 to a side, were almost once and a half times the width 
 of the door, not more. In the Fuji tramways pil- 
 grims' hats are not admitted. This is no prohibition. 
 It is an impossibility, for the diameter of the pilgrim 
 hat, which is twice as large as the largest halo, is 
 equal in size to the width of the entire tram. So 
 the pilgrims hang their huge circles of straw hats, 
 like scooped-out orange halves, outside ; and our tram 
 before it started became a new kind of armoured train. 
 
 In this dumpy bathing-box we had room for four 
 a side. We took five and thought it empty ; smiled 
 at six ; submitted to seven ; where an eighth would 
 have disposed himself I do not know, he would 
 certainly have got in, but the puzzle would have 
 been to have found a vacant cubic foot of space for 
 his occupation. Trams are never full in Japan. 
 There is always room for more, if the more arrive. 
 In this case the more got in at a small junction 
 outside the back lanes of Gotemba. They got in, 
 three of them, and with huge bundles too. Then 
 the conductor looked round inquiringly and smiled, 
 whereupon two polite pilgrims of lighter build than 
 the newcomers gave up their seats and wedged them- 
 selves into the window-frames, while the bundles were 
 deposited on the continuous strata of passenger. What 
 happened to the third I do not know. He got in. 
 
 Then we started, really started, for there was no 
 other halting-place, no village or station between here 
 and Subashiri. Nothing but a broad, bare sweep of 
 upward-tending common, where multitudes of wild 
 flowers grew out of the cindery soil.
 
 62 LORD FUJI 
 
 As we went on, the faintly curving common, which 
 always sloped round and up, grew wilder and wilder. 
 There were fewer flowers on the black soil. Sometimes 
 the cinders lay all bare in large dull patches against the 
 coarse grass. We were on the broad swelling slope of 
 Fuji, on the edge of the first ripple before it dies away 
 into the smooth water of the plain below. And we were 
 crawling slowly from the first to the second ripple as a fly 
 crawls round the curve of an orange. Fuji himself 
 was invisible. For all we could see he did not exist. 
 Spread out before our eyes was only the endless swell- 
 ing line of the green common, always curving round 
 and up. From time to time our driver blew a melan- 
 choly thin note from a tiny copper horn shaped like a 
 thickened comma and ornamented with a worked band 
 of brass, a pathetic far-off note unknown to western 
 scales. 
 
 Our tram-line was laid among the smple cinders of 
 Fuji's burnt-out fires, and sometimes the curves were 
 very sharp. Then the conductor, balanced on the step 
 and grasping the window-frame with both hands, 
 jerked the tram towards him to keep it on the lines ; 
 and we rounded the curves in triumph. The compact 
 mass of passenger which filled the tram interior looked 
 on unperturbed, while those in the window-frames 
 kindly adjusted their weight to assist the conductor. 
 And the melancholy thin note of the copper horn 
 travelled over the long slope of the upward-tending 
 common as we crawled slowly on. 
 
 In the midst of a perfect stocking-heel of knitting- 
 needles, which all looked as though they were about to 
 begin violently knitting at once, the tram stopped, and 
 the compact mass of passenger disintegrated itself 
 slowly. Having been the first to enter we were the
 
 THE ASCENT 63 
 
 last to detach ourselves from the general lump, and 
 when we did recover a separate entity the knitting- 
 needles lay gleaming in the cindery mud and there 
 was nothing else We stumbled on over them for 
 some time, until a ticket-hole in a sentry-box restored 
 our belief that it was a stopping-place and not an 
 accident. So we stood still and shouted for our tea- 
 house boy by name. He came running, in long, tight- 
 fitting, blue trousers like thick cotton hose and a blue 
 tunic ; and he was a girl, a pretty bright-coloured girl 
 with daintily coiffured hair ; and we all set off for the 
 tea-house. 
 
 Subashiri is another straggling ill-kept street, all 
 tea-houses and long cotton banners tied to bamboo 
 poles, and our tea-house was the last of them all. It 
 lay on the very edge of Fuji, and when we left it, 
 after all our preparations had been completed, our 
 lunch eaten, our guide engaged, we stepped straight 
 on to the endless curve of upward-tending common. 
 
 I should have said our horses stepped, for the first 
 stage of Fuji San is climbable on horses, pack-horses 
 of a unique Japanese breed, which bite. They are 
 harnessed with elaborate trappings in scarlet and gold, 
 saddled with huge wooden saddles, rising like the 
 prow of a ship behind, and sloping so steeply that 
 the middle is one long knife-blade ridge, and only 
 a tight hold of the stirrups prevents the rider from 
 falling. All ride straddle-legged. I do not recom- 
 mend Japanese pack-horses for pleasure, comfort, or 
 security. 
 
 We plodded along over the bare common with its 
 eternal long sweep upwards, like the swell of a great 
 Atlantic roller, and the freshness and the coldness 
 seemed to lift us out of Japan and carry us miles and
 
 64 LORD FUJI 
 
 miles north, to the chill summer of a northern land. 
 The path which cut winding across the long up-sweep 
 of the green common was black as ink, and shining 
 with the wet of mountain clouds. Fuji was invisible, 
 but as the deep rumble of the thunder, deadened 
 behind the thick white clouds which bounded path and 
 common, rolled slowly out of hearing it was as if Great 
 Fuji spoke. Behind the mist the presence of the 
 " honourable mountain " could be surely felt. Already 
 the world seemed sunk away and the pilgrimage 
 begun. 
 
 Over the green common the pack-horses plodded. 
 Our guide and the little girl groom, in her thick blue 
 hose and dark blue tunic, were far behind talking in 
 peace. The big drops of rain which the thunder 
 brought had ceased to fall, and the freshness and the 
 chill coming after the tropical heat of the plain stung 
 strength to life again. Even the pack-horses grew 
 less sulky, and urging made them shuffle into some- 
 thing near a trot. But this outbreak of energy, which 
 lasted perhaps eighty yards, was more than enough for 
 comfort, though it added to experience, for like the 
 knights of old who " clove " their enemies in two, 
 we too "clove," but in another direction. It was 
 painful. So the horses sank back into their bad- 
 tempered pace, and the wide common swept onwards 
 and upwards. 
 
 After awhile the monotony of the black path crossing 
 the green common was varied by stunted bushes which, 
 gradually growing bigger and bigger, actually enclosed 
 the cinder-track as English hedges an English lane. 
 But the change was brief and the sloping green world 
 with the long black line of path winding across it came 
 back again.
 
 THE ASCENT 65 
 
 The pack-horses plodded bad-temperedly on, and 
 the structure of that saddle seemed to be petrifying in 
 my frame. A blot in the path which had lain for so 
 long on the edge of the common came gradually nearer 
 until it widened into a deep oblong pit filled with the 
 rakings of a thousand fires. Through this we ploughed 
 our way, and the loose cinders came over the feet of 
 the horses. With a good deal of exertion we climbed 
 out again, then a few yards, a sharp turn, and we 
 passed an empty row of sheds, for we had reached the 
 Mma gaeshi "Horse-turn-back" station. My horse 
 evidently understood the Chinese characters of the 
 tea-house sign, for no sooner did he see them than he 
 promptly walked into one of the sheds, with me cling- 
 ing affectionately to his neck to avoid the shock of the 
 roof on my chest. But promptly as he walked in, the 
 little girl groom and the boy guide were prompter; 
 with a rush they were at his head, hauling him out 
 again. He objected strongly, snarling like an ill-used 
 dog, and so did I, but we were backed out of the shed 
 at last. 
 
 We did not " horse-turn-back," we were going to 
 take our steeds on one more station. The stations on 
 Fuji, which are nothing but the native tea-house, 
 rougher, ruder, and less scrupulously clean, are mostly 
 built right across the actual path itself. You go in at 
 one side and out at the other. 
 
 Up to the very threshold of the tea-house the sweep 
 of the wet green common rolled, like a gigantic, 
 motionless wave that never breaks. It was a bare 
 wild world bounded only by the pale walls of the 
 distant clouds. But on the other side the path plunged 
 steeply into a thick interminable wood, where the 
 great trees dripped slowly, with the heavy persistency
 
 66 LORD FUJI 
 
 of Fate, and the dark trunks glistened uncertainly with 
 wet. The little girl groom and the boy guide came and 
 led the horses carefully, for the path was very steep, 
 and the thick roots of the trees stretched like cords 
 above the cinders. 
 
 This stage was short. At the next tea-house, which 
 lay confined as a lake between the walls of the moun- 
 tain, we said "good-bye" to the ill-tempered horses 
 and to the little girl groom. The boy was to take us 
 to the top and down to Yoshida. Then the wood, 
 which the tea-house had interrupted no more than a 
 buoy the ocean, stretched on. The great trees dripped 
 coldly, with that chill feel of damp green things that 
 makes the springtime of the north : coldly fresh as 
 though the running sappy life were chill as mountain 
 water, as though the growing trees were enwrapped in 
 invisible ice and the very air made of impalpable snow. 
 
 In the midst of the wood stood a little desolate 
 shrine, its floor was nothing but the black stamped 
 earth, its roof of roughest thatch kept down with lava- 
 stones, and only the tiny altar had walls at all. Behind 
 a sort of wooden bar the gods sat dim, and a mournful 
 old priest was their only attendant. 
 
 Straight towards the altar led the mountain path. 
 This was the gateway of Lord Fuji. Each path that 
 climbs the "honourable mountain" leads through a 
 temple to the temple on the top. At the first shrine 
 the pilgrim buys his long white staff, stamped with the 
 temple crest, which he carries with him upwards to the 
 summit. 
 
 We bought our staves. And the old man, thrust- 
 ing a thin bar of iron like a stick of sealing-wax 
 into the charcoal fire, burnt the crest of Subashiri's 
 shrine into the clean white wood, and with a courteous
 
 THE ASCENT 67 
 
 gesture he said the prayer which we, unknowing, had 
 left unsaid. Lord Fuji is neither fierce nor exclusive, 
 all the world may come as pilgrims through his gate- 
 ways. From the great Sun-Goddess the Mikado 
 sprang, and the people of Japan are all kin to the 
 Shinto gods, but the Shinto gods themselves welcomed 
 the Lord Buddha when he came. Side by side with 
 the older gods Buddha's temples stand to-day, and 
 Lord Buddha, too, once said, " All men are one " ; and 
 again, " All living things are brothers to mankind " ; for 
 Buddha, like the modern scientists, declared the world, 
 all worlds, and all that in them is, one, in substance 
 one. 
 
 Three steps from the temple and the trees of the 
 wood shut over it as waters over a stone. It was 
 lost. Lord Fuji is greater than his temples. With 
 the help of our staves we climbed on up the steep 
 cinder-path, till the great green trees, dripping slowly, 
 dwindled, drew back, were ended. 
 
 On the very edge of the wood was a tea-house, 
 the Ichi-go, No. i station, a roughly built wooden- 
 walled tea-house, on the edge of whose matting, with 
 our feet on the path, we sat and drank tea, innumer- 
 able egg-bowls of hot green tea. While we were 
 sitting here a whole party of pilgrims, in their white 
 hose trousers, their white tunics tucked into their white 
 obi, and their wash-basin-big straw hats, came down 
 the path. They turned into the tea-house, and one old 
 man, dropping on to the matting, rolled himself into a 
 corner and was covered with futon. He had caught 
 cold on the top, and was perfectly exhausted with pain 
 and fatigue. But as he lay in the corner, clutching 
 faz futon to him as though to press a concrete warmth 
 inio his numbed bones, there was in his eyes a look
 
 68 LORD FUJI 
 
 of dwelling content that not all the pain nor all the 
 fatigue could overcome. He had climbed from the 
 threshold to the sanctuary of Fuji ; had knelt by the 
 cloud-swept altar ; felt the might of the God in the 
 winds ot his summit, in the still depths of his crater ; 
 caught up with Lord Fuji on high, he had looked 
 down upon earth. What now was pain or fatigue ? 
 
 The path from the tea-house struck out abruptly 
 across the mountain, and we soon stood above the 
 trees, stood on the bare cinder-slope that is Fuji. It 
 was very much like walking up an ash-heap or a 
 ballast-mound, and about as beautiful. Below us 
 everything was hidden in a shifting mist ; above, 
 twenty feet of cinder-slope ended in a white wall. It 
 was like climbing a black rope hung between two 
 clouds. 
 
 After the ballast-heap came a lava-bed, where a 
 molten river of lava had dried itself into high rocks 
 and deep cracks, as the ice of a glacier. We crossed 
 it obliquely, and in the twilight saw neither beginning 
 nor end, neither from where it came nor to where it 
 went ; but its pinnacles and crevasses, its tumbled 
 waves and jagged, piled-up ridges, lay lustreless and 
 dark, as though of coal-black ice. 
 
 Once across this lava-glacier, and out of the dip 
 formed by its bed, we stood on a sort of self-contained 
 ash-heap, and looked down that long slope of Fuji 
 which already lay below us. 
 
 Dimly through the faint floating veil of mist we 
 could see all the green earth bare and smooth, with a 
 darker line of hills as a child's bank of mud curving 
 round the black surface of the lakes. We were so 
 high up, the lakes so far away, and the whole air so
 
 THE ASCENT 69 
 
 heavy with moisture that they looked in the misty 
 light like polished slabs of black rock dropped into 
 the green earth as one might sink stepping-stones into 
 a lawn. As we watched the light seemed to thicken, 
 the white mists spread through it as motes in a sun- 
 beam, gathered themselves together. Swiftly they 
 hid the black lakes ; and boiling within the dark curve 
 of the hills in billows of smoke, boiled over the mud- 
 bank of hills, and blotting them out ; submerged the 
 green earth, and flowing rapidly upwards hid all the 
 long slope of Fuji beneath a shoreless sea of fog. 
 
 Again we stood on a steep cinder-heap on the black 
 rope which hung from void to void alone. 
 
 And impenetrable Fuji remained. We simply 
 climbed a cinder-path which ran from end to end of a 
 never-ending, ever-retreating circle of cloud. And 
 still within this grey-white circle we reached the Ni-go, 
 or No. 2 station. Here we were to stop the night, 
 because No. 2 is larger and more comfortable than 
 No. 4, and No. 8 was too far away. 
 
 No. 2 lay on the side of the path, its face looking 
 over the precipice and its three sides well within a 
 scooped-out hole in the cinder-heap. It was nothing 
 but an ordinary Japanese room, only its walls were 
 of solid wood, protected outside by cut blocks of lava, 
 and inside with a lining of folded futon on shelves. 
 Far away in the back of the room the charcoal fire 
 was sunk in a sort of earth well, so that you could sit 
 on the matting with your legs in the hole, absorb 
 warmth, or do your cooking. Otherwise the tea-house 
 was bare matted space on which each comer staked 
 out a claim for himself with his luggage. 
 
 Having chosen a good site in a corner less draughty
 
 70 LORD FUJI 
 
 than the rest of the enclosure, we proceeded to unpack 
 and wash. Just outside the middle of the open wall 
 of the house, and full on the pathway of Fuji, stood a 
 large waterbutt. Having been directed by the family 
 an amiable man, an indifferent wife, and an inquisitive 
 boy to wash outside, I stepped on to the pathway. 
 The tub was half full of water and looked very like 
 the ordinary bath-tub of Japan. It was the first time 
 I had seen a bath out of doors, though they figure so 
 largely in travellers' tales ; still there was nothing else, 
 so boldly I plunged the top half of myself into the 
 water. 
 
 A simultaneous scream from the man, the wife 
 and the boy, brought me up dripping and bewildered. 
 
 What had I done ? 
 
 Not sinned against their moral code, surely. No- 
 worse. Washed in the drinking-water ! 
 
 Luckily there was more, enough for endless tea that 
 night, and to-morrow fresh water could be fetched. 
 But my wash came to an abrupt end. Of course what 
 I ought to have done was to unearth a brass pan 
 tucked away behind the tub, take down a bamboo 
 dipper from a lava-block, dip out water from the tub 
 into the pan and wash in that. Quite simple, naturally, 
 when it was all explained and the pan and the dipper 
 produced, but all problems always are simple after the 
 explanation. 
 
 The amiable man remained amiable even after this 
 catastrophe, and the indifferent wife had not been 
 shaken from her indifference save for the space of one 
 brief scream, while the small boy, at such an exhibition of 
 curious manners on the part of the Ijin San, grew 
 more inquisitive than ever, and we fried ham, ate tinned 
 tongue, cut slices of bread, and drank foreign wine
 
 THE ASCENT 71 
 
 under a close and exhaustive series of comments which 
 were questions. 
 
 It grew dark rapidly as we ate. And as relays of 
 pilgrims came in out of the night to fling themselves 
 down on the matting, swallow cupfuls of hot tea and 
 exchange long compliments with the man, the wife, 
 and the guide, and disappear again into the night, 
 we congratulated ourselves. No. 4 must have been 
 very full. At eight o'clock, when the amado were 
 drawn and the tea-house became a compact box, 
 No. 2 had no guests but the Ijin San. 
 
 It was time to go to bed. The man put out the 
 one smoking lamp by the fire-pit which had cast such 
 lurid yellow lights on the white clothes of the pilgrims 
 as they sat and drank, and such murky, gigantic 
 shadows on the rest of the room ; the boy went to bed 
 in a corner, and we rolled ourselves up in our carefully 
 Keatinged/^/07z and tried to sleep. 
 
 It was cold. There were fleas. And Fuji sent us 
 down a draught which simply whistled through the 
 wooden walls, the folded futon and the lava-blocks. 
 And the sense of the unusual, of the rest-house, the 
 cinder-path and of Fuji, crept into our slumbers, 
 holding back sleep. 
 
 When we awoke it was already five o'clock and 
 the amado were open. The boy, careering over the 
 matting, was detailing how the Ijin San slept. 
 
 We shook ourselves out of our futon and went 
 outside to wash not in the waterbutt. 
 
 Already, when we stepped upon the cinder-path, the 
 unseen sun had touched the white clouds lying like 
 islands in the blue beneath. And as we watched they 
 coloured blushing, till in blood-red pools they studded
 
 72 LORD FUJI 
 
 thick the air below. They lay away out over the 
 land, moving slowly through the vapoury mist. It was 
 as if the air was half precipitated, the atmosphere made 
 visible. We looked down on to the world below and 
 saw it as one sees white stones at the bottom of 
 deep water. 
 
 The hidden sun was rising swiftly, and as he rose 
 the blood-red pools faded out ; the vapoury white air 
 grew thinner, seemed slowly drying, until clear and 
 invisible, we looked through it and saw the green 
 earth stretching away and away to the level line of 
 the horizon ; while midway the little lakes lay sepia- 
 black upon the green, curving so comfortably into the 
 tiny crescent of the hills all dark with purple shadows. 
 A fresh-washed world lying green and flat at the 
 bottom of 7,000 feet of atmosphere. 
 
 It was cold, the water in the brass pan colder, 
 and tingling with sudden chill we ran rapidly up the 
 path past the scooped-out hollow where the rest-house 
 hid and stood transfixed. 
 
 Above us, touching us, and black against a sky all 
 blue and liquid as the living sea, was Fuji San. 
 
 His clear-cut lines rose up quickly, and the mountain, 
 whose slope our hands were holding, seemed to draw 
 back its summit that our eyes might see it, so close it 
 lay, so steep above. Round as a tower it rose in curves 
 of grace, a black lighthouse springing towards the sky, 
 delicate as Giotto's lily tower : slender in its grace and 
 fragile. This was no rude Colossus, mighty with brute 
 strength, but a god, great in grace, and strong, because 
 divine. 
 
 Upwards the soaring lines rose up, coal-black, and 
 the growing light caught faintly at a wine-red patch
 
 THE ASCENT 73 
 
 where the sullen fires were sleeping, caught and turned 
 it redder ; redly it glowed, smouldering into life, the 
 living life of Fujiyama. 
 
 Beneath the rounded dip of the summit were two 
 tiny cracks, and the sky which lay so blue within the 
 crescent curve seemed straining through. Here was 
 neither tree nor rock, neither snow nor glacier, nothing 
 to hide the form and substance of the mountain. Quite 
 smoothly it rose, deep black, one great dead cinder. 
 
 It was perfectly fine when at last towards six o'clock 
 we started to climb ; and the pale blue sky lay flat 
 behind Fuji, as the background in a picture. 
 
 Our path was narrow, just a foot-wide track beaten 
 firm in the steep cinder-slope. And we climbed, till 
 at No. 4 we stopped to rest. 
 
 The stations on Fuji are all much alike. A matted 
 room lined with futon, and always a square well at the 
 back with a charcoal fire and an ever-boiling kettle. 
 As you go up the wooden walls are hidden outside 
 beneath huge blocks of cut lava, hidden deeper and 
 deeper, while the roofs are fastened down with lava- 
 stones. Yet every winter Fuji blows down the built- 
 up walls, tears off the roofs, and sends the big blocks 
 hurtling down the slope. Even in summer the roof 
 and walls lose portions of themselves, which, rolling, 
 rolling, rolling, roll for ever downwards. Some of the 
 stations are smaller, some larger, some cleaner, this is 
 the only difference. In each you sit down on the 
 matting to rest, and the crouching man over the fire 
 brings you hot tea, and rice-paste cakes, while a far- 
 away figure dimly seen through the smoke of the 
 charcoal fire asks your guide where you come from, 
 where you are going to, when you started, and what
 
 74 LORD FUJI 
 
 time you will be back. And your guide replies, with 
 endless details as to your behaviour if you are an Ijin 
 San, and the amount you have already expended on 
 tea and tips. 
 
 It was a glorious morning and one with the added 
 charm of uncertainty. 
 
 Floating in the blue above and below us were clouds, 
 large white clouds which would swoop down on the 
 land, suddenly, and hide it as under a napkin. Then 
 the black cone of Fuji, a cone with its top bitten out 
 in two little bites, would pull down a thick flap out of 
 the blue, and disappear. Mountain, sky and land 
 shifted and shone, passed in an eddy of broken 
 glimpses, stayed in a still-set picture, or were lost under 
 covering clouds. 
 
 But always the steep little path led up through the 
 loose cinder-slope, and always we climbed. 
 
 The steepest and most tiring part of the climb, 
 except the natural staircase below the summit, is 
 between the sixth and eighth station, where the path, 
 leaving the cinder-slope, runs along a ridge of solid 
 lava, rising like the long root of a tree high up out of 
 the cinders, and loses itself among great black blocks. 
 To cross this was something like jumping over sea 
 rocks when the tide is out, only instead of lying flat 
 these went steeply upward. 
 
 As we went toiling painfully along, feeling very 
 like ants crawling up a tree-trunk, the clash of tiny 
 cymbals, the faint echoes of talk and laughter came 
 floating up. It was a whole party of pilgrims who 
 came swinging up hand over hand, as it were, and 
 as easily as if they were skating on good ice. We 
 first saw them as we stood propped against the
 
 THE ASCENT 75 
 
 lava-blocks, panting, and they were far below us, 
 tiny as dwarfs, little spots of white on the dead-black 
 slope, away down in the second storey as we were 
 in the sixth. But as we laboriously climbed our 
 inches they came on swiftly on, up, on, past us ; 
 the little bells clashing and chiming gaily to the talk 
 and laughter. Our guide told us they were kuriimaya 
 who had started from Gotcmba that morning at two, 
 and who would get back there again before dark, to 
 work the next day as usual. Anything like the pace 
 at which those men came up the steep slope of Fuji 
 for the most part straight over the long beds of loose 
 cinders I have never seen. It was like sailors running 
 up a rope. They came up more swiftly than most 
 people would care to go down, without an effort, with 
 plenty of breath left to talk and laugh', and with that 
 supreme ease which only comes when doing something 
 well within the margin of one's power. 
 
 We were very glad to rest at No. 8, though our 
 friends the kurumaya had gone on cheerfully. It was 
 such a nice large tea-house, beautifully clean, and the 
 hot egg-bowls full of tea were peculiarly refreshing. 
 Without the continuous tea I do not know how one 
 would climb Fuji at all. The air at 13,000 feet 
 freezes, but the sun of Japan pours down relentlessly, 
 fierce as the tropics, while the hot dust drifts down 
 one's throat, into one's very skin ; and when the wind 
 blows you need to cling to the shifting cinders with 
 the very soles of your feet. Shelter on the bare slopes 
 of Fuji there is none. Frequently the wind is so 
 fierce even in the six brief weeks of summer that to 
 stand upright is impossible, for Fuji's summit is in the 
 heart of the storm. 
 
 Between the eighth and the ninth station the path
 
 ;6 LORD FUJI 
 
 was easy, but we climbed it wrapped in a sudden 
 cloud. All the long sweep of earth below was gone. 
 The green Tokyo plain, where the dark thunder-clouds 
 lay brooding in the still blue air, and the great fingers 
 of light which struck so fiercely on the little lakes 
 beneath the mud bank of the hills, the dark cone, so 
 near above us, all were gone, sponged out by a big 
 cloud. And we were only climbing up a steep black 
 rope that hung between two infinities, climbing out of 
 space, into space. 
 
 From the ninth and last station you climb into 
 Fuji's stronghold by a giant staircase of rough lava. 
 It is necessary here to hoist yourself painfully up by 
 the aid of guides or your own two hands. We 
 climbed on slowly. The lava was quite hot, for the 
 staircase lies cut within the slope, and gets and keeps 
 the heat. 
 
 On the steepest step of the staircase we passed an 
 old, old man, and an old, old woman, both in the white 
 garb of pilgrims, and each with a guide on either side 
 to help them on. The last pitiful effort of the old 
 woman to drag herself up on to a lava-block had ex- 
 hausted her completely; she lay huddled against the 
 stones gasping, her eyes shut. The old man kneeling 
 by her side was holding the wrinkled hand in both of 
 his trying to encourage her. The cracked old voice, 
 broken with quavering pants for breath, sounded 
 strangely on the desolate black staircase as we came by. 
 
 "We are going," he chanted "we are going to 
 the top." 
 
 And the four guides in their fresh young voices 
 sang : " To the top, to the top, to the top." 
 
 "We are going," repeated the old man, softly 
 stroking the hand he held " we are going to the top."
 
 THE ASCENT 77 
 
 And again the four young voices rang out vigour 
 ously : " To the top, to the top, to the top." 
 
 It was the pilgrims' hymn, and the old woman heard 
 it. Slowly she stirred, her mouth opened with a sigh 
 of utter weariness, but still she too sang in the thinnest 
 trickle of a voice, broken with quavering sobs : 
 
 " To the top, to the top, to the top." 
 
 It was the most pathetic music I have ever heard. 
 Indeed the wave of faith was great which could carry 
 such as these to the top of Fuji San. 
 
 Up the steep steps, cut so deep within the lava, we 
 hurried panting, eager we, too, to reach the top. But 
 the summit of Fujiyama is a sanctuary, and on its 
 threshold stood two priests. 
 
 As we stumbled up over the last step, and on to the 
 path which runs around the crater, they barred our 
 way, standing motionless behind a white-wood wicket. 
 In the breeze their black robes fluttered, their tonsured 
 heads were bare. 
 
 Surprised we paused. All the climber's hurry fell 
 away. This was not another peak to be raced up and 
 raced down by the indifferent tourist, not another 
 ascent to be added to the list of the mountaineer. 
 Fuji San is sacred. Enter into his courts as into the 
 temple of the Lord, humbly, reverently, or at least 
 with a sincere respect. 
 
 The two priests leaned over the wicket as we came 
 up and bowed ; but they did not open it. One 
 stretched out his hand for our staves to stamp them 
 with the temple's crest. On the summit of Fuji San 
 the crest is stamped in vermilion ink. In the temples 
 at the foot it is burnt with a red-hot iron : vermilion is 
 a royal colour.
 
 78 LORD FUJI 
 
 The other priest, holding a bamboo dipper, came 
 slowly towards us. Something he was saying as he 
 moved, in the nasal sing-song of the priest. Then 
 he motioned to us to put out our hands and slowly, 
 carefully, he poured the ice-cold water over them. 
 And they bade us enter. It was the rite of purifica- 
 tion, the symbol of the contrite heart which all who 
 cross great Fuji's threshold must surely bring. 
 
 Once inside the wicket the path, beaten wide here, 
 ran between a breast-high wall of lava which, built like 
 a rampart on the edge of Fuji, hid the sheer sides of 
 the mountain and a row of low wooden huts, the rest- 
 houses ran between these and on, up to where the 
 black edge of the crater, like the rim of a broken cup, 
 cut the sky in sharp clear lines. 
 
 For the moment it was fine, and leaving our luggage 
 in one of the huts we hurried on, past the rest-houses, 
 on past the rampart wall, on along the little beaten 
 track which still led steeply upwards. Then sharply it 
 turned, and we stood wedged within a crack in the crater 
 wall, with the sharp black rim rising high on either hand. 
 
 We were alone on Fuji's side, before his altar. And 
 there was no sound. 
 
 In a stillness as of death the vast crater stretched 
 800 feet below, and the grey ash-dust gathering through 
 two centuries lay thick and smooth as sand upon the 
 shore. Steeply the cinder-walls rose up, rose round, 
 and held the ash. Only in front of us, across half a mile 
 of silent dust, a wide crack in the cup-like rim showed 
 two tall poles and many floating banners, there where 
 the temple's wicket crossed the pathway from Gotemba. 
 
 Grey ash and cinder, that was Fuji San. Once a 
 mighty fire, a fire two and a half miles round, with
 
 THE ASCENT 79 
 
 13,000 feet of cinders, and a bed of ash 2000 feet 
 across. And now, dying or asleep, rigid as death, grown 
 grey and cold, but yet mighty as the sea, powerful as 
 the storm ; Nature's eternal force made visible. And 
 that still life which rolls around our human incom- 
 pleteness, mysterious and unknown, drew near. Almost 
 it seemed as though we touched the force without, the 
 unresting naked flame of being which threads through 
 the spheres. Almost we touched but saw only the 
 corpse of Life, for Nature keeps her secrets. . . . 
 
 In a silence as of death, the vast still crater stretched 
 for a circle of two miles, and the grey ash-dust gather- 
 ing through two centuries lay thick and smooth the 
 pall of a mighty God. 
 
 Steeply the cindery walls rose up, rose round in 
 jagged points like the rim of a broken cup, and into 
 the crack there came two white-clad pilgrims. They 
 knelt bareheaded on the edge of the crater, looking 
 down, and the murmured sing-song of their prayers 
 broke the silence. Old and grizzled, their Lullet-heads 
 were bent before the altar in a Faith reverent and 
 sincere. 
 
 Truly the might of God had dwelt on Fuji ; the 
 breath of Eternal Life had rested here rested and 
 passed, or was passing ; and the pilgrim in his faith 
 holds sacred the print of that footstep. He prays to 
 that part of the Godhead incarnate in Fuji Fuji so 
 perfect in his grace, so stirring in his strength. 
 
 In western lands the Roman Catholic peasant prays 
 before his altar, but the symbol of his Godhead is 
 often reduced to a composite Christ in pink and white 
 plaster. If Truth must have a form and mankind 
 believes with difficulty in abstract nouns it surely is a
 
 8o LORD FUJI 
 
 purer, grander faith to feel God visible in Fuji's curves, 
 dwelling in his sleeping fires, than to hem Him in a 
 building made by man and seat Him on an ugly altar 
 between groups of tawdry flowers. 
 
 The little narrow path which led down into the 
 crack led also round the summit below the jagged 
 edges of the crater's rim, nnd we followed it. Outside 
 the crack it went steeply downwards before it turned, 
 for above, the cinderyslopes of Fuji were steaming white 
 in the sunshine, and the ground was very hot. It is but 
 a patch, still evidence that Fuji sleeps. He is not dead. 
 
 Then the wandering pathway, a black thread on the 
 loose cinder-slope, led up again, round and down into 
 a tiny fold among the cinders, and suddenly, quickly 
 as a camera snaps, the white clouds, loosely piled upon 
 the mountain, were riven asunder, and the whole world 
 shimmering in a golden haze that touched but did not 
 hide it, lay at our feet. 
 
 Straight down below, 13,000 feet away, it lay. All 
 the long line of the river Fujikawa, gleaming blue-black 
 as rough-cast iron, among the orange sand-flats of its 
 mouth. And the soft curves of the Yokohama penin- 
 sula, a smaller but more graceful Italy, floating, floating, 
 on the water, purple-blue on azure blue. 
 
 And all beyond was the blue intensity of the infinite 
 sea. 
 
 So near it looked, so clear that the steely line of the 
 Fujikawa seemed a sword-blade one could stoop and 
 reach. And leaning we looked from Fuji's top as 
 from a tower; but Fuji's self we could not see. His 
 cinder-slopes had vanished. 
 
 Straight down below there was the world, and we 
 above it hung suspended 13,000 feet above the earth.
 
 THE ASCENT 81 
 
 Beyond, above, outside of it. Dear Earth, how still it 
 lay, how beautiful ! 
 
 And into my mind there floated the old, old words : 
 "And He divided the land from the waters, and the 
 dry land He called Earth. . . . And God looked and 
 saw that it was good." 
 
 Above the world, beyond it, we too could look and 
 see, and we too " saw that it was good." 
 
 Then the little wandering track, beaten firm by the 
 feet of the pilgrims, led on, up and down, among the 
 cinders of Fuji's sides, and round to that great crack 
 in the cup's rim where the pathway from Gotemba 
 reached the summit. 
 
 Here were crowds of people, all the pilgrims on Fuji 
 San, pouring through the white-wood wicket, or buying 
 draughts of the sacred " Golden Water " which is born 
 in the depths of the crater. 
 
 As we stood drinking our little bowlful of the ice- 
 cold water, the low boom of a Japanese temple bell 
 came swaying through the air, and each jagged peak 
 round the crater's rim added its muffled echo to the 
 bell's deep boom. 
 
 The level space which formed the floor to this big 
 crack was full of pilgrims old and young, men, women 
 and little children, and they were all pressing forward 
 between the tall poles, where the long banners tied top 
 and bottom were stirring in the wind, to the little temple 
 lying under the very edge of Fuji, as a nest beneath 
 the eaves. The temple seemed full already, but the 
 crowd, courteous for all their zeal, pressed forward 
 gently, content, if they could not enter, to stay outside. 
 
 Again the low liquid boom came swaying through 
 the air, prolonged by the muffled echoes of the jagged
 
 82 LORD FUJI 
 
 peaks. And we too walked towards the temple. But 
 the patient crowd without reached already to the path- 
 way, and must press back against the cinder sides as 
 the long procession of black-robed priests, with copes 
 and stoles and vestments of rich brocade, swept into 
 the temple. 
 
 Then the liquid booming bell swayed out again and 
 was still ; and the muffled echoes of the peaks, subdued 
 and faint, lingered in the intense silence. 
 
 The priests had passed within. 
 
 The ash on the floor of the crater was soft and very 
 thick. It lay in thin round flakes that broke between 
 the fingers, and the feet sank into it, drawn under as 
 on sand that is half-quick. It was like walking on 
 piles of those sun-lit flecks that carpet a beech-wood ; 
 but the light had gone out of these and left them 
 pale and grey. 
 
 All around the black walls of the crater rose up into 
 the sky, five hundred feet of sheer height. Shut into 
 the crater pit with the dead ash sucking our feet we 
 seemed to have come to the region where death lies 
 behind and birth is yet to come. We stood in the 
 Place of Pause, in that Between which is Nothingness. 
 
 Smooth as the sand of the shore the ash stretched 
 along. Loose and thick the flakes were piled, and 
 the feet, drawn under, grew heavy. 
 
 What was beneath ? Nothingness ? 
 
 And a strange fear of falling through the loose ash 
 into that Nothingness grew with each empty moment. 
 
 Faintly, far away, the stir of Life's Birth reached 
 into the void. It came from below, deep through the 
 ash where a little clear trickle of water sang in the 
 silence. Distinct, but so soft that the senses must
 
 THE ASCENT 83 
 
 needs strain to hear. Through the ash, beneath the 
 ash, the water trickled, faint as a new-born breath. 
 And its name it was Golden. 
 
 The hut when we reached it was empty, and it lay 
 facing the lava-wall, the last of the row, and all of 
 them were open in front, like cages at the Zoo. 
 
 The square pit with its charcoal fire was in front 
 here, and we had to pass behind it to reach the 
 unoccupied space at the back. As we crawled over 
 the matting darkened by our own shadows, for the 
 only light came through the open front, we almost 
 stumbled over some one rolled up in a bundle of futon. 
 It was the old, old woman of the morning. She was 
 asleep, in the deep, dull sleep of utter exhaustion, and 
 her wrinkled chin, dropped down, trembled, as she slept. 
 
 It was very cold in the hut, and we too were glad of 
 futon and egg-bowls of hot tea, glad to eat our tinned 
 tongue and slices of dry bread, and gladder still just 
 to stay wrapt in \hefuton, and sleepily rest. 
 
 The landlord, like an image, sat on his heels in the 
 well and never stirred. From time to time he put 
 fresh pieces of charcoal on the fire with a pair of brass 
 chopsticks ; then the smoke, sweeping in dense waves 
 through the room, would make us all cough abruptly, 
 till it melted slowly away and the room was still. 
 
 Beyond the lava-wall the grey-white clouds lay 
 herded as a fold of sheep, and we watched them 
 mounting up and up, rolling against the wall, rising 
 above it, sending thin wreaths and wisps of mists 
 across the pathway, which stayed like ribbons in the 
 air, and then sinking, dropped down again. Often they 
 came up, and always rolled back beaten. Fuji's 
 summit is above the clouds, they could not scale it.
 
 84 LORD FUJI 
 
 In twos and threes and little groups, the white- 
 robed pilgrims stopped to sit on the edge of the 
 matting and drink tea, and eat innumerable balls of rice 
 rolled in a soft grated substance that looked to be, but 
 was not, cheese a thing unknown in this milkless land. 
 So the pilgrims sat on the matting and ate their rice- 
 balls, which the landlord, without moving his body a 
 hair's-breadth, produced and rolled, and sprinkled, and 
 handed. And the acrid smoke from the charcoal fire 
 drifted across the room, filling it. 
 
 Quite suddenly I awoke out of my sleep, to find 
 some one on the floor beside me waking the old, old 
 woman. It took her a long time to struggle out of 
 that dense, deep sleep into a state of even drowsy 
 consciousness. She sat up, bewildered, and when 
 they told her she must go, get up, climb all that 
 weary way down again, the old face seemed to shrink 
 together in hopeless despair. There was a long dreary 
 pause. Then the old, old woman bowed, the smile of 
 courtesy upon her worn old face. 
 
 " Yoroshil gozaimas " ("As it honourably pleases 
 you "), she said. And rising, she tottered out. 
 
 This flesh was more than weak, but the spirit was 
 the spirit of her race it sacrificed all things. 
 
 We were to sleep in Yoshida that night, and for us 
 too it was time to go. So leaving our money on the 
 edge of the fire-pit we crawled out of the hut. The 
 image sitting on its heels never stirred ; with one 
 swift glance beneath the eyelids, he had reckoned the 
 money to the last sen, but whether more or less than 
 he expected, he remained immovable, magnificently 
 unconscious, occupied solely in bowing us out. Had
 
 THE ASCENT 85 
 
 it been less than the proper charge we certainly should 
 have heard of it through the guide, but as tea is never 
 charged for, each visitor pays for it according to his 
 rank, exigencies, generosity, and the status of the 
 tea-house. In reality, of course, it is payment for 
 attendance as well as tea. 
 
 The Japanese hold that no service performed can 
 ever have a money equivalent. In their economy, 
 money was never a real asset, as courage, knowledge 
 or art, and they ignored it, when they did not despise 
 it. So in the old days, those trades which had most to 
 do with money, whose aim seemed to be the getting 
 of money, were looked down on. Shopkeepers and 
 merchants ranked below swordsmiths, peasants and 
 artisans. Only the ignoble would choose such as a 
 life's work, and if to-day this idea has hindered com- 
 merce, if it has produced the low standard of some 
 business men, and consequently the foreigner's bad 
 opinion of them, it has, on the other hand, lifted the 
 nation out of the rut of sordid greed, made it seek 
 after, and lay fast hold of, that which seems to it true 
 made of its people a race of men, of gentlemen, 
 honourable, high-principled, and capable of indomit- 
 able devotion to their ideal. 
 
 We stepped off the summit of Fuji San into a wet 
 white cloud, which was the sky of the earth below. 
 For the first two stages the way down was the same 
 as the way up, but at No. 8 the paths divided, the 
 one to Yoshida leading away to the left. 
 
 After we had made a sort of semi-tour of the moun- 
 tain we climbed over a lava-ridge and found ourselves 
 in the centre of a black scoop in Fuji's side that, 
 coming from above, stretched interminably downwards.
 
 86 LORD FUJI 
 
 And the whole of the huge groove was a mass of the 
 loosest, most shifting cinder. There was no path. One 
 went down. At each step all the cinders on that part 
 of Fuji slid bodily, tumbling over each other in their 
 haste. You slid too, until the cinders, piling them- 
 selves up and up, reached the knee, and abruptly you 
 stopped, only to pull out that leg and begin to slide 
 again with the other. The rate at which one shot 
 down was prodigious, and the method alarming. Each 
 step seemed to start half the mountain rolling, rolling, 
 for ever downwards, and there seemed no particular 
 reason why the other half with you on it should not 
 roll away too. Positively, as the torrent of cinders 
 rolled and rolled and rolled, the conviction that Fuji- 
 yama must look smaller next morning grew upon me. 
 Until with a flash of understanding I remembered 
 the legend of the dust brought down by the pilgrims' 
 feet flying each night back to the mountain. And it 
 seemed a very necessary explanation, and quite con- 
 vincing too, when I looked at the tons and tons of 
 cinders which my feet alone were sending down Fuji's 
 side. 
 
 After awhile the slope grew even steeper, and the 
 cinders from black became a deep dull red. And still 
 one shot downwards. Small patches of powdery, grey 
 snow sprinkled with tiny round spots were tucked 
 away here between the red cinders, and the whole 
 slope was covered with the straw sandals of former 
 pilgrims. They were scattered over the red cinders 
 like a new kind of vegetation hardier than the rest, 
 and there were thousands on thousands of them. 
 
 And still we shot downwards. At too steep an 
 angle now to be brought up merely by the weight of 
 the cinders, so that we were obliged to invent brakes
 
 THE ASCENT 87 
 
 with our more or less free foot, our extended arms, or 
 the angle of our bodies ; and we were very glad indeed 
 of our staves to put any sort of term to the long 
 uncomfortable slide. 
 
 It was a long while before we passed out of the 
 zone of the waraji, and saw real little green things 
 growing between the cinders. They looked utterly 
 miserable and degenerate, but they did make the 
 ballast solider, and the sliding easier. 
 
 It was a gigantic slide, but we brought up at last on a 
 ridge of grey rock, over which we had to climb carefully, 
 for it was full of holes. On the other side of this ridge 
 the degenerate green weeds had grown into degenerate 
 green plants ; and after a few more slides and climbs 
 the plants became bushes, stunted and miserable, but 
 bushes, and we came out on to a sort of natural grass 
 platform, before the rest-house of No. 4, Yoshidaside. 
 It was dirty, the first dirty house I had ever seen in 
 Japan. Below us, as though stopped short by a word 
 of command, " Thus far and no further," were the trees ; 
 the tops of the nearest were on a level with the plat- 
 form, but not one grew upon it. 
 
 With the cinder-slope behind us we stepped off the 
 grass platform straight into the forest. It was a 
 beautiful forest. First firs, and then, as we went 
 downwards, green trees, small oaks and cryptomerias 
 of all kinds. 
 
 To feet weary of ballast-heaps, the forest footpath 
 was a rest refreshing, and the delight of growing trees 
 and green fresh leaves after waraji and cinders, an 
 enchantment. But Fuji had not finished his surprises 
 or his trials. Soon the pathway disappeared from 
 under our feet, and only the roots of the trees remained. 
 On these we had to walk, and they were slippery,
 
 88 LORD FUJI 
 
 knotted, and far apart, and full of tangled holes that 
 caught and tripped the feet. 
 
 A polite Japanese student came and walked with us 
 a little way "to improve his English," but his feet in 
 their waraji stepped over the tree-roots faster than ours 
 in our boots, and we were soon left alone again. 
 
 Gradually, as we went downwards, the forest altered 
 from the austere wood of the mountain to the rich 
 luxuriant wood of the plains, green with moss, covered 
 with creepers, dripping with big juicy drops of water 
 as though rich sap were oozing from every vein. 
 
 All through the wood there were tiny tea-houses, set 
 under a tree and lost among the branches. We passed 
 No. i at least seven times, each time certain that it 
 really must be the real original No. i, and that the 
 " horse-turn-back " station, where we could get a basha 
 to carry us to Yoshida, was necessarily " the next." 
 After the weary sliding down that abrupt slope, the 
 muscles of one's legs were all trembling with the strain, 
 and the tree-roots, slippery and uncertain, became 
 doubly difficult. We were still going down so steeply 
 that the hollow of the pathway lay like a green chimney 
 below us. Slowly up through this living funnel came 
 the pilgrim's chant. 
 
 "We are going," and the little bells clashed out 
 triumphant " we are going to the top." 
 
 Then the deep sing-song of the chorus, coming 
 nearer with each syllable, grew louder : 
 
 "Top ... the top ... to the top." 
 
 We waited while the chant coming up from the 
 green depths below came nearer, came past us, went on. 
 
 From the green heights above it sounded down. 
 
 "We are going," and the tiny cymbals clashed 
 "we are going to the top."
 
 THE ASCENT 89 
 
 And faintly echoing from above came the answer : 
 "To the top ... the top ... top." 
 
 And still the first stations succeeded one another, 
 and the tired feet and the aching muscles grew more 
 weary. The wood was dense as ever, but less steep, 
 and at last there came earth as well as tree-roots for a 
 pathway. 
 
 We passed through another station, half tea-house, 
 half temple, where a man sat behind a tray of thin 
 irons stamped with the temple's crest, and where gods 
 and tea-bowls filled the shelves. The path went 
 through it and out again, under the trees, a path of 
 good stamped earth. Then twisting suddenly it ended 
 in four smooth green steps that led down into a natural 
 amphitheatre, with tea-houses on each side. This 
 was the Mma gaeshi " horse-turn-back " station 
 Yoshida side. Away to the left were several square 
 boxes on wheels, otherwise the stage was empty. It was, 
 indeed, exactly like a "set" in an opera. 
 
 We hobbled, it was so difficult to walk on flat earth, 
 to a tea-house and sat down demanding basha. Slowly 
 a man entered right front, and crossing left centre 
 tipped up a square box and waited. Then another 
 man, entering left front, harnessed a horse to it. This 
 took them half an hour, because they wanted four times 
 too much for the drive to Yoshida, and at each refusal, 
 at each expostulation, at each rebate, the one man 
 dropped the square box down on the ground and the 
 other gave up harnessing the horse. Meanwhile we 
 drank tea and monotonously repeated our price. After 
 half an hour the basha was finally harnessed, and 
 crossing left front we got in. 
 
 This basha was simply a square box without a lid,
 
 90 LORD FUJI 
 
 mounted on wheels. You sat on a piece of matting 
 spread at the bottom, leant against the wooden back 
 and clutched hard at the sides to keep yourself in. 
 The driver sat on the shaft and used his feet as a 
 brake. The reins consisted of one length of straw 
 rope attached to the left side of the horse's head. 
 
 For the first half-hour the relief of stretching out 
 one's miserable, trembling legs was pure bliss, after that, 
 dasJta-driviag was pleasant but jolty, and after that it 
 became renewed torture to endure the jolting, and the 
 aches in one's back and arms were vigorous and per- 
 sistent. Road there was none, only two large ruts, in, 
 over and among which we wandered. 
 
 The trees stopped as abruptly above the natural 
 amphitheatre of Mma gaeshi as they had begun below 
 the platform of No. 4. And for the whole two hours 
 of our journey to Yoshida we travelled over an immense 
 far-reaching common, one of the soft ripples at Fuji's 
 base. There was not a house or a village to be seen, 
 noth'iVg but the wide stretch of green common. 
 
 It was half-past five when the basha started out 
 among the ruts, and the clear, colourless light of a 
 northern evening we were 3000 feet up which is 
 not cold, yet is so colourless, enclosed the earth. The 
 sky was as bare of clouds as the common of land- 
 marks; the one lay palely blue above, the other stretched 
 subduedly green below. Here and there the green was 
 crossed by long flushes of colour, with the red of tiny 
 tige/ -lilies, and the pale yellow of the evening primrose. 
 Behind, Lord Fuji rose majestic. At first a line of 
 fleecy cloud had lain above the deep green of the forest, 
 a r .d Fuji's head was lost in mist, but at the sunset the 
 clouds fell away lower and lower, until the whole long 
 sweep of Fuji rose up triumphant into the blue.
 
 THE ASCENT 91 
 
 It was but slowly that the basha jolted among the 
 deep-cut ruts of the common, and but slowly that we 
 travelled on, downwards. 
 
 Looking out across the wide flat land we saw that 
 the whole world was slightly rounded, slightly tilted. 
 It was like journeying over a large green apple. The 
 globe in fact palpable, visibly rounded. Away on the 
 left the sun was setting in straight streamers of pale 
 red edged with shining gold. And the green common, 
 with its pools of little red lilies, and its bands of pale 
 yellow primroses, grew greyer and greyer. 
 
 Fuji San, perfect in long smooth curves, stood purple- 
 blue behind. Clear-cut as a jewel in a setting he rose 
 up, rose up, until the rounded strength of his summit 
 lay bright sapphire on the azure sky. 
 
 Over the ruts the basha stumbled, endlessly jolting. 
 
 The sun set slowly, and slowly the colours died. 
 Grey lay the common in front of us, on each side. 
 Lord Fuji was but a dark, still shadow. And over the 
 ruts the basha stumbled in long, slow jolts. 
 
 We were very tired, our backs ached with the 
 jolting, and our arms were numb with pain. All 
 around us the grey spaces of the common stretched 
 uninterruptedly, without house or village. Where was 
 Yoshida ? 
 
 Still the baska lumbered and stumbled, and we looked 
 for lights and houses. 
 
 Nothing. Only in front of us the grey level of the 
 common grew tall and black. ... In a few more jolts 
 the deep black had engulfed us, grey common and all, 
 and we were wandering among dark shadows that 
 were trees. 
 
 In the very pitch of the blackness the cart suddenly
 
 92 LORD FUJI 
 
 stopped. We were asked to get out. The basha went 
 no further. 
 
 "But Yoshida?" 
 
 " Yoshida yoroshl ! all right," replied the man, 
 unconcerned, as though every traveller to every town 
 arrived in a dark wood without sight or sound of 
 houses ; and he drove off. 
 
 Our guide picked up the luggage, and we followed 
 stumbling, straining our eyes to tell the deeper shadows 
 that were trees from the paler dark that meant pathway. 
 
 Slowly the deeper shadows receded, and in their place 
 came the dim forms of houses. Then a sharp turn 
 and we were walking along a real road with the familiar 
 knitting-needles of the Japanese tramway shining in 
 the twilight. After a while the houses grew denser, 
 and some of them had lights ; but the contrast only made 
 the pale dark of the open roadway seem still blacker. 
 
 Large trucks, like kitchen-tables with their legs cut 
 short, came sliding past us as we stumbled on, gliding 
 slowly down the road alone and unattached. 
 
 Parties of pilgrims in white, with white staves in 
 their hands, came unexpectedly out of the darkness, 
 and the lighted paper lanterns in their hands warmed 
 their white clothes into a rich cream-yellow, precipi- 
 tating them into solid bodies from the waist down- 
 ward, while their heads and shoulders drifted slowly 
 on through the pale night like impalpable ghosts. 
 
 We had reached the top of the hill, and the road, in 
 a sudden turn, ran sharply away from us. The houses 
 were on both sides now in one continuous line, and the 
 shock of meeting trucks jarred through the street. 
 There was a flare of orange light where the knitting- 
 needles became a shunting-yard. 
 
 This was Yoshida.
 
 THE ASCENT 93 
 
 Our landlady was aristocratic to her finger-tips. She 
 had the long slim neck, the long thin face, with its 
 pure outlines, the long narrow eyes, the long graceful 
 body, and the delicate poise which is the ideal type of 
 the aristocrat and rare even among them. When 
 she knelt on the matting to receive us, she did it with 
 the distinction of a queen, and all her movements 
 showed that clean-cut grace, that courtesy without 
 effort, that refinement of pose and gesture which only 
 the continued culture of long generations can produce, 
 and which is to mere politeness or mere beauty as the 
 subtle music of the poet to Monsieur Jourdain's 
 prose. Her husband was a bullet-headed man of the 
 people, stubby and plebeian. His manners, like his 
 Japanese, were polite of course, but undistinguished, 
 while our hostess spoke a language as courtly as her 
 ways. When she glided over the matting, her long 
 sleeves swaying, or stretched out her thin slim- 
 fingered hand to take our tea-caps, we felt like beings 
 of a lower evolution, and this higher product, evolved 
 by centuries of self-control and a living love of beauty, 
 was the human form made perfect, to which we might, 
 perhaps, one day attain. 
 
 Even the inn possessed something of her grace : the 
 matting was whiter, the woodwork smoother, the steep 
 stairway set like a ladder between the walls more 
 polished than elsewhere. The tiny medallions set deep 
 in the skoji, which are as the handles to our doors, were 
 works of art. The miniature garden of the courtyard, 
 with its hills and trees and swift grey stream, was a 
 living landscape, perfect in form and colouring. Even 
 the shallow brass pans in which we washed, the com- 
 monest of hotel furniture, had an elegance of their own. 
 And in the refined and beautiful inn our graceful, courtly
 
 94 LORD FUJI 
 
 landlady knelt and offered us platefuls of " mixed 
 biscuits." They were certainly cheap ones, but never 
 did the utter vulgarity of their shapes, or the crudeness 
 of their colouring, strike so sharply on my senses. If 
 they had tasted like manna from the wilderness I could 
 not have eaten one. They were too ugly. 
 
 It is vivid still, the bliss of that hot bath in fresh 
 mountain water pumped from a stream which comes 
 from Fuji's sacred slopes, and the joy of that long 
 dreamless sleep under the green mosquito curtain in 
 our white matted room. Vivid still, the breakfast cooked 
 over the hibachi, with our aristocratic landlady, every 
 line of her graceful form looking purer and more refined 
 as she stooped to hold the handle of the frying-pan, 
 while her stolid husband on his knees before his 
 office desk in the corner looked on good-naturedly, 
 and the stout little maid watched the foreign cooking 
 of our ham as though it had been a sacred rite. 
 
 We were to return by the lakes which encircle Fuji, 
 and we set out that morning along a dull dusty road 
 between dull dusty banks. 
 
 It was but a little way to the first lake, but hot beyond 
 believing, and when we reached it, and pushed out in 
 our boat beyond the narrow inlet which ran deep into the 
 road, the heat settled down like a roof above our heads. 
 
 The sky was one superb arch of azure blue ; the earth 
 in front of us a wide, bare flat, glittering with heat. 
 And from out of that gleaming, quivering mist which 
 hid the level land Great Fuji rose dark blue on blue. 
 Naked and superb he stood against the background 
 of the sky secure in his strength, perfect in his beauty, 
 beyond words, beyond praise, in sober truth divine. 
 
 It took an hour and a half to cross the lake, and
 
 THE ASCENT 95 
 
 all the time Fuji San, set in the framework of the tur- 
 quoise sky, with the gleaming, glittering mist of light 
 sweeping like an iridescent cloud to the edge of his 
 dark blue slope, stayed with us. For an hour and a 
 half we looked, and the form and the soul of the 
 mountain sank deep within our hearts. 
 
 The second lake is divided from the first by a natural 
 wall of hill over which we climbed, the sun striking 
 fiercely on the pathway where one small patch of shade 
 lay black on the thick white dust. 
 
 The second lake was set deep within the circle of the 
 hills, and we crossed it in company with three men who 
 had drunk much sakt^ and another who stuck fuses into 
 a row of dynamite cartridges and then, leaving them 
 under a corner of the matting in the bottom of the boat, 
 apparently forgot their existence. These four passen- 
 gers and the two boatmen were continually stumbling 
 up and down the boat to row in turns, and always 
 within a few inches of the dynamite. 
 
 It was a somewhat agitating row, although we were 
 assured the cartridges were " only for fishing." 
 
 It ended at last, after a long two hours of suspense, 
 among the quiet grey boulders which stretched for a 
 hundred yards between the water and the wood. 
 
 Down the little valley beyond the stones, a winding 
 river of rice-fields ran like a grass-green stream, and 
 we followed it, as one follows up a mountain brook, till 
 it dwindled and disappeared. Then the wood closed 
 in above it, and we were in the middle of a weird 
 uncanny forest, all grey and wrinkled, where multitudes 
 of thick-set pole-like trees, covered with a powdery 
 dust, ranged ghost-like out of sight. 
 
 And here we walked, the only living things in a
 
 96 LORD FUJI 
 
 spell-bound world, walked until the earth grew thin 
 beneath our feet and the rough grey boulders came up 
 through the soil. 
 
 Then for a long, long while we went beside a grey 
 lava-river flowing between the grey tree-stems, a wide 
 and furious river arrested as it swept in angry tumult 
 through the wood, stopped dead, and each breaking 
 wave turned into stone. We looked at this still, dead 
 river and saw how the years had covered the waves 
 with a thick white crust of dust. Buried deep lay that 
 tempest of passion which once had swept burning from 
 Fuji's sides, buried deep beneath blocks of grey lava 
 and the drifting ash-grey dust. 
 
 Yet the very stones that buried it were carved in its 
 image. And the face of that passion, petrified and 
 deadly, looked up from the river. And all around 
 the grey wood stood dead too, and very still, coated 
 deep with a powdery dust, ash-grey. For the spell of 
 the river was over the wood, and it was the death of 
 Destruction. 
 
 For miles we walked beside that Medusa river, 
 sometimes we left it, sometimes we crossed it, then 
 losing it between the trees we wandered where the 
 ghostly pole-like trunks grew thickest. But always 
 the river came back with the dead passion that made 
 it staring rigid beneath the stones. 
 
 Miles and miles of lava, wide, and long, and deep. 
 The ghostly trees were rooted in it, the very lakes lay 
 cradled in it, the world for far around was made of it. 
 Verily the fires of Fuji San were mighty in those days. 
 
 The third lake was black, ink-black, black as strong- 
 cast shadows in the moonlight. Tarnished and still it 
 lay, without a glitter or a gleam ; yet the washing
 
 THE ASCENT 97 
 
 wavelets, as they poured over the stone at our feet, 
 were pure and clear, and the high steep hills that half 
 encircled it were dense with the greenest trees. 
 
 The ghostly wood was ended, the petrified river 
 gone ; on the banks of this sombre lake living trees 
 were growing. Tangled and thick and high, they 
 walled in three sides of the lake, and, sweeping round 
 in a long thin promontory, divided the ink-black waters 
 with a sword of green. 
 
 Along the hill there ran no pathway, the trees stood 
 too thick, the hill too steep. There was no boat upon 
 the lake nor any road around it. The black waters 
 washed to the foot of the trees, the trees stretched 
 green to the top of the hills, and lake and wood were 
 still as undiscovered country. 
 
 And behind us lay all the long silence of the ghostly 
 wood. 
 
 On the very edge of the promontory a white house 
 rested, poised like a gull on the water, but the dead- 
 black lake gave back no reflection, and the dark-green 
 hills caught no colour from the sun, nor stirred a leaf. 
 Silent as the waters the house poised white beneath the 
 evening sky. 
 
 On three sides the high hills shut in the lake, but 
 on the fourth the lava-stones met the marsh, the marsh 
 the common, and wide and flat the common stretched 
 away to the beyond. 
 
 A little while and the setting sun was down behind 
 the hills, and all the sky was darkening into night. 
 Far over the common, and purple as a king's raiment, 
 rose Fuji San. Grand and lonely he stood between 
 dark earth and darkening sky ; far off on the edge of the 
 world, and all the solemn stillness of the evening wrapt 
 him round.
 
 98 THE ASCENT 
 
 Gently fell the twilight on lake and hill. The grey 
 spaces of the common stretched more vast and wide. 
 The night was coming fast. 
 
 Beneath my feet the blackness of the waters opened 
 as the deep abyss. Behind, the horror of the spell- 
 bound wood waited wide-eyed. Sweeping onwards in 
 the twilight the indistinctness of the common passed 
 out of sight, the pathless hills closed round me. 
 
 Then the spell of the ghostly wood reached out to 
 clutch. I looked towards the light. . . . Dim as 
 Life's hope it lay, far off beyond the horizon, while all 
 the blackness of the lake and hill surrounded me. 
 
 I strained my eyes across the indistinctness, and 
 from that far-off heaven a lofty Presence leaned. 
 
 It was the Great God Fuji.
 
 Ill 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 THE blue sea lies sleeping 1 warm and still ; the sky, 
 another sea, sleeps too ; only the green headlands stand- 
 ing- between blue and blue watch, their feet in the 
 water. And the heat is the heat of a summer's noon. 
 
 So still the sea, so quiet the sky, so calm the earth 
 that the soft breath of the sleeping ocean comes 
 as a rippling sigh towards the land, while the blue sea 
 above floats lazy. 
 
 From their low hiHl Tesshuji's forsaken Gods look 
 out. The temple walls are bare, its altars dumb, and 
 the grass-grown court has shod even silence with a 
 velvet shoe. Dreaming, the Gods sit undisturbed, and 
 the hush of the noonday's heat is deepened. 
 
 It is long since the clang of the praying-bell over- 
 head called them to listen. Still they sit, and look. 
 
 In the shadow of the doorway at the still Gods' 
 feet, I, too, sit and look. 
 
 Over the sleeping sea, blue and still, beyond the 
 watching headlands, out into the liquid sky above, 
 where in utter majesty great Fuji rises one sheer line 
 of beauty in the blue. The rounded curve of his 
 snow-crest shimmers white as a sun-caught sail, and 
 the long slope of his perfect form is a deep blue line 
 on blue. Fuji rises as a tower, he floats in that limpid
 
 ioo EPILOGUE 
 
 sea above a mist-clad iceberg. And the glimmer of 
 his snow-crest is a shining crown of glory in the sky. 
 So real, so simple, so beautiful. Just a crescent of 
 white snow floating thirteen thousand feet above the 
 world, and two long lines of blue sloping gently down- 
 wards, outwards to the earth. So simple, so beautiful, 
 is it real ? 
 
 A faint stir in the sleeping sea and I drop my eyes 
 to the blue below. 
 
 Beauty, said the Greeks, was born of the waves and 
 the foam. Once in that clear sea above, a great blue 
 wave came leaping with a crest of foam. It was 
 Beauty's self, all-perfect, and they called it Fujiyama. 
 Beauty content to be but beauty. 
 
 Tesshuji's Gods look out over the sea, beyond the 
 green headlands into the blue. They dream undis- 
 turbed. They have looked so long. 
 
 The noonday heat has spread the land with a quiver- 
 ing haze of blue. It sleeps. The softly breathing sea 
 sleeps too. No prayer has roused the Gods, they too 
 are sleeping. 
 
 The whole world, says the Scriptures, is but a dream 
 of the great Lord Buddha. Tesshuji's Gods are dream- 
 ing, and Fuji is. 
 
 Dream Gods for ever.
 
 THE ART OF THE NATION
 
 " All that is superfluous is displeasing to God and Nature ; 
 all that is displeasing to God and Nature is bad." 
 
 DANTE, " De Monarchia," bk. i. chap. xiv.
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 
 
 THE kuruma running quickly through the narrow 
 opening in the high bamboo fence curved into a tiny 
 garden set with dark green shrubs, and stopped 
 abruptly. 
 
 In front of us, where a square recess broke the long 
 line of wooden wall, a pile of gheta lay heaped on a 
 grey stone block. At the sound of our coming the 
 wooden wall opened, and a Japanese in kimono and 
 hakama stood bowing before us. He came with pairs 
 of soft woolly night-socks to cover English feet, and, 
 sitting down on the narrow knee-high platform of 
 polished black wood, we took off our boots. Two 
 giant curb-stones at right angles made a solitary step 
 to reach the platform, and leaving our leather boots, 
 looking caricatures of feet among the wooden sandals, 
 we followed the waiting kimono along the three-foot- 
 wide platform. 
 
 Round the corner of the square recess, and shut off 
 from the tiny courtyard by a thick screen of fence and 
 shrubs, was a white garden, sunny and still, where, 
 under a pale blue sky, the tall shadows of the trees fell 
 black across the pure white snow. Sliding back the 
 paper-pan ed wall the waiting kimono bowed us to 
 enter.
 
 104 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 " Come in, come in," said our friend the professor, 
 his familiar face looking strangely unfamiliar from out 
 the wide-sleeved silken kimono and pleated silken 
 skirts of his hakama, as he laughingly bowed us a 
 Japanese welcome. 
 
 The first sensation on coming into that low matted 
 room, bare of all furniture, was one of intense awkward- 
 ness, all one's limbs seemed to have swollen to ungainly 
 proportions, and to have grown correspondingly wooden 
 and jerky. In a flash I had slipped back to a child's 
 years, and was lying in my little iron bedstead in the 
 dark, the haunting terror of the unknown upon me, as 
 I stealthily pinched a mountainous leg with a hand 
 twelve feet thick, and trembled to feel the bedstead 
 giving way beneath me. That old sensation of un- 
 accountable largeness, of bursting one's surroundings, 
 stayed as the unreal background to my mind until the 
 paper-paned walls closed behind me again. 
 
 "If you would like a chair, there are just two " 
 began the professor. 
 
 But we had come to be really Japanese, and Japanese 
 we intended to remain at all costs. So, getting gingerly 
 down on our knees on the square cushions that lay on 
 the matted floor, we tried unsuccessfully to sit on our 
 heels with the same grace as little Miss Hayashi oppo- 
 site. There she sat, demure, serene, and, above all, 
 supremely graceful all through lunch, while we, like 
 chestnuts on hot bricks, hopped from knee to knee, 
 bobbed up and down, tucked our legs under us like 
 Turks, or bunchwise like children, leaned on one arm, 
 then on the other, enduring untold horrors of pins and 
 needles as we became more intimately acquainted with 
 our own anatomy than we had ever done in all the pre- 
 vious years of our existence. And my admiration of
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 105 
 
 Miss Hayashi grew as she sat there, one line of pure 
 grace from the curves of her slender neck, rising from 
 the folds of mauve and white, to the thick wadded hem 
 of her kimono. 
 
 As I looked I grew more and more conscious that 
 the dress and the room were one, each the necessary 
 complement of the other, the right frame for the right 
 picture, and the right picture in the right frame. 
 
 " The soul of Japan," they say, " is the sword of the 
 samurai." "Then the soul of the uchi" I thought, "is 
 the kimono of the housewife." 
 
 The simplicity of the straight-falling lines, the 
 perfection of the embroidery on the innermost of the 
 folds around the neck, the richness of the obi at 
 the waist, there was the same severity of design with 
 richness of decoration which characterised the room, 
 where two paper-paned walls, one of sliding wood and 
 the fourth stained a subdued brown, enclosed the bare 
 matted space. Against the one solid wall was built a 
 slightly raised platform of polished black wood, forming 
 with the two low pillars of wood a wide recess, the 
 tokonoma. Within the tokonoma hung a long silken 
 scroll where pale storks flew across the moon, a kake- 
 mono of price. On the black wood of the platform, 
 which was raised but a few inches from the ground, 
 were set the two swords of the samurai, a bronze horse 
 of exquisite workmanship, and in the corner some long 
 branches of white plum-blossom in a vase. In these 
 four objects (as in the obi and the embroidery of the 
 neck-folds) lay the entire decoration of the room. And 
 looking, one realised that great truth, almost unknown 
 to us, but a truism in Japan the artistic value of space. 
 In a European drawing-room you often cannot see one 
 ornament for its fellows : here the bronze horse and
 
 106 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 the kakemono held the eyes ; one looked, and one saw ; 
 their beauty filled the soul; next week, next month, 
 they will go back to the store-house, and others will 
 take their place. I could never forget the curved lines 
 of those two swords against the polished black floor 
 under the white fragrance of the plum-blossoms, any 
 more than I could forget the soft half-moon curves of 
 Miss Hayashi's kimono, white below mauve, as she 
 glided over the matted floor. 
 
 Our lunch, we had come to lunch, opened with tea, 
 pale amber tea in little round bowls on bronze stands, 
 and sugar chrysanthemums, rice-paste storks and 
 dolphins, cakes and sweets as perfect in design and 
 colouring as though they were intended to last for ever. 
 A rosy-cheeked maid, who bumped her head so vigor- 
 ously on the floor that I thought she must get a head- 
 ache, presented the tea, a bump for each guest and 
 three as a salutation, while Miss Hayashi, folding 
 squares of white paper in double triangles with one 
 sweep of her hand, delicately heaped them full of sugar 
 flowers and fishes, and passed them round, one to each 
 of us. 
 
 Then came a long pause, while we asked all the 
 questions that occurred to us about kimono and hakama, 
 and swords and etiquette ; and then our lunch, a whole 
 lacquered trayful of bowls for each one of us, with all 
 the courses served together, and all irretrievably and, 
 to us, inexplicably mixed. I pass the hot soup in a 
 lacquered bowl, and the hot rice in a china one, but 
 the rest a golden bream on a pale blue plate set 
 round with oranges in jelly ; slices of pink raw fish, and 
 a design in brown seaweed and green roots ; a deep 
 bowl of pale yellow custard, its surface ruffled with 
 silver fishes, oriental whitebait, and its depths filled
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 107 
 
 with bamboo shoots and lily bulbs and other surprises ; 
 and one dish, a triumph of design and colour, where an 
 oval slab of pounded fish, white as snow, rested against 
 a green mound of preserved chestnuts, while in front, 
 arranged in a curving crescent like the tail of a comet, 
 were purple roots, brown ginger, and slices of a red 
 radish. And all this you eat as you please, a bit here, 
 and a bit there, now a drink of salt soup, then a mouth- 
 ful of sweet chestnut ; custard, vegetables, fish, sweets, 
 with relays of rice for bread, and sakt for wine, paper 
 napkins, and withal two penholders to eat with, and 
 your Japanese dinner is complete. 
 
 Having tried everything with the greatest persever- 
 ance, and wriggled our chopsticks until our hands were 
 as tired as our toes, we gave in and rested from our 
 labours. The little maid, rosier than ever, removed 
 the trays of food, and brought in bowls of oranges and 
 dried persimmon. 
 
 At this moment there was a rustling of screens, and 
 a dear, little old lady with shaven eyebrows and 
 blackened teeth slid into the room, and instantly went 
 down on her knees, and putting out her hands bowed 
 her head right down on to them. 
 
 "This is my aunt," said the professor, "a real old- 
 fashioned woman there are not many left nowadays 
 who blackens her teeth and shaves her eyebrows." 
 
 The little old lady laughed, and made many polite 
 speeches, asking after our " honourable healths " and 
 our "august appetites." At every word she made 
 another bow, until I felt as if I really must get down 
 on my knees and hit my forehead against the ground 
 as well. Luckily the professor, after a moment's con- 
 sultation, suggested we should see the house, and we 
 all got up. The little old lady was on her feet in a
 
 io8 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 twinkling, but our half-dead limbs sent pins and needles 
 up our legs, as we stumbled on to them and awkwardly 
 walked away. 
 
 The sliding paper wall of our room hid another 
 absolutely bare, no tokonoma here, only a poem painted 
 on a long narrow board fastened against the door-post, 
 and in the further wall, shut oft" by sliding screens, a 
 large cupboard, full of the household linen, which means 
 the silk-wadded quilts or futon, on and under which 
 one sleeps. Sliding aside the door-panel we found 
 ourselves on another three-foot-wide platform, looking 
 out through more paper-paned walls into another 
 garden. This house was just a long series of rooms 
 with a platform and a garden on each side, and a little 
 square bunch of rooms at one end. In one of these 
 we cuddled down under a silk quilt thrown over a square 
 hole in the middle of the room, and felt the heat coming 
 up from the glowing charcoal sunk in a sort of pit 
 beneath the floor. 
 
 Then we peeped into the bath-room, containing a 
 high wooden wash-tub with a stove-pipe running down 
 one end. The wash-tub is filled with cold water, and 
 lighted charcoal put down the stove-pipe, and in a few 
 minutes the water is hot, and you get in, and the longer 
 you stay the hotter grows the water, until having boiled 
 yourself in the approved Japanese way you step out 
 and wipe yourself dry with a yard of white cotton 
 adorned with blue storks. 
 
 Then we invaded the kitchen, bare of everything 
 like the other rooms, and with only a two-fold brazier 
 to cook over ; one brazier has permanently fixed above 
 it a coppered wooden tub, dedicated to rice-boiling, the 
 other brazier cooked everything else. That was all. 
 Wooden pots, pans and dippers were hung up inside
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 109 
 
 the sliding cupboards, or were washing in the yard 
 outside. A tiny shrine, like a mantelshelf over the 
 sliding door, held minute gods in a dim light ; a paper- 
 framed bamboo lantern, like an afternoon-tea cake-table, 
 with shelves between the legs for plates, stood in a 
 corner. This is the andon, and inside the paper panes 
 a floating wick in a saucer of oil burns all night. 
 
 Our advent into these regions was attended with 
 much excitement punctuated with peals of laughter, 
 it striking the dear old lady as irresistibly funny, that it 
 was all funny to us. 
 
 In the midst of our hilarity came the summons of 
 the kurumaya, and out we had to go, take our boots 
 from the friendly company of the wooden gheta, and 
 laden with mysterious boxes neatly tied with red and 
 white strings, and bunches of plum-blossom, say stiff 
 English " Good-byes," while the little old lady, the 
 rosy-cheeked maid, and the rest of the household 
 bowed us graceful Japanese sayonara and mata 
 irasshai (Come again). 
 
 The kuruma curved out through the tiny snow- 
 covered garden set with dark shrubs, the paper-paned 
 walls shut with a soft thud ; the picture was gone, but 
 the memory of it will remain with me always.
 
 II 
 
 IN A CLOISONNE FACTORY 
 
 NAGOYA is a manufacturing town with a quarter of a 
 million of inhabitants. It is full of porcelain and fan 
 factories, cloisonn6 works and cotton mills. It is the 
 centre of the celebrated potteries of Seto, and is 
 famous for its embroideries and its silks. It is bigger 
 than Nottingham or Hull, and is almost as large as 
 Dublin. Nagoya is both Staffordshire and Bradford 
 and yet a city clean and still. A town of sunny 
 streets and pure fresh air, whose sky is blue and clear, 
 whose trees are green. Its 250,000 inhabitants are 
 mostly factory hands and there is neither dirt nor 
 din. The golden dolphins on its castle's roof are 
 three hundred years old, and they glittor in the sun- 
 shine like new-fired gold. 
 
 On the edge of the growing rice-fields the porcelain 
 factory lies. Its doors are open to the sun ; and in the 
 corner of the low, white room, where the workmen sit 
 cross-legged like Buddhas, each beside his potter's 
 wheel, a yellow vase of purple iris stands. 
 
 The room is still and fresh and clean. The whirr of 
 the turning wheel is soft as the drowsing of a bee. 
 There is no hurry as there is no idleness. And each 
 worker, as he moulds his clay, looks towards the purple 
 iris in the yellow vase.
 
 IN A CLOISONNE FACTORY in 
 
 The cloisonn^ works are built in the heart of the 
 city, in the middle of a busy street, where blue-clad 
 coolies continually load and unload the wide coster- 
 barrows which are the waggons of Japan. The hum 
 of working life is in the air, and the wide road which 
 stretches without division of pavement across from side 
 to side, is thronged. Business men in grey kimono 
 and foreign hats go out and in ; the loaded barrows 
 drawn by the blue-clad coolies pass up and down ; 
 fast-running kurumaya steer in and out among the 
 foot-passengers and the traffic. And the occasional 
 collision is followed by mutual bows and polite Gomen 
 nasai ("I beg your honourable pardon "), on the part 
 of either coolie or kurumaya. 
 
 Nagoya factories and cotton mills are hard at work. 
 
 The gateway of the cloisonne works leads down a 
 wooden passage into a tiny court, a garden set round 
 with the workshops of the factory. And such a garden. 
 It is not larger than the front lawn of a suburban villa, 
 but the skill of a Japanese gardener has planted a whole 
 mountain side with forests of pine and bamboo, has 
 spanned with an arching bridge the stone-grey stream 
 at the mountain's foot. From inside the tiny matted 
 rooms, no bigger than bathing-boxes, which shut in 
 three sides of the garden, the illusion is complete. 
 And the shade and coolness of the real trees and water, 
 of the imaginary forest and stream, brings a sense of 
 calmness and repose, of quiet peace and beauty, to all 
 the many workers of the factory. It is a living land- 
 scape growing unspoiled in the heart of a workshop in 
 the centre of a manufacturing city. 
 
 Each on his mat in the clean, bare, matted rooms the 
 workmen sit, the rice-paper shoji pushed open to the 
 mountain stream, and the forest of pine and bamboo.
 
 H2 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 In the first room sit workers outlining the design on 
 the bare metal vase with metal wires, silver wires on 
 silver vases, copper wires on copper vases. And 
 each design is different, and many of the men are 
 old. In the second room the bare metal vases are 
 getting a coat of coloured paste, and now the design 
 stands out rough as a cave-man's drawing. Here the 
 workers are younger, while boys fill in the body of the 
 vase. In the third and fourth rooms the matted floor 
 at the back is replaced by a large hearthstone, and a 
 round earthen oven ; in this the vases are baked, passed 
 back to the men and boys to recoat with the coloured 
 paste, and then rebaked, recoated and rebaked many 
 times, until at last the vase is handed over to the 
 workers in the last rooms. It has lost all trace of 
 design by now ; the metal wires are no longer visible ; 
 the colours have bubbled over in all directions, the 
 vase is an unmeaning mosaic of a thousand shades. 
 Then the workmen, sitting on their heels on the kneel- 
 ing-cushions in their clean, bare, matted rooms, tiny as 
 bathing-boxes, polish, polish, polish, sometimes for a 
 whole year, until the worker's hand wears down the 
 hard smooth surface and the design shows through 
 clean and true once more. The workmen here are grey 
 and old. 
 
 But the oldest of all sat by himself in a little room 
 just opposite the arching bridge which crossed the 
 mountain stream. He wore a pair of quaint horn 
 spectacles, and his face was the face of an Eastern 
 sage. He sat with his tools before him fixing silver 
 wires on to a silver vase, with a certainty and a 
 rapidity beyond his fellows ; and all that is most beauti- 
 ful and most difficult in the cloisonn6 works of 
 Nagoya comes from his hands. The old man pushed
 
 IN A CLOISONNE FACTORY 113 
 
 back his horn spectacles as I stopped before the open 
 shoji, and his eyes rested on the still picture of the 
 garden with a smile. 
 
 I, too, turned to look at the row of tiny paper rooms 
 stretching out like arms on either hand, at the living 
 landscape lying in their midst, at the blue sky above, 
 and at the old face beneath the horn spectacles. I 
 did not wonder at the peace which lay upon it, nor at 
 the exquisite beauty of the finished vase standing on 
 the matting beside him. For the garden was still as a 
 cloister, though the cloister was a workshop for cloisonne 
 ware in the manufacturing town of Nagoya. 
 
 H
 
 Ill 
 
 FLOWER ARRANGEMENT 
 
 WE sat opposite each other on the matting, and she 
 laughed. The polite, audible smile of the Japanese. 
 All around us lay cut branches of fir ; and on the 
 long wooden footstool they call a table stood a 
 shallow bronze dish and a wonderful cleft stick of 
 bamboo. 
 
 She was a little bent old lady, with the courtly 
 politeness of a thousand Grandisons refined to a 
 subtle essence, and she gave lessons in flower arrange- 
 ment. The close-cropped grey hair gathered into a 
 slide behind told its own tale of widowhood, and the 
 withered careworn face its story of work and want. 
 
 The shoji were shut, and the light through the 
 rice-paper panes sent a warmed white light into 
 the room that knew no colour, a light as though 
 one sat inside a luminous mist, or in the heart of the 
 plum-blossoms. A passionless, lifeless light which was 
 simply light. 
 
 And the little old lady laughed again. 
 
 " There is much to learn," I said, stopping to watch 
 her bending the warmed fir branches over the hibachi 
 always to the exact curve, never too near or too far, 
 and mine snapped at the first touch. 
 
 She handed me another branch in place of the one
 
 FLOWER ARRANGEMENT 115 
 
 I had broken, and watched while I wedged it into the 
 cleft bamboo stick with little chips of wood. 
 
 " Very much," she said. " It takes three years of 
 learning for the pupil and seven for the teacher. And 
 the Ijin San has had four lessons." 
 
 The fifth and last branch being successfully wedged 
 into line, I got on to my knees to admire the effect, 
 while Arabella, from her camp-stool in the corner she 
 considered it lowering to sit on the floor bridled. 
 
 " Oh, the Japanese ," she said ; "but any European 
 could learn in half a dozen lessons." 
 
 The little old lady bowed, letting her forehead almost 
 touch the ground, as she sat on her heels on the kneel- 
 ing-cushion. 
 
 " The august stranger " she began, when I 
 
 interrupted. 
 
 The contemplation of my five branches of fir, two 
 curving to the left and three to the right, had not filled 
 me with any satisfaction. They wobbled. All their 
 curves were wrong, and the five stems, instead of being 
 hidden one behind the other, so that the illusion of a 
 single branch growing out of the bronze dish was created 
 and kept, were all distinctly and decidedly visible. 
 
 " It doesn't look a bit right," I said ; " but what is 
 the matter?" 
 
 The task of sticking five branches of fir, already 
 bent to the proscribed curves for me, into a cleft stick 
 had not seemed difficult, especially with three lessons 
 behind me, and I had worked hard and been very 
 confident that morning. 
 
 With a thousand apologies the little old lady pulled 
 the bronze dish towards her, while Arabella cleared her 
 throat. 
 
 " In Europe," she said, in the tone of voice adapted
 
 n6 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 to a kindergarten class her Japanese voice, " we do 
 not learn such a simple thing, we do it naturally. 
 Every European woman can arrange flowers, and 
 they are flowers " (with a glance at the fir branches in 
 the little old lady's hand she was busy correcting) 
 " not trees." 
 
 The little old lady was putting back the five fir 
 branches into the cleft stick with the deftest of deft 
 fingers. Arabella unclasped the brooch at her neck 
 and pulled out what she called a "nosegay." A 
 bamboo vase, just a piece of the stem hollowed out, in 
 which the fir had come from the florist that morning, 
 lay on the floor. She picked it up. 
 
 " It should be of glass," she said forgivingly, " but 
 I will make it do." 
 
 And then with her own hand she proceeded to 
 arrange the Yokohama nosegay in the slender bamboo 
 stem. There was a bit of spiraea, one fat red rose, 
 and some miscellaneous leaves, which Arabella 
 referred to grandiloquently as " green." These 
 she crammed tightly into the bamboo stem, and then 
 placed it, with a " who-shall-deny-me " air, upon the 
 table. 
 
 I looked at it. No, it was not a good specimen 
 even of Western flower arrangement, but in how 
 many buttonholes, on how many tables, had I seen 
 something like it. 
 
 Flower arrangement is taught in the schools in 
 Japan, and every Japanese girl learns. If she did not, 
 she would not "arrange" anymore than we should 
 paint or play. 
 
 The little old lady had finished, and she pushed the 
 bronze dish along the table beside the bamboo vase. 
 Then, with many compliments and much bowing, she
 
 FLOWER ARRANGEMENT 117 
 
 thanked the Ijin San for her " august kindness" and her 
 " honourable condescension." And the smooth phrases 
 ran on and on, while I sat back on my heels and looked. 
 
 East and West, they stood there before me. At the 
 best, what we aimed at was a scheme of colour, and at 
 our worst no scheme at all. And what they strove 
 after was line, whether in fir branches or lily leaves, 
 in plum-blossom or iris flowers, line, and a coherent 
 whole. Each branch, each twig, each flower, nay, each 
 curve of the branch, each petal of the flower, each leaf 
 of the twig, were parts, essential parts of the whole ; 
 for in Japan they draw with flowers and fir branches 
 as we only draw for " design." And line is beyond 
 colour as sculpture is beyond painting. 
 
 The sun through the walls of rice-paned shoji spread 
 a warmed white light through the room, a limpid, 
 liquid light in which there was no shadow. 
 
 The little old lady had been busy tidying up. The 
 room was one clear sheet of pale yellow matting. On 
 the low empty tokonoma stood the bronze dish and its 
 pure line drawing in fir. Arabella was offering the 
 bamboo vase and its mixed contents "as a model," 
 and the little old lady bowed to the ground. 
 
 Once more I looked at the bronze vase and the pure 
 outlines of the fir branches, at the bare room perfectly 
 proportioned, at the rice-paned shoji, and the snow- 
 flake whiteness of that light which knew no colour 
 and no shadow struck on my consciousness. 
 
 I think I understood. Colour, as colour, in that 
 luminous, shadowless room, whose beauty was its line 
 and its proportion, would have been not colour but a 
 blot. Outside the rice-paned shoji lay life and colour 
 enough. Here was but light and line. 
 
 Arabella was removing the white night-socks from
 
 n8 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 her boots, she always refused to take them off, on 
 the veranda. The little old lady, down on her knees 
 with her forehead to the ground, was saying sweet 
 Japanese sayonara. 
 
 I looked back one last time and Arabella's 
 nosegay vanished.
 
 IV 
 GOD'S MESSENGER 
 
 THE first fresh heat of summer is here, and outside the 
 city the rice-fields spread in quivering pools of green. 
 It is the month of the Iris, Hana-shobu, and along the 
 raised causeway, between the fields, the miniature 
 hansoms, drawn each by the bent dark figure of the 
 kurumaya, silhouette against the blue sky. 
 
 You pay as much as three sen (three farthings) to 
 enter an Iris garden, and they are an hour's 'ricksha ride 
 from the city, so that the/e<fe is select. In the covered 
 court of the entrance the kuruma are stabled in long 
 lines under a pale yellow roof of mats, while the kuru- 
 maya, their black mushroom hats on their knees, sit on 
 the slender shafts and smoke their pipes three whiffs 
 from the metal thimble in the bamboo stem, and 
 then the sharp tink, tink, as the ash is knocked out 
 against the shaft. Inside the garden the blue tunic of 
 the coolie is absent, three farthings and the long 
 kuruma ride proving prohibitive ; but the grey kimono 
 of the classes, Tokyo shopkeepers for the most part, 
 is everywhere. The gardens are large and full, but 
 in no sense crowded, for the Japanese, by the very 
 polish of their politeness, contrive to create a sense of 
 space and repose around them even in a crowd. 
 But the gardens are full, and the deadened clack of
 
 izo THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 the wooden gheta on the earthen pathway, as the little 
 musmd carry the " honourable tea " and the " honour- 
 able cakes " to the mat-roofed summer-houses, is 
 incessant. 
 
 We do not sit on our heels on the flat cushions on 
 the low matted table, under the bamboo roofs ; we sit 
 on the cushions, with our feet on the ground, and the 
 little waitress laughs, her polished black hair shining 
 like a metal mirror in the sunshine. It is so ridiculous 
 to see the Ijin San sitting on the tables with their 
 legs hanging uncomfortably down in front of them, 
 when all the world agrees it is much more natural to 
 sit on your heels with the cleft toes of each little white 
 tabi sticking up behind like rabbit's ears. The idea 
 of getting cramp in such a comfortable position makes 
 little O Haru's brown eyes open very wide indeed. I 
 believe she revolves the idea, inside that metal-polished 
 head of hers, that the Ijin Sans legs are not made 
 aright, or why do they hide them so ? And surely the 
 civilized boot could only have been invented by people 
 without toes ? 
 
 The open summer-houses, behind the bamboo bushes, 
 or on the tops of the miniature hills, are full of family 
 parties, with children in all stages of age and coiffure, 
 from the shaven baby heads and the stiff horsehair 
 ribbon bunches of the children, up through the flat 
 fronts and the first freehand designs of the schoolgirls, 
 to the black cockscomb fronts and the elaborate 
 polished rolls of the grown-up daughters. And they 
 are all content to sit in the sunshine, drink tea, and 
 look at the flowers. They do not want to be for 
 ever restlessly doing something, not even the children. 
 
 In the summer-house over the way a party of 
 bachelors, students from the University perhaps, are
 
 GOD'S MESSENGER 121 
 
 also drinking tea and smoking cigarettes ; one of them 
 is writing a poem. And a bourgeois Sabbath peace is 
 over the land. 
 
 The tap of the tiny tea bowl on the lacquered tray, 
 the deadened clack of the musmes gheta on the path- 
 way, is hushed, for I have left the summer-house, and 
 am standing close down by the river of flowers. 
 
 Iris, the messenger between Gods and men, said 
 the old Greek legend, Iris, Hana-shobu. And surely 
 this swaying river of lavender-blue flowers, floating out 
 from the fleckless blue of the summer's sky, on into 
 the young green of the rice-fields, is a living message 
 from the Gods. A message of beauty and peace, and 
 of the holiness that springs from these. A message 
 which this cultured, courtly, beauty-loving people alone 
 know how to create and how to read. For many 
 generations have lived and died, tenderly caring for 
 God's Messengers, before these flowers learned to 
 unfold their petals in a hundred ways, and wear a 
 thousand hues from pink to purple, from blue to grey, 
 from grey to black or to the purest white. 
 
 The river of exquisite blossom flows on, straight out 
 from the fleckless blue, on into the delicate green, 
 bearing God's message of beauty to man. And these 
 who see it know how to read.
 
 V 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 IT is usual in judging the art of a nation to consider 
 solely the art of the artists and never the art of the 
 people. The first is naturally of greater importance; 
 it affords moreover an easy method of comparison and 
 enables art critics to register the high-water mark of a 
 country's art, and this being found, the question is 
 considered settled and the nation judged accordingly. 
 We say the French are artistic and think promptly of 
 Corot, Meissonier, or Puvis de Chavannes, not of the 
 people of France. But the art of a nation, always 
 something less, is often something very different from 
 the art of its artists, and though the artists' art will give 
 you the high-water mark, it does not and it cannot 
 give the general art level of the people. The English 
 nation produced the greatest dramatist who ever lived, 
 and several fine comedians, yet the level of the nation's 
 dramatic instinct is ackowledged to be far below that of 
 the French. If we wish to get a true opinion of French 
 and English dramatic feeling we must study something 
 more and something other than the dramatists. For it 
 is not the presence or the absence of a certain number 
 of celebrated men, or even the greater or the lesser 
 value of their wo-ks, which necessarily makes a whole 
 nation dramatic or artistic, but it is the general level of
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 123 
 
 the dramatic or artistic feeling in the average indi- 
 vidual of that nation. That a truly dramatic or 
 artistic nation has more chance of producing a greater 
 number of dramatists or artists is certain, the condi- 
 tions under which they would work being so much 
 more favourable, but to consider no one but the artist 
 and nothing but his art, and then to transfer the 
 judgment on the artist's art to the whole nation, is 
 surely a confusion of ideas. It is a confusion to which 
 art seems particularly susceptible. For most people, 
 in England any way, seem to regard art as comprising 
 only expensive objects suitable for exhibition in 
 museums, and not as an integral part of every article 
 used in daily life. Museum art is the product of a 
 nation's artists, for the enjoyment of the rich and the 
 cultured, but the art of a people is as wide as its life, it 
 touches everything and is for the joy and the pleasure 
 of all men. 
 
 Artists' art is an end in itself, its whole reason for 
 existence is to create beauty, but the art of a people 
 is not an end, but a means. The problem before it is 
 very different and really more complicated, for it is to 
 add beauty to mere utility, and by force of art to create 
 art in objects whose raison d'etre is usefulness. And 
 the greater the number of useful objects made beauti- 
 ful, and the more beautiful the useful objects, and the 
 further removed from beauty and the more sunk in 
 mere utility the useful object is, so much greater will 
 be the people's art. 
 
 To add beauty to mere utility, art may be said to 
 use three ways. It does it 
 
 (1) Directly, by moulding the shape (the material of 
 useful objects being already determined) ; 
 
 (2) Indirectly, by decoration ; and
 
 124 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 (3) Extra-directly, by arrangement. 
 
 And if art be truly in a people, even the most ugly 
 and stubborn of useful objects will, by one of these 
 three methods, be made beautiful. 
 
 I suppose that any one who has ever seen a rice- 
 field will allow that for at least some six months in the 
 year it is one of the ugliest objects in the world. Made 
 of liquid mud, it lies for half the year a slimy, greasy 
 black pond shut in by low mud walls. On its oozy 
 surface gather unwholesome growths that shine with 
 metallic reflections, while the manure, in Japan mostly 
 human, decomposes in the thick mud. There is nothing, 
 I suppose, much uglier, nothing more useful, and its 
 ugliness is the condition of its utility. The Japanese 
 cannot change the thick black ooze, they cannot 
 change the low mud walls which embank the slimy 
 pools. These, with all their ugly consequences, are 
 fixed and determined. But the art of the Japanese 
 people has yet rendered the rice-fields beautiful. They 
 change the shape. Those embanking walls of mud 
 are moulded as a potter moulds his clay. A series of 
 dead square fields I have never seen. Two, three, 
 four, five, six, even eight-sided rice-fields can be found 
 in Japan, and often the curves of the mud wall itself 
 are graceful as the lines of a Greek vase. 
 
 Beneath the temple of Tesshuji, which looks towards 
 the wonder of Fujiyama, with its two pure lines of 
 exquisite grace, is a great fertile plain, a plain of in- 
 numerable rice-fields, one of the richest in the country. 
 When I stood on the steps of that deserted temple and 
 looked down, the fields were all black and naked, and 
 yet the plain was neither ugly nor monotonous, for the 
 peasants had curved their rice- fields into exquisite lines, 
 and not two were alike.
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 125 
 
 A wall has certainly more possibilites than a rice- 
 field, but our modern walls, the high brick atrocity of 
 a prison or an embankment, is not usually beautiful. 
 We make spasmodic attempts to beautify their monot- 
 onous ugliness with creepers or other coverings. That 
 is, we do not beautify the wall, we take something less 
 ugly and conceal it. Now the Japanese beautify the 
 wall. (We are only considering here walls of mere 
 utility, where all decoration or ornamentation is out 
 of the question.) Except for the brick walls of the 
 foreign buildings, walls in Japan are made of hewn 
 stone usually shaped like pyramids and hammered base 
 outwards into a bank of earth. In a country whose 
 architecture, from the most glorious of its temples to 
 the humblest of its houses, is all of wood, a clumsiness, 
 a gaucherie in its stonework might be well excused, 
 yet Japanese walls are a wonder to all who see them, 
 for the hard enduring granite is plastic beneath their 
 fingers. Their walls are never dead straight. The 
 line always curves softly outward as it touches the 
 ground. And this not only in the strong walls of the 
 daimyos castle, or the long moat walls of the Mikado's 
 palace, but in the embankment walls of the tiniest 
 shrine, in the modern walls of the modern temple of 
 the modern coaling port of Moji. 
 
 To beautify a useful object indirectly by decora- 
 tion is a great deal easier, at any rate the means 
 and the possibility of doing so are more apparent ; 
 and yet, do we draw designs on our sacks, on our 
 flour sacks, grain sacks, potato sacks, as they do in 
 Japan ? 
 
 For many months I passed regularly every day 
 through a street of warehouses where sacks of all kinds, 
 and containing all sorts of produce, were lying on the
 
 126 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 ground, were being carried into the godown or were 
 loading or unloading. It was some time before it 
 really struck me that the sacks were decorated, that 
 their blank yellow sides were made beautiful with a 
 design ; but when I had once realised it, I used to look 
 carefully to see if I could find sacks without. They 
 were extremely rare. The designs varied considerably. 
 A flower, conventional or natural, a maple leaf, a 
 broken branch of plum- or cherry-blossom, the delicate 
 outline of the bamboo in a thousand different shapes, 
 were the most common, but there were others, birds, 
 geometrical patterns, rice-ears, Fujiyama. These 
 designs were with true decorative feeling in one corner, 
 rarely in the exact centre, and admirably proportioned 
 to the size of the sack. They were mostly drawn in, 
 in soft blues the commonest colour in the Far East 
 sometimes in a pale but very beautiful green ; colours 
 which, on the unbleached cotton or pale yellow matting 
 of the sack, made complete harmonies. 
 
 But a sack, whatever its business in life, is at least 
 an article of considerable duration, it is not made to be 
 used and thrown away the next moment like the paper 
 wrapping of a parcel. Yet it is very few parcels in 
 very few shops which are not wrapped up in paper 
 whose monotonous surface is broken by just one tiny 
 design. The papers in which piece-silks are wrapped, 
 the equivalent to those whitey-brown covers which 
 drapers seem perpetually doing up on our counters, are 
 often really beautiful in both colour and design. I do 
 not think a Japanese can see a blank surface without 
 wanting to design something on it, something little, 
 something beautiful, just to redeem it for art. 
 
 These designs are to be found, if one looks for them, 
 in the most unexpected places, on the axle-heads of
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 127 
 
 your kuruma for instance. A casual and rather 
 dilapidated kuruma in an out-of-the-way town in 
 Japan had such exquisite flying storks beaten on to the 
 bronze metal of its axle-head that I had to get out and 
 look at them. The kurumaya was amused at my 
 enthusiasm, and entered into a detailed comparison of 
 these axle-heads with all the other axle-heads of all 
 the other kuruma of his acquaintance, explaining their 
 respective merits and defects. If there is no actual 
 design the metal is usually beaten in such a way as to 
 form an irregular pattern. 
 
 When a Japanese cannot mould the shape of an 
 object, when he cannot redeem it by a design, 
 when in fact he has no control over its creation 
 at all, but it is placed in his hands as it is, finished, 
 he will still contrive to add beauty to it merely by 
 arrangement. I first noticed this on board the steamer 
 going out, where the Japanese "boy" arranged the 
 extra blanket on the berth in a new design each day. 
 He folded it into lotus leaves and chrysanthemums, 
 into half-opened fans and half-shut buds. He had one 
 wonderful arrangement which, being patriotic, was more 
 often repeated than the rest. The blankets of the 
 steamship company had, instead of the usual stripes at 
 top and bottom, just two thick wavy lines of deep red 
 the steamer's flag was two wavy red lines on a white 
 ground ; by some wonderful twist of his fingers the 
 " boy " would fold that blanket into the rising sun, with 
 the four red lines coming out of it like blood-red rays. 
 It sounds difficult, but he did it so perfectly that I 
 recognised the flag of Japan the moment I saw it. Nor 
 was he exceptional ; the other "boys " on board were 
 just as artistic, all the other cabins, for in the course 
 of the voyage I entered most of them, were equally 

 
 128 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 decorated, though in most cases the art had been quite 
 lost on the occupants. 
 
 A Japanese servant, any servant, even one in a 
 hotel, will set out your hair brushes, clothes brushes, 
 nail scissors, collar box, tooth-powder tin on the ordi- 
 nary average hotel dressing-table and make a design 
 of them. The toilette table will somehow be a picture, 
 an artistic whole. It was an application of art I tried 
 hard to learn, and failed dismally. After awhile I 
 could manage something with the brushes ; but the nail 
 scissors, and more especially the tooth-powder tin, 
 remained, in my hands, the unbeautiful necessary 
 articles which they intrinsically are. 
 
 We make in Europe various attempts at beautifying 
 our food. We put parsley on white dishes round cold 
 mutton, and paper frills on ham bones where the pins 
 are dangerous. On special occasions, such as a Lord 
 Mayor's banquet or a cookery exhibition, we serve 
 pastries as Tower Bridges, or jellies as broken lutes, 
 but we do not consistently arrange our food so that 
 each dish is a colour scheme and an art design of its 
 own. 
 
 I lunched once with a professor in Tokyo ; it was a 
 modest meal in the house of a man badly off, accord- 
 ing to our ideas, but when the red-lacquered trays 
 came in, each lunch on its own tray, and all the courses 
 served together, I could not restrain a cry of delight. 
 The whole set out in its red-lacquered tray was a 
 picture, each dish in itself was another. The golden 
 bream lay on a pale blue dish ; an oval slab of pounded 
 fish, pure white in colour, rested against a mound of 
 lime-green chestnuts ; in front and lying in a crescent 
 curve were purple roots, brown ginger, and tiny slices 
 of red radish. It was simply a triumph. I have eaten
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 129 
 
 pinky brown soup in which the curved peel of an 
 orange floated like a golden dolphin ; pale yellow 
 custards, served in delicate blue bowls, whose surfaces 
 were ruffled with silver fishes ; white rice-moulds 
 wrapped in the delicate tendrils of a vine-green sea- 
 weed ; thin slices of pink raw fish, the colour of 
 an uncooked salmon, laid out on green dishes and 
 garnished with little heaps of olive seaweed shaven 
 fine and eaten with a burnt-sienna sauce. The very 
 hawkers in the streets serve their one-rm (10 to a ^d.) 
 sweetmeats or their snow-white tofu daintily, on 
 plates of appropriate colour, artistically set out. The 
 rice-paste biscuits are veritable works of art in shape 
 and colour. You can eat almost every variety of 
 chrysanthemum, as well as see it, and the colouring, all 
 vegetable, is almost as beautiful. 
 
 We have, I believe, in England, a profession called 
 " window-dressing," and in a few cases this does truly 
 attain to art. But with us it always ends at the windows. 
 Enter the shop and, unless it is a showroom, you 
 stand in the midst of undigested cargoes of goods ; 
 and whose eye has not been pained by heaped rolls 
 of stuff where a post-office red will lie, as often as 
 not, on the top of a crimson and underneath a 
 magenta ? That is a thing which could not happen in 
 Japan ; the eye of the young man behind the counter 
 would forbid it. 
 
 I once watched a whole consignment of silks being 
 put away on shelves in a shop in Tokyo. It was the 
 European side of the establishment, so that the shop 
 was fitted with counters, chairs, and the usual drapers' 
 shelves, the silks, too, told the same tale in their width 
 and pattern. It was only a boy who was putting them 
 away, sixteen at the outside, yet he did it with a con- 
 
 i
 
 i 3 o THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 scious choice, and when he had finished, the silks, which 
 ran through the whole gamut of colour, harmonised 
 delightfully. But the real Japanese shops are more 
 beautiful still. To go over the Mitsui is to walk 
 through a gallery of pictures in still life. Here are 
 no heaps of undigested goods, no mere piles of articles, 
 but a definite and deliberate setting forth of certain 
 things which left the impression that the clerks of the 
 Mitsui posed their silken goods as an artist his model. 
 The Mitsui is one of the best shops in Tokyo ; to 
 be perfectly fair compare it with one of our " art 
 salesmen." But the best of our shops tie up their 
 parcels in whitey-brown paper with tow-coloured string, 
 thinner or thicker according to the weight of the parcel. 
 In the Mitsui the string is all pure white or scarlet-red, 
 and each parcel is tied with a strand of both laid side 
 by side, the heavier the parcel the greater the number 
 of scarlet and white strings, always laid side by side, 
 until sometimes they make a wide white line above a 
 wide red one, kept evenly together by a skilful knot. 
 The ends, too, are not snapped off anyhow after tying 
 an ugly knot, but are cut slantwise, to form a V or a 
 point, and even the knot is beautiful because it is a 
 coherent whole, and not a conglomeration of successive 
 ties. 
 
 So far, all these things, rice-fields, sacks, and food, 
 with the sole exception of the blankets and hair brushes, 
 have been exclusively Japanese, the nation has evolved 
 them in itself, and by itself, and consequently in 
 comparing them with things European it has only been 
 possible to take similar and not identical objects. But 
 since their first contact with Europe, and more especially 
 during the last thirty years, the Japanese have borrowed 
 a certain number of articles directly from the West.
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 131 
 
 They have borrowed beer-glasses, windows, and wall- 
 papers. And from the Dutch, three-hundred years ago, 
 they took pipes and tobacco pouches. A light kind of 
 lager beer is rapidly becoming a universal drink in 
 Japan. There are several native breweries, and those 
 places where beer has not penetrated are considered 
 hopelessly " old-fashioned." After the beer came the 
 beer-glasses, and though the art of the nation has not 
 been long at work upon them, they are already very 
 different from their European models. It must be 
 remembered, too, that glass was unknown to the 
 Japanese until it was introduced from the West. The 
 first thing which the nation did when it set to work 
 upon beer-glasses was to reduce the size, otherwise 
 they would have been out of all proportion to the rest 
 of the dinner service, and so the beer-glasses of Japan 
 are small as dolls' tumblers in which, if you are lucky, 
 you will find three sips of beer under the egg-white 
 froth. 
 
 If this example illustrates the love of the little, 
 generally supposed to be the chief characteristic of the 
 Japanese, the case of the windows will show their 
 dislike to unredeemed blank space, and at the same 
 time their knowledge of the artistic value of space in 
 design. So long as windows only existed in houses 
 built in the style called " foreign," they remained 
 severely Western, just another European object like 
 the railway or the telegraph set up in the land, but 
 when they began to be introduced into Japanese houses, 
 then the art of the nation set to work upon them. 
 They are still rare, but in a few private houses and in 
 some of the best native hotels windows exist. They 
 do not open. They were not introduced to supply 
 ventilation, an unnecessary consideration in a Japanese
 
 1 32 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 house, which is all draughts, nor really for light, the 
 paper panes of the shoji admitting light readily ; 
 but just in order that the person inside might have 
 another picture before his eyes the picture of what lies 
 without. The window then is not a glass fitting to an 
 oblong hole knocked into a wall, but a broad band of 
 glass running round the whole length of the shoji at 
 just that distance from the ground which will allow any- 
 one sitting on his heels on the floor to see through 
 comfortably. A pattern on this glass window would 
 have interfered with the view, and the window was 
 there expressly for the view. So the glass is empty 
 and clear, but not blank. Then it would have been 
 merely useful, and the Japanese never stop at utility ; 
 it had to be made beautiful, and so the pure perfect 
 curves of Fuji were traced upon the glass. The design 
 was quite small and only occupied one end, but the 
 area of the glass was no longer blank space, but the 
 demanded setting to a picture. 
 
 There is no place in a Japanese house for wall- 
 papers, but the number of foreign-built hotels and 
 houses has created a certain demand for them. Also 
 the Japanese are beginning to export wall-papers 
 abroad. As the patterns are mostly supplied to them 
 direct from European firms, or copied from models 
 sent them on order, they have to please their market, 
 and yet I have seen a wall-paper in a hotel bedroom 
 where two golden dragons drawn back to back studded 
 a white ground. It was a perfectly conventional 
 pattern, and at first there seemed nothing remarkable 
 about it. The tiny dragons, looking something like a 
 fleur de lys, occurred at six-inch intervals. Then it 
 dawned gradually, the intervals were not regular, they 
 differed both lengthways and width ways. It took
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 133 
 
 indeed ten feet of wall before the pattern absolutely 
 repeated itself. 
 
 But windows, wall-papers and beer-glasses are new 
 growths, only just engrafted on to the life of the people. 
 They are still thought of as something foreign, whereas 
 pipes and pouches, although coming originally from the 
 West, have in the course of three hundred years become 
 thoroughly absorbed and transformed by the genius of 
 the nation. To judge from the old pictures the first 
 pipes were three or four feet long, with a bowl to corre- 
 spond, in size and capacity suggestive of those long 
 wooden pipes with china bowls smoked by the tradi- 
 tional Dutchman. At the same time we in the West 
 have also been evolving our pipes and pouches, as the 
 art and the convenience of Europe demanded, and 
 to-day the British navvy has arrived at his clay and the 
 city clerk at his briarwood, and both at the gutta-percha 
 pouch. When bent on " something tasty," they may 
 indulge in skeleton -head pipes with carbuncle eyes, or 
 magenta plush pouches embroidered in apple-green 
 silk. In Japan the navvy (or his wife, for smoking is 
 equally common to both sexes) uses a doll's pipe made 
 of a slender bamboo reed, whose bowl and mouthpiece 
 are of metal, beautifully finished, and holding just three 
 whiffs of their fine-cut red-brown tobacco. The pouch 
 is made of leather, fastening like a purse, and the metal 
 snap is always fashioned into a design, however simple 
 two birds flying, a fish, a grasshopper. There is also 
 a leather case to keep the pipe in, like an open spec- 
 tacle-case, and the two are fastened together by means 
 of a twisted silken cord. The pipe-case is stuck into 
 the obi, and the pouch hangs over. It was to allow of 
 the free hang of the pouch, and also as a finish to the 
 silken cord, that the netsuk'e was invented, and some of
 
 134 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 the most beautiful of museum art objects produced. 
 But netsuke are not for the navvy or the people, or if 
 they do occur in the cheap pouches of the poorer 
 classes they are nothing more than a rounded bead only 
 valuable artistically as a spot of colour. The pouches, 
 the pipes and the pipe-cases are genuinely beautiful 
 in shape, make and proportion. They also have the 
 merit, rare in gutta-percha, of endurance. A pouch 
 bought four years ago by a careless European, and in 
 use ever since, shows to-day no sign of wear. It is 
 not cracking at the seams, and the snap is as firm as 
 ever. A smoker, I believe, has no particular hanker- 
 ing after the Japanese pipe with its metal bowl and 
 mouthpiece, but anybody with a sense of form must 
 enjoy the delicate refinement of even the commonest 
 native pipe with the gentle yellow of its bamboo stem, 
 the finish of the metal mouthpiece, and the perfect 
 shape of its acorn bowl. 
 
 These are, after all, only a few examples, sufficient 
 perhaps for the purpose, but any one who has lived in 
 Japan and looked at the common objects of daily life 
 used, owned and produced by the people would be able 
 to multiply them almost indefinitely. 
 
 In thinking them over perhaps the thing which 
 occurs most frequently to the mind is the simplicity of 
 the means used. The whole artistic effect of the rice- 
 fields consists in the variation of their shape, in the 
 curve of the mud wall ; in the shops and in the food 
 simply in the right choice of given articles. But 
 through all Japanese art, even the most elaborate, 
 this same simplicity of means is noticeable. I have 
 seen the most elaborate imperial brocade which pro- 
 duced an effect of running water, and it was done 
 by simply throwing over the original blue brocade
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 135 
 
 a rough mesh network of brown silk. Every garden 
 in Japan is an illustration of this point, for a Japanese 
 in a dull back yard as big as a bath-towel will, by the 
 judicious planting of two small palm-trees, the setting 
 up of a stone lantern, and the careful making of a 
 puddle, convey to the mind of those who look the 
 greenness and the coolness of a dense forest, the 
 freshness of clear water, and the delight of hills and 
 dales. I have seen it often in wayside inns, in shops, 
 in big towns, in factories, everywhere. 
 
 Exactly the same thing is true of their flower 
 arrangement. Putting aside all other points of beauty 
 and charm, a Japanese with three chrysanthemums, 
 with one branch of fir, will produce a whole which we 
 should only think of attempting with a shilling's-worth 
 of flowers and two penny bunches of "green." 
 
 On the characteristics of Japanese art European 
 writers have varied greatly, but in considering only the 
 art of the people there are perhaps fewer difficulties 
 or differences, and we come, I think, to four value of 
 space, desire for line, sobriety of taste, and thorough- 
 ness of workmanship. I do not include the dislike of 
 symmetry, because a want can hardly be called a 
 characteristic. Symmetry is more properly a charac- 
 teristic of our art. The Japanese dislike it, they 
 make nothing in pairs, and if certain things, such as 
 candlesticks, are required in twos, each one, though 
 resembling the other in the main idea, always differs 
 from it in detail. 
 
 The sense of the artistic value of space shows itself 
 everywhere, in every form of decoration and design, 
 as well as in every object of art. In Japan there is 
 no such thing as overcrowding. It is one small leaf 
 which decorates the sheet of paper wrapping. It is
 
 136 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 the scarcity of articles in the Mitsui which accounts 
 for nine-tenths of the artistic effect of that draper's 
 interior. If ever a nation has thoroughly and aesthetic- 
 ally realised the psychological fact on which much of 
 our theory of backgrounds is based, that we only 
 really see an object by its outlines, it is the Japanese. 
 They have worked out this fact to its last artistic value. 
 In a Japanese room there hangs one picture ; on the 
 raised and polished platform of the tokonoma, the 
 artistic altar of the room, there is set one bronze or 
 porcelain vase of flowers, one ornament. These are 
 changed as often as the fortune or the taste of their 
 owner permits. When a Japanese comes to Europe 
 he complains that our drawing-rooms, with their dozens 
 of pictures and their scores of ornaments, are "like 
 warehouses"; and after this first disturbing feeling 
 of crowd, when he has lived in that drawing-room for 
 several months and finds that the ornaments are never 
 changed, only perhaps added to, he complains then 
 of the monotony. For he knows and has realised 
 another psychological fact, that it is in the freshness of 
 observation that the eye sees clearest and the brain 
 works best. 
 
 With the sense of the supreme value of space comes 
 an intense feeling for line. Whether this has some- 
 thing to do with the climate, which is clear, and the 
 landscape, which is mountainous, I do not know ; but 
 compare the purity of outline in the Italian painters, 
 more especially in the Tuscan and the Umbrian, 
 Botticelli and Perugino, with the Netherlands School, 
 Rembrandt and Rubens, where light and shadow, and 
 colour as colour, play so great a part. But whether it 
 is due to the landscape or not, personally I should be 
 inclined to attach a great deal of importance to the
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 137 
 
 artistic value of Fujiyama, a mountain whose exquisite 
 outlines, visible from thirteen provinces, have simply 
 permeated Japanese art ; but landscape or no, the 
 desire for line is a fact. The Japanese draw with 
 everything ; with the mud embankments of their rice- 
 fields, with the granite stones of their walls, with the 
 trees in their gardens, with the flowers in their vases. 
 The whole essence of flower arrangement is not colour 
 mass, but line drawing. It is the same with their 
 trees, the dwarf trees in their pots, or the grown trees 
 in their gardens. Both are trained and educated to 
 produce a beautiful outline, and they succeed. It is 
 perhaps interesting in this connection to notice the 
 number of illustrations in Japanese books where the 
 trees are simply silhouettes washed in in Indian ink on 
 a blank background. We should have, I think, a great 
 disinclination to treat our trees in this way. 
 
 The feeling for line is very strong, and it is perhaps 
 perpetuated by the daily use of those dead pictures, the 
 Chinese ideographs. Several hundred years ago the 
 Japanese invented the phonetic syllabaries called 
 kana. It is interesting from an artistic point of view 
 to compare them with our alphabet. A very short 
 contemplation of the alphabet as used in our books 
 and handwriting will show that it is mainly composed 
 of straight lines, often parallel, with a certain admixture 
 of circles. Now, although a straight line is the nearest 
 way between two points, it is rarely or never the most 
 beautiful; did not some one once say, "The line of 
 beauty is a curve" ? I do not think any one's artistic 
 soul has received much nourishment from a contem- 
 plation of the letter "m," three parallel lines, or "t." 
 Compare them with the corresponding kana, and the 
 difference will be felt at once. Indeed, we are all
 
 138 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 unconsciously well aware of the artistic failing of our 
 ordinary alphabet, for directly we carve or write an 
 inscription, or introduce it in any way into something 
 which claims to be an object of art, then we discard it 
 altogether, and either fall back on the Gothic letters, 
 or adopt some kind of fancy alphabet. As the average 
 Japanese child is taught writing four hours a week for 
 the first three years, and three hours for the next two, 
 and as their writing is really painting, their feeling for 
 line has at least a chance of development. 
 
 Of the thoroughness of Japanese workmanship I do 
 not think anybody would disagree ; when the wing of 
 the stork on your rice-bowl is finished inside, when 
 the chrysanthemum petals on your wooden tray curl 
 over the edge, when the bottom of your flower vase 
 has a design as well as the outside, you are convinced 
 that the Japanese knew Ruskin's dictum long before 
 he said it. I have seen the feet of a bronze statuette, 
 the feet which were entirely hidden under the folds of 
 the kimono from in front, carefully finished off under- 
 neath. The statuette in question cost 50 sen (i^), and 
 was sold by a street hawker. Nobody really sees the 
 designs on the kuruma axle-heads, not unless they 
 look for them, except perhaps the kurumaya himself, 
 when he squats on the ground waiting for a fare ; but 
 they give a thoroughness of finish to the 'ricksha which 
 it would miss without. 
 
 Most people are agreed, I think, upon the thorough- 
 ness of workmanship, but sobriety of taste is a more 
 disputed point. We are very fond of talking of the 
 "gorgeous colouring of the East," and using terms 
 like "barbaric splendour" and "oriental luxury." 
 These terms may have had some truth as applied to 
 the art of India, but because Japan is also situated in
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 139 
 
 the East, they do not necessarily apply to her. We 
 do not sufficiently realise over here that there is con- 
 siderably more difference between China and Japan, 
 let alone India and Japan, than there is between any 
 two European countries whatsoever, be the^ Greeks 
 or Dutch, or what you will ; that they are not of the 
 same race, nor do they belong to the same linguistic 
 family. Therefore, to transfer an adjective applicable 
 to India to Japan, just because both are Oriental, is 
 like applying an adjective suitable to the Turks 
 or the Laps to the English, on the ground that 
 both are European. This is, I think, one source 
 of error ; the others are more subtle. There is 
 first of all the climate. Now a colour, any colour, 
 under a bright blue sky in a dazzling yellow sunshine, 
 will always look more subdued than that same colour 
 under a grey sky and in a cloudy atmosphere. This 
 is simply an effect of contrast. Therefore, Japanese 
 colouring must be judged as it is seen in Japan, not as 
 it may look when transferred to England. And, again, 
 a study of the actual colour itself will show that the 
 Japanese have learnt how to make the very brightest 
 colours soft in tone. This fact has been well rubbed 
 into me lately, for I have tried both in Paris and 
 in London to match certain Japanese stuffs, or at 
 least to find something in the same note of colour 
 which would go with them. It was quite impossible. 
 All our soft colours, the so-called artistic shades, are 
 too dull in tone, while none of our bright ones are soft 
 enough ; by the side of the Japanese colours they look 
 simply crude. These are all quite material reasons, 
 objective facts, but there is another which only those 
 who have stood and looked at the glorious splendour 
 of a Japanese temple such as Nikko or Shiba, where
 
 140 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 the whole rainbow is resplendent in carved wood and 
 gilded lacquer, and that is their matchless power of 
 combination and of background. The temples of 
 Nikko or Shiba are both built in the midst of a wood ; 
 the dark, deep, sober forms of the giant pine-trees 
 stand all around. This is the setting ; then between 
 each gorgeous gateway comes a still clear space of 
 court, paved with quiet grey pebbles ; and when 
 the glory culminates in the temple's interior the 
 building is of unstained, unpainted wood, soft as 
 the dust-brown carpet of the beech-leaves when the 
 sun's rays are level. But the temples, supreme 
 in their way among all the products of Japanese 
 art, are exceptional. The average Japanese room is 
 colourless, luminous, but practically colourless. The 
 floor is of the palest yellow matting, the one or two 
 solid walls of the room are washed in in the softest of 
 bark browns, the wood of the tokonoma is dark and 
 polished, and the other walls are shoji, that is, com- 
 posed entirely of small panes of rice-paper. Through 
 this paper the sunlight comes luminous but colour- 
 less. To sit in that room is like living in the heart 
 of the plum-blossom, or within the petals of a warm 
 white rose. 
 
 In their dress the Japanese are equally subdued : the 
 men wear mostly grey or dust-coloured silks, the 
 women soft mauves, blues and greys. It is only the 
 children who are dressed in bright colours and gay 
 patterns. All the working classes, both men and 
 women, wear a dark indigo blue. The Japanese wear 
 no jewellery. Precious stones they have, exquisite 
 mauve and purple amethysts, crystals of blood-red 
 splendour or soft and milky as flushing pearl. And 
 the rich man buys these, not to wear, but to look at,
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 141 
 
 as works of art, as exquisite natural objects. He 
 never hangs them round his own neck, or enmeshes 
 his womankind in them. The Japanese are, I believe, 
 the only nation on the earth who know and value 
 precious stones, and yet wear no jewellery. Might 
 not this be considered convincing evidence of their 
 essential sobriety of taste ? Even the landscape, 
 though supremely beautiful and sunny, is never flaunt- 
 ing. There are too many sober green pine-trees, 
 and pale, bewitching bamboos for that. I have never 
 seen anywhere in Japan, in the poorest house, in the 
 cheapest shop, anything that was tawdry or even 
 "loud," except in that part of porcelain and other 
 factories which supply goods, mostly from " foreign " 
 patterns, for the European market. 
 
 In this enumeration of the characteristics of Japanese 
 art, you will perhaps wonder why I have omitted the 
 very popular one of their love of the little, the small, 
 the minute. I have left it out simply because I do not 
 believe it exists as such. Many writers have ex- 
 claimed in paragraphs sprinkled with interjections on 
 this passion for the little which they say the Japanese 
 possess ; and they have apparently seen in it nothing 
 but a blind unreasoning prejudice for the something 
 small as opposed to the something great. I think this 
 opinion is mostly due to the " little knowledge " of the 
 tourist or the restricted knowledge of the specialist. 
 It leaves also entirely unexplained and inexplicable the 
 Dai Butsu of Kamakura, a bronze statue of Buddha, 
 fifty feet high and of the most exquisite workmanship ; 
 the Buddhas of Kyoto and of Nara ; the big bronze 
 bell of Kyoto, the largest hanging bell in the world, 
 besides that at Chion-in, the second largest, and 
 at Nara, the third ; the Hongwanji at Kyoto, the
 
 142 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 walls of the castle at Osaka and the battle of Mukden. 
 A wider acquaintance with the Japanese people and 
 the realities of their daily life will show, I think, that 
 this so-called love of the little is really a highly culti- 
 vated and acute sense of proportion, where it is not 
 purely ethical. 
 
 The Japanese beer-glass, you will remember, was 
 the size of a doll's tumbler. " Why ? " " Oh, because 
 they have a passion for little things " is certainly the 
 easiest and most obvious answer. But follow that 
 glass to its home on its Japanese dinner tray, in its 
 Japanese room, and you will see that its littleness is in 
 exact proportion to the tray and the room. Nor are the 
 rooms so small, but because we insist on bringing our 
 encumbering " foreign " ideas into them. There is no 
 furniture in a Japanese room, no furniture of any kind 
 whatsoever. Two kneeling-cushions and a round box, 
 a brazier, are the only possible objects which could come 
 under that heading, therefore the whole space within 
 the four walls of a room is space for movement. If 
 a measurement were taken of the actual feet of free 
 space in many a modern European drawing-room, I 
 believe that it would be found to be something less 
 than that in the " tiny " Japanese apartment. 
 
 Another thing to be borne in mind is that life in 
 Japan is lived, not above the floor on chairs, but 
 on the floor itself. Try living on the floor and you 
 will find the whole horizon of a room opening out 
 in the most astonishing way. What we call a stool, 
 for instance, represents the same level as a table. 
 The actual difference in the height of the eyes sitting 
 on one's heels on a Japanese floor and on a chair is 
 really between two and three feet, while it must also 
 be remembered that Japanese eyes, belonging as they
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 143 
 
 do to a body shorter on the average than our own, 
 come still nearer to the ground. 
 
 Thus a careful examination of the things which are 
 small in Japan, which they have deliberately chosen to 
 make small, copied smaller than the foreign originals, 
 will show, I think, that it is due to their acute sense 
 of fitness and proportion. There is also another 
 reason, which is not artistic but ethical. 
 
 The Japanese are a sober and abstemious race, a 
 race of high culture and of ancient civilisation. When 
 we were running about clad in the inadequate skin, 
 gorging off half-raw oxen, and drunken with seven- 
 day feasts of mead, they lived already under an ordered 
 and an organised government with most, if not all, of 
 the essentials of civilisation. And after all, is not 
 one of the hall-marks of real civilisation the learning 
 to take "a little" instead of "a lot," in extracting 
 from each atom the whole of its use, enjoyment 
 and pleasure? Children and savages are always 
 wasteful. We do not now try to eat whole oxen 
 or drink mead for seven days, we have learnt to get as 
 much if not more pleasure out of one glass of wine 
 and one slice of beef, and the reason is that we are 
 slowly learning not to gulp. If you watch the work- 
 ing man drink his beer, or the working woman her tea, 
 you will see that they usually gulp it down in big 
 draughts, imagining, I suppose, that it is sheer quan- 
 tity which produces flavour. They have not yet learnt 
 that profound ethical truth, expressed by the old 
 epicure when he said approvingly of some young man 
 that he " had already learned to sip his wine and not 
 to gulp it." The Japanese have learnt to sip. Their 
 wine-glasses, which are china bowls, hold perhaps two 
 tablespoonfuls, their tea-cups three, their pipes just
 
 144 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 three fleeting whiffs. Drunkenness is exceedingly 
 rare ; it does exist, but with a glass holding two table- 
 spoonfuls there is time for reflection. It is also more 
 economical than the foreign variety, the actual quantity 
 required to produce intoxication when taken in small 
 doses being, I believe, considerably less. 
 
 There is always another side to a people's art, a side 
 which is frequently overlooked, and that is the art, not 
 in the object, but in the workman. A people's art will 
 show itself, not only in the actual object produced, but 
 in the life of the producer and in the conditions of 
 production. 
 
 In the cloisonn6 works of Nagoya, an industrial 
 centre of a quarter of a million of inhabitants, the 
 workers sat in peace and solitude, not a sound of the 
 busy streets penetrated to the long series of matted 
 rooms where they worked. Each room and each 
 workman looked towards a quiet garden, cool with 
 running water, and still with the deep mystery of the 
 pines. In the modern porcelain factory, dedicated to 
 the production of goods for the " foreign " market, 
 the long white room looked out through open doors 
 upon the waving rice-fields, and each potter's wheel 
 was turned to see the branch of purple iris standing in 
 its yellow vase. There is a cotton factory in Japan 
 which is a positive addition to the beauty of the land- 
 scape. 
 
 Nor is it only the big and wealthy workmen who 
 produce good art. Some of the most beautiful silver 
 enamel-ware in Tokyo was made by a little man who 
 owned the smallest and poorest of general shops, where 
 halfpenny tooth brushes and farthing sheets of paper 
 formed the richest portions of his stock. All this beau- 
 tiful silver enamel-work was done in the back parlour,
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 145 
 
 and at no time could he have had more than ten yen (1) 
 worth of such goods in hand. Yet he was an artist to 
 the tips of his fingers, and the sheen and colour of his 
 enamelled silver lotus flowerswere a joy to the beholder. 
 
 In Nikko there was a carpenter who made wooden 
 trays for the inhabitants. His stall, the merest shanty, 
 was the littlest imaginable, yet he carved me a wooden 
 box with a design in chrysanthemums which was 
 skilled artistic work, and even his cheap wooden trays 
 had the stamp of art. He did them with a penknife, 
 and the whole surface of the tray was grooved in 
 shallow curving lines. 
 
 And the worker himself? If there is art in the 
 product and in the conditions of production, what of 
 the producer ? Is there art in his life and his tastes ? 
 Is there art in the life of the labourer, of the coolie and 
 the 'ricksha man ? Is there art in the daily life of the 
 common people as well as in the things they use ? 
 
 A man's tastes are known by his pleasures. When the 
 common people of Tokyo make " Bank Holiday " they 
 go to see a handful of pink cherry-blossoms against 
 the blue of an April sky. They walk politely, looking 
 up at the trees, and though the crowd is thick, endless, 
 nobody pushes or fights or swears. No special 
 posse of policemen is turned out to keep order. 
 Down the long two-mile avenue of cherry-trees at 
 Mukojimathe crowd wanders amiably, and the munici- 
 pality of Tokyo has never thought to invent a single 
 penalty for the destruction of young trees and shrubs. 
 The world stares contentedly, drinks tea, and goes 
 home again. And this is considered to be the rowdiest 
 crowd at the most popular resort on the favourite 
 " Bank Holiday " of the year. 
 
 The blossoming of all the other flowers, plum,
 
 i 4 6 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 peach, azalea, peony, wistaria, iris, lotus, convolvulus, 
 maple, chrysanthemum, are equally visited, and adver- 
 tised daily in the newspapers. The people of Japan 
 take few holidays, but those they do take are almost 
 always at the time of the flower festivals. 
 
 When they can afford something more expensive 
 they go to the " Royal Academy," which opens its doors 
 twice in the year for the aristocratic sum of 3 sen (f<^.) 
 gheta (wooden clogs) and umbrellas left outside, 5 rin 
 (10 rin make \d.\ The other picture exhibitions, 
 not having the status of the Tokyo " Royal Academy," 
 are more moderate, averaging i to 2 sen for ad- 
 mission, and gheta, free. The entrance to the exhibi- 
 tions of bronze, lacquer, porcelain and other arts is 
 the same. Even on the basis of Japanese incomes, 
 where a General earns ^300 a year, the Headmaster 
 of a Public School 160 and a coolie 6d. a day, the 
 charges are exceedingly moderate. And the people, 
 the real working people, go. I should be curious to 
 find out how many working men have paid at the turn- 
 stiles of Burlington House. 
 
 Besides art exhibitions, Japanese workmen go to 
 the theatre, but this is a taste they share with many 
 other nations ; what is all their own is their love of 
 pilgrimages, not only to temples of religious repute, 
 but to places of celebrated beauty. Fujiyama is yearly 
 ascended by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims. Here 
 religion and beauty are mingled. For the great 
 mountain is sacred. So is almost every spot in Japan 
 that is particularly beautiful. As one journeys through 
 the country, the traveller will always find that the most 
 beautiful point of view, the grandest scene, the loveliest 
 nook, has a temple, or at least a wayside shrine, set up 
 by the common people and tended by them. There
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 147 
 
 never was a nation since the days of Ancient Greece 
 who so entirely believed that beauty is sacred, or 
 who so entirely disbelieved that art can be divorced 
 from ethics. They have the love of beauty innate 
 and inalienable. A man I knew was once crossing 
 Tokyo in a 'ricksha ; he was a prosperous, commercial 
 being with a vast contempt for the "heathen." It 
 was late afternoon. His kurumaya, after looking 
 round at him several times, suddenly stopped short, 
 and waving his hand to the west said respectfully 
 but firmly : 
 
 " Honourably please to observe the unusual glory of 
 the sunset." 
 
 " And I told him to jolly well get on," was the end of 
 the story as I heard it. 
 
 A favourite pastime of the 'ricksha men on the 
 cab-stands as they wait for a fare is to draw in the 
 dust of the roadway one against the other. If sand 
 has been spilled from a cart anywhere within reach the 
 whole 'ricksha stand migrates and has the happiest 
 time. I have seen really good outlines of Fujiyama 
 and of flying birds, or blossoming flowers, all on the 
 roadways by the 'ricksha stands. And whatever their 
 faults, they at least had life, for the 'ricksha man has 
 knowledge, knowledge based on intelligent observation 
 and on the inherited training of his race. 
 
 In the Japanese language there is a word, edaburi, 
 which means " the formation or the arrangement of the 
 branches of a tree." Merely to possess such a word 
 shows the long training in art and observation which 
 the nation must have undergone. But this word is 
 not a technical term used only by artists and the 
 cultured classes ; it is a living, breathing expression, 
 part of the vocabulary of every Japanese, even the
 
 148 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 Board School educated. Kurumaya discuss edaburi 
 in the streets of Tokyo. Railway porters at wayside 
 stations argue the matter with the stationmaster. 
 Every peasant knows, understands, and talks of the 
 matter as though he had brought himself up on long 
 courses of Ruskin. It has often been a subject of great 
 regret to me that Ruskin did not know the Japanese, 
 for in them he would have found the living proof of 
 so much of his teaching. 
 
 But the people of Japan not only discuss edaburi, 
 they write poetry. There is an exceedingly simple 
 form of poetry called hokku. It consists of only three 
 lines of five, seven, and five syllables, and is written in 
 the language of daily life. The kokku was invented by 
 a man called Basho, for the definite ethical purpose of 
 cultivating the taste and improving the morals of the 
 people. He believed in the composition of poetry as 
 an ethical force, and he wished to bring it from the 
 home of the educated into the lives of the poor. He 
 succeeded. Not because the hokku is a so much easier 
 form of poetry than the English couplet, but because 
 the people have taste, and art, and civilisation in the 
 very cells of their brains. Every one writes poetry, 
 even the typical jinricksha man, who is to the Japanese 
 what the charbonnier is to the French or the coster to 
 us. When the kurumaya and his wife go to visit their 
 relations the whole party amuses itself by composing 
 these tiny poems. On all occasions of joy and grief, 
 on birth, death and marriage, at the time of each flower 
 festival, or of any other happening, the people compose 
 poetry. Literary composition has always been incul- 
 cated as the best medicine for sorrow, and as such is 
 practised daily. 
 
 This is a little poem taken from the diary of a woman
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 149 
 
 who died in Tokyo a year or two ago. She lived with 
 her husband, a doorkeeper, on an income of i a 
 month, and she was very delicate. She bore him three 
 children, who all died shortly after birth ; then the poor 
 mother died herself. Her diary came into the posses- 
 sion of Lafcadio Hearn, who translated it under the 
 title of " A Woman's Tragedy." This poem was 
 composed on the death of the third baby and runs : 
 
 " Tanoshimi mo 
 Sam6te haka nashi. 
 Hani no yume." 
 
 " All my delight has perished, and hopeless I remain. 
 It was a dream, a dream of spring." 
 
 Here is another poem which is more typically 
 Japanese. It was composed by the same woman after 
 the death of her second baby, and runs : 
 
 " Sami dare" ya 
 Shimerigachi naru 
 Sod6 no tamoto wo." 
 
 " Oh, the month of rain ; all things have become damp ; 
 the ends of my sleeve are wet." 
 
 Which being interpreted is : " Oh ! the time of grief. 
 All things now seem sad. The sleeves of my robe 
 are moist with tears." * 
 
 It is this very allusiveness, this saying of something 
 simple and commonplace, and hiding behind it a whole 
 meaning of intense emotion, which makes this poem so 
 typically Japanese, for Japanese art is always sugges- 
 tive, it always needs the observer to bring his share of 
 thought and mind to its interpretation. 
 
 It is interesting to speculate how much the two most 
 
 * The long sleeve of a Japanese kimono is always held before the 
 face to hide emotion.
 
 150 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 universally recognised characteristics of the Japanese, 
 politeness and cleanliness, owe to their sense of art. 
 If one looks into the psychology of the race, one sees, 
 of course, that this national trait of exquisite polite- 
 ness was built up, or at least assisted, in many ways. 
 There was that stern training of the samurai which 
 taught eternal, never-ending self-control. There 
 is the whole Buddhistic teaching, which is one long 
 gospel of unselfishness and kindness. But other 
 nations have had training in self-control, we ourselves 
 among the number think for a moment of the 
 Puritans and our public schools. And other religions 
 preach kindness and unselfishness, our own again, and 
 yet there is no other nation so widely recognised, 
 even by the snappiest of tourists who ever wrote his 
 "memoirs," as universally polite from the Emperor to 
 the coolie in the streets. It is a hypothesis which I put 
 forward with some hesitation, because the origins of 
 national psychology are not for the amateur, but I do 
 think that a certain stress is to be laid upon this innate 
 and instinctive, but much cultivated sense of art. Has 
 not the politeness something to do with that love of a 
 beautiful outline, that desire for a perfect curve in the 
 relations between man and man as well as between 
 man's eye and his drawing? Is not, in fact, a rude 
 action a something inartistic in the social whole, a blot 
 of crude colour that jars ? 
 
 The whole of the cka-no-yu, or tea ceremony, one 
 of the few Japanese things of which Europeans 
 have heard more or less vaguely, is an illustration in 
 point. The tea ceremony, divested of its subsidiary 
 and attendant growths, is in essence nothing more 
 than the proper making and the proper drinking 
 of a simple cup of tea. This, in the course of
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 151 
 
 centuries, has been elaborated into an imposing and 
 very complicated ceremonial. Nowadays the cha-no-yu 
 is regarded mainly as a useful reservoir of etiquette 
 and politeness, and is taught as such. But the whole 
 idea on which it rests is that for every given action 
 there is always one, ami only one, right and proper 
 attitude, that is to say, me most graceful. So that the 
 curve of every finger in the mere passing of a tea-cup 
 is the result of careful thought and long experience. 
 Everything has to be considered, the room, the person, 
 the relation of the body to the arm, of the arm to the 
 hand, of the hand to the tea-cup, the position of th 
 person serving, and of the person served, the place ol 
 the tea-cups, of the tea-pot, and the tea-kettle ; all 
 have been taken into consideration by the tea cere- 
 monialists, and the proper, the most graceful attitude 
 carefully evolved. 
 
 That you may not think politeness a matter of social 
 caste in Japan, I may say that the kurumaya when 
 they run into one another at the corners, the coolies 
 hauling carts when they collide, bow profoundly 
 and beg one another's pardon. 
 
 And the exquisite cleanliness ? Some o'ne once defined 
 dirt as "matter out of place." Is not much of art 
 just the putting of things in their right places, in their 
 best and most appropriate and consequently their most 
 beautiful place ; in the putting of a thing in such a 
 place that you feel it never could have been otherwise. 
 As the child said when lost in admiration of his birth- 
 day cake, " It's so beautiful I think God must have 
 made it." It is this cleanliness, this neatness, which 
 the Japanese possess, a neatness which has passed 
 beyond mere precision, passed on into its essence 
 grace.
 
 152 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 All this may perhaps sound far-fetched to English 
 ears. If we are clean and polite it is on sanitary or on 
 ethical grounds, not for aesthetic reasons, because " it is 
 healthy or right," not "because it is more beautiful," 
 and we make a broad distinction between ethics and 
 aesthetics. In Japan, on the contrary, there is the most 
 intimate of relations between them. The whole modern 
 controversy of "art for art's sake," all the dearly 
 cherished views of French critics that art has nothing 
 to do with morals, is simply unmeaning to them. You 
 might as well say that the sun had no relation to 
 light. 
 
 I have already mentioned how the hokku form of 
 verse arose as a moral influence, how literary com- 
 position is always recommended as the best medicine 
 for sorrow ; but what of a nation whose gardens are 
 arranged to express an ethical abstraction such as 
 courage, resignation, obedience, or to suggest a saying 
 of Buddha, the Blessed One ; whose dwarf trees are 
 not merely grown to make a design, but also to express 
 an idea and suggest a reflection ; where every single 
 tree, and flower, and bird, and beast is a moral symbol 
 and is commonly used as such ; where a simple candle- 
 stick of a stork standing on a tortoise and holding the 
 stem of a convolvulus in its mouth is a whole philo- 
 sophy : the stork, representing Life, standing upon the 
 tortoise, Eternity, and holding in its mouth the Morn- 
 ing Glory, a flower whose brief life, only blooming for 
 the few hours after dawn, is typical of mortality, and 
 the impermanence of all things. From Life based 
 upon Eternity springs Mortality, whose joys are fleet- 
 ing. Here is the kernel of the whole Buddhistic faith. 
 The impermanence of phenomena and the eternity of 
 law, that is, cause and effect.
 
 THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 153 
 
 Even such an ordinary art as that of arranging 
 flowers is deeply ethical. The whole of Chinese 
 philosophy is bound up with it. Each stem is known 
 by the name of some tenet in this philosophy, and at 
 the end of the lesson on flower arrangement the 
 teacher sits down and talks to the class of the under- 
 lying ethical ideas. 
 
 I do not think there is any art in the world into 
 which so much thought and meaning has been poured 
 as into that of the Japanese. Every design, even the 
 simplest, even the most stereotyped, has behind it a 
 whole world of symbol, of suggestion which speaks to 
 the mind of the beholder as the outlines to his eye. 
 And this is the reason why no design is ever unmean- 
 ing, haphazard, as it so often is with us. It is there 
 not only because it is beautiful, but because it is 
 appropriate to the place and the occasion, because it 
 has some connection with the object it decorates, with 
 the person who gives or the person who receives it, 
 with the time and the circumstances of the giving. 
 Their art, in fact, regarded from the ethical point of view, 
 is often a sort of moral shorthand, a very beautiful, 
 finely wrought shorthand, which men can take away 
 and think upon. 
 
 And this brings me to my last point. John Adding- 
 ton Symonds, in one of his wonderful essays on the 
 Italian Renaissance, says that painting inevitably fell 
 from its high estate among men because modern life 
 is too complex to be expressed by it. That just in the 
 same way as the Renaissance required something less 
 simple than the sculpture of the Greeks to translate 
 its thoughts and feelings into outward form, so we in 
 this century cannot express our own more subtle and 
 complex thought in terms of painting, and therefore
 
 154 THE ART OF THE NATION 
 
 never again can we hope to rival the perfection of that 
 old Renaissance art. And he concludes by remarking 
 that it is in music, more plastic and suggestive, that we 
 must seek our best expression. Now Japanese art is 
 not dead but intensely living, and it has always seemed 
 to me that it lives, it holds its place in their life, 
 thought and culture just because it has learnt to express 
 those complex and subtle emotions which make up our 
 world to-day. And it does it, not by imaging them 
 forth defined and definite as our painting seeks to do, 
 but just as our music would by suggestion. 
 
 To every Japanese painting a man must bring his 
 own soul and his own thoughts, and where he has none 
 or little, then he will turn away complacently, saying, 
 " Here, there is nothing." For his are not the eyes 
 to see all the dim eternal problems, all the vistas of 
 unwritten poetry which the artist has but shadowed 
 forth ; the artist whose part is not to portray, but 
 infinitely to suggest.
 
 SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE
 
 " What it is 
 That dwelleth here 
 
 I know not ; 
 
 Yet my heart is full of gratitude, 
 And the tears trickle down." 
 
 SAIGIO. 
 " Japanese Literature," by W. G. Aston.
 
 THE MOAT 
 
 IT is winter, and yet a summer sky of clearest blue, 
 faint and pure. A white sun rides in the southern 
 sky, winning me to believe it summer until the cold 
 northern wind lifts the edge of my cloak, and I know it 
 winter. 
 
 It is warm here in the corner of the bridge, full in 
 the sunlight, and I linger. The dark, still waters of 
 the moat creep stealthily along on either side of me ; 
 in the distance I can see the rounded arcli of a bridge, 
 so arched is the span and so white that I could believe 
 the people had stolen the young crescent of the moon 
 to span their waters. 
 
 I lean on my bamboo parapet and look. The dark 
 still waters run between brown stone walls all overhung 
 with the twisted limbs of the fir-trees, such big strong 
 branches lying almost along the ground, and twisted 
 as if in a vain endeavour to get back to the earth 
 beneath. I watch the thick strong branches, soberly 
 green, the masses of foliage riotously so, a green line 
 and its shadow. 
 
 The stone banks of the moat are unhewn and 
 uncemented, but their surface is one unbroken line of 
 sober brown ; and I look at the long wave of muddy 
 finger-marks traced by the tide's edge, and now high up
 
 158 SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE 
 
 the wall, and drop my eyes to the deep mud-brown of 
 the waters below. 
 
 The bamboc parapet grows hot, hotter. I wonder 
 who laid those stones, and who keeps them so free of 
 grass and weeds. On the whole they are not more 
 silent and solid than the big limbs of the trees above. 
 Past the bridge in the distance is an unkempt space of 
 yellow grass, then a tall red building shoots abruptly 
 into the sky. The small brown policeman, hidden by 
 his military cloak and sword, stands motionless as I. 
 Am I dreaming that this is a city of a million souls ? 
 
 Blue, green, brown, black ; sky, trees, stones, water ; 
 a white sun, a white bridge and suddenly the two 
 seem to meet in a whirl of dust, my scale of colours 
 vanishes and with it the dreamy quiet and the summer 
 sun. A clatter of gheta on the bridge, two kuruma 
 past the policeman, a boat on the moat, the voice of 
 the tofu man following his bell along the road, the 
 shadow of the tall house over the world and I awake 
 to winter and the town.
 
 II 
 
 A RAINY DAY 
 
 RAIN ! 
 
 And the world lies like an impressionist picture 
 washed in with white. Shut up in my miniature 
 hansom, with the apron up to my eyes and the roof 
 down to the brim of my hat, it passes before me in 
 misty unreality. But for an occasional bob of the 
 black mushroom hat of my kurumaya as he pulls the 
 'ricksha out of a hole, I am drawn by an invisible 
 force. 
 
 It has rained for a week, and the streets are bogs, 
 the puddles ponds. The wind drives the rain with a 
 murmured "ssssk" against the tarpaulin sides of the 
 kuruma, but in front there is no rain, only an 
 intangible, shadowy whiteness between the world 
 and me. 
 
 The green bank of the moat, the dark water, even 
 the fir-trees whose green arms stretch down long 
 fingers into the water, are uncertain and swollen as the 
 world to sleepy eyes. Black kuruma splash past me, 
 with the large glass eye in their aprons shadowly 
 suggestive. The coolie in his straw raincoat, just a 
 walking sheaf finishing in two bare brown legs, plods 
 on, a golden figure against the grey. A long string of 
 carts pass by me, long narrow carts drawn by long
 
 160 SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE 
 
 thin horses ; cart and horses hidden under a structure 
 of yellow oil-paper, until they look like huge golden 
 bats or mythical dragons. And with his back to 
 the head of the horse, a halter in one hand, a yellow 
 paper umbrella in the other, his bare brown legs lost 
 in the mud, the walking sheaf moves on. 
 
 All the world to-day is four inches higher than its 
 wont ; and the stilt-like gheta seem an uncertain footing 
 for their owners. Bare to the thigh is the kurumaya, 
 and his brown legs look like the statues of Greece 
 sunned into life, so perfect are their outlines. 
 
 Down the vanishing road are two pale yellow 
 umbrellas, gold on grey, and I marvel at the beauty of 
 the colour. Suddenly round the bend of the street 
 comes a third foreign, black and in a flash the beauty 
 goes ; a muddy road in the drenching rain alone is 
 left, cold, prosaic. And I shiver in my kuriima.
 
 Ill 
 
 MME (PLUM-BLOSSOMS) 
 
 THEY lay in fleece-white purity down the hillside, and 
 the brooding stillness of that garden was as a sheltering 
 wing above the world. 
 
 Beneath one's feet the six-sided tiles set in the 
 brown earth were clean with a Dutch cleanliness, and 
 the soil all around had been raked with the same 
 quaint precision. Not a fallen leaf, nor the foot-mark 
 of a bird, marred the soft brown surface only the 
 narrow line of glazed tiles ran on and on under the 
 trees. 
 
 On every side the curve of the hill sloped upwards, 
 outwards, drawing the white garden nearer as a mother 
 draws her child close within her arms. 
 
 A hot sweet scent is in the air, delicate as 
 honeysuckle, fragrant as the pine, half-soft, half- 
 spiced the scent of the blossoming plum, mme, 
 the emblem of chastity, of womanly purity and 
 strength. 
 
 The pale grey stems of the trees are bent and old ; 
 some are covered with a grey-green moss, and between 
 their silvered stems I walk as in the cloistered calm of 
 ruined abbeys. 
 
 Up through the white fleece of blossom overhead 
 bright stars of blue shine down. The sun-warmed
 
 162 SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE 
 
 presence of the living earth draws her children near. 
 In all the world there is no sound. . . . 
 
 " Like as a hen gathereth her chickens." . . . 
 
 Is not that the white wing of the eternal mother 
 overhead ? And the warm, sweet fragrance of herself 
 is all around.
 
 IV 
 
 WET LEAVES 
 
 IT had rained all night and all day ; big, solid drops 
 of rain that fell as compactly through the air as 
 battalions of small shot, but at twilight the raindrops 
 dwindled, slackened, dwindled, ceased. 
 
 The clear, colourless sky, which the whole day long 
 had shot down its drops of rain, drew together in grey 
 clouds, growing momentarily greyer, thicker and more 
 grey, and shining with a pale light as though far away 
 behind those thick coverings a great white light was 
 burning. 
 
 The stones on the pathway were all wet and shining 
 and crunched down into little pools of water under 
 one's heels. The trees were dripping raindrops at 
 each leaf, the trunks of all the pines were a dark 
 brown with wet. 
 
 In the garden there was peace, a peace of plants 
 weighed down with raindrops, and very tired. Up on 
 the damp hillside the note of a solitary bird sounded 
 forlornly. Uguisu, the Japanese nightingale was 
 calling. One sweet short song, and then a greater 
 silence. 
 
 Above the little grey shrine to Inari, the Fox God, 
 two golden oranges swayed out against the dark green 
 bush. The raindrops on their under sides trickled
 
 1 64 SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE 
 
 slowly over the little temple, and down the miniature 
 steps, while those on the upper sides stood out in little 
 clusters growing larger and larger until an impercep- 
 tible stir of the heavy fruit sent them chasing their 
 fellows down the temple's roof. 
 
 And the sky above grew greyer. The golden 
 oranges, larger for the raindrops, swayed mysteriously 
 out, bright yellow against dark green, in a damp, dark 
 world. 
 
 At the path's edge another pathway of clear water 
 encircled the temple and the orange trees ; a water so 
 clear that it hardly seemed to exist, while the brown 
 banks and the brown stones showed wet and dark as 
 the pathway under foot. And round the temple and 
 the orange trees in ever silent motion along the brown 
 pathway swam strange fishes ; bright blue carp with 
 black sides and designs in creamy white, large orange 
 carp with tracings in silver, golden carp with six or 
 seven waving tails, and solitary in their midst one 
 white patriarch whom age had turned to driven snow. 
 
 And the damp, dark world turned slowly darker. 
 The wet hillside grew a black, blurred line ; the light 
 behind the cloud was going out ; the trees had lost 
 their colour. 
 
 All silently the blue carp moved along the dark 
 pathway, and the golden orange globes dripped above 
 the little temple. Bright blue, orange ; the light 
 behind the clouds was out.
 
 ASAMAYAMA 
 
 WE were to climb Asamayama. The plan seemed 
 simple and delightful ; to take horses in the cool of the 
 evening and ride by moonlight to the last green frill of 
 trees upon the mountain side : to climb the nine 
 thousand feet to the very edge of the crater ; and then 
 in those blackest hours before the dawn to look into 
 the volcano's mysterious depths, all red and glowing, 
 where flame and smoke strive ever for the mastery, 
 where the long orange tongues leap up through rolling 
 purple masses of the smoke ; and all around and all 
 below, as far as eye can pierce, is lurid glowing red. 
 And still on the crater's treacherous sides which hold 
 smoke and flame unsteadily as a drunkard holds his 
 cup, to look down fascinated until they crumble 
 beneath one's feet, and the thrill of terror bites in the 
 memory of the mighty force indelible. Then to break- 
 fast under the sheltering walls of the old crater ; to 
 watch the darkness melt before the coming day, to see 
 the sun rise swiftly in his strength, and the long circle 
 of the hills stand clear and blue and liquid on the 
 upland plain ; to see the giant ridges of the mountains 
 stretching from sea to sea with the faint white cone of 
 Fuji a dream upon the distant sky ; to look in the 
 freshness of the morning upon the beauty of the land,
 
 1 66 SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE 
 
 and standing on the cinder slopes of Asama to trace 
 the tortured lava beds stretching like long grey snakes 
 among the green till the trees grow over and the forest 
 engulfs them. And still in the first hours of the dawn 
 to ride back slowly with the memory of the crater and 
 the sunrise making pictures in one's mind, tired but 
 contented. 
 
 The programme was delightful, perfect, it only 
 remained to carry it out. So we started, on the 
 sorry horses of the upland regions of Japan, and the 
 full moon fitful behind thick clouds shone sadly. It 
 was distinctly chilly, for the table land of Karuizawa is 
 3000 feet above sea level, and in the air was the damp 
 shiver of coming rain. Still we started, out of the 
 village and along the wide still plain where the dark 
 shadow of a hill showed round as a basin on our right. 
 This was Asama's satellite, born of her fires, made 
 of her ashes, a round, smooth, green hill, cruelly 
 deceitful. 
 
 The empty plain stretched dark to the edge of the 
 misty clouds and diffused through it was a pale grey 
 light that shimmered, trembling. Over the plain and 
 the mountain, through the air and the shadows, the 
 light filtered mistily, swaying and rounding the outlines 
 till they looked like solid bodies seen through a vast 
 perspective of clear water. As we plodded on, the 
 paper lanterns held by each boy at the horses' heads 
 turned all the wet black path to shining silver pools 
 which gleamed as the light fell on them, quivered like 
 spreading veins of ore, and disappeared into the black- 
 ness. The limpid flowing air that swayed above the 
 plain, all luminous and clear, grew darker, shrank as it 
 were together, lost its liquid light, turned slowly into 
 rain, and came down steadily.
 
 ASAMAYAMA 167 
 
 We passed through a second village, and went on, 
 over a rutty road, between high banks, persistently 
 upwards. All the sounds of the world had died away, 
 and the life of the woods, the rustle of leaves and of 
 grasses, the long thick hum of the insects was dead. 
 Nothing moved. Even the rain made no sound as it 
 fell in great wet clouds upon the ground. 
 
 High up on the rutty road we halted, while the two 
 boys plunging downward through the bushes in the 
 darkness drank of a silent stream which flowed below, 
 the last water we should pass that night. The leaves 
 of the bushes cut sharp green silhouettes upon the 
 blackness, stiff and metallic as tinfoil, as the boys, 
 lantern in hand, plunged downward, But we did not 
 go, for the soft cloud of rain was falling thicker, 
 wetter, and we were cold. When each had drunk his 
 fill, and the metal green leaves of the bushes had 
 flashed back into darkness again, we plodded on, 
 over the common, under the trees, along another 
 piece of road, looser, more rutty than the last, 
 and definitely among the dripping trees we climbed 
 upward. 
 
 The moon was gone now, hidden deep behind the 
 falling layers of cloud. And there was a hush, a 
 stagnancy upon all things as though an unseen, un- 
 known force were terrorising life to stillness. Not a 
 tree had leave to stir. The branches huddled dumbly, 
 and all the seething insect life which makes the woods 
 so full of sound lay stricken, lay dumb, paralysed ; and 
 among the damp trees we journeyed on. 
 
 At midnight the horses stopped, in a fold of the hills 
 on the edge of the trees, where the blackness lay solid, 
 and we slid down. One boy tied the horses together
 
 1 68 SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE 
 
 and sat down patiently to await our return next 
 morning. The other snuffed the candle in his paper 
 lantern and prepared to lead the way. By this time it 
 was raining hard, in distinct material drops, which 
 splashed sharply on face and hands, and it was pitch 
 dark. The boy, lantern in hand, went first, and all 
 the light of the lantern so carefully trimmed was 
 cut off from us by his stout round body. We knew 
 by the crunch there were cinders under foot, by the 
 cold wet dabs that ghost-like pressed our hands that 
 there were bushes, and that we climbed. 
 
 From time to time the boy would sway his lantern to 
 one side or the other, and stunted shrubs like London 
 laurel trees would start into being, and disappear. 
 With each swing of the lantern the stunted shrubs 
 grew scarcer and more stunted, till they dwindled to 
 bushes, to mere green weeds like dandelions, to 
 nothingness. Then the light fell on cinder, piled up, 
 half-burnt cinder with ends of broken brickbats, and 
 all the rubbish of a dust-heap. And at each step the 
 wind came up and up ; colder, stronger, wetter it tore 
 down the bare steep slopes driving us backwards. 
 Then we would sit down upon the cinders, our backs 
 to the mountain, our feet on the brickbats, and pant. 
 It was distinctly exhausting. Each footstep was a 
 launch into the unknown, and a searching for a foot- 
 hold, each pause an adding to the weight of cinders 
 that drifted down boots and clothing. And it rained 
 with fierce splashes when the wind blew, with dull 
 persistency when it died away, but still unceasingly. 
 And that sense of an unseen, unknown force, paralysing 
 all things, grew with each footstep. The chill of a 
 dumb terror lay upon the world, and the utter desolation 
 struck colder than the wind.
 
 ASAMAYAMA 169 
 
 We rested again while the icy wind rushed screech- 
 ing through the cinders ; and, as it died away, the 
 chirp of a Japanese grasshopper came into the stillness. 
 We were far above the weeds now, in the region of 
 perpetual cinder, and still that grasshopper chirped 
 weakly. But the spell was too real, the terror too 
 deathly ; the unseen, unknown force took a step nearer 
 in the darkness, and the weak wee chirp seemed only 
 the voice of the horror, the breath of the dumbness 
 giving it life. 
 
 The cinders grew looser and looser as we climbed, 
 more difficult to tread, and the stagnant silence was 
 filled and filled with sulphur. It did not come in 
 breaths or gusts, or driving before the wind, it was 
 there in the silence, part of it, and it wrapped us 
 round. If dead silence can grow more deathly, then 
 did that stillness die again. The dumb terror tightened 
 on the world, and the unknown force came nearer. 
 
 From far below the sound of pouring heavy stones 
 drove up and up. The mountain rumbled in its 
 depths, rumbled and was still. The presence of that 
 unseen force was manifest. Before it terror crouched 
 still as a bird beneath the swooping shadow of the 
 hawk. 
 
 We climbed up heavily, up through the thick 
 sulphur and the loose steep cinders, up till we turned, 
 and the full force of the wind came sweeping round 
 the side of the mountain. We were walking on the 
 edge, the real edge over which you could fall, and it 
 was all of lava, sticky as clay and crossed with deep 
 black cracks that had no bottom. The wind swept 
 down here undisturbed, the gusts of rain broke sharply 
 on the paper lantern as it swayed from side to side to 
 peer out a way. The sticky lava softened rapidly until
 
 170 SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE 
 
 it sucked around our feet, drawing them down. Then 
 a long fierce gust blew out the lantern and we stood 
 still. 
 
 " Honourably please stand very still," called the 
 boy quickly. 
 
 And we stayed dead still. 
 
 The gust of wind rushed by us, rushed on. Then 
 another blew till we cowered on the sinking lava. It 
 was so long in passing that the moments seemed as 
 hours. We stood like statues. Insidiously the lava 
 crept above our feet, crept stealthily, and motionless 
 we waited. 
 
 The gust died down but the wind still blew, still 
 blew. A light quivered for a moment in the darkness 
 and went out. The boy had lit a match. He struck 
 another. It flickered in little yellow leaps that showed 
 the lantern and his face and went abruptly out. Again 
 the tiny mandorla of light shot up, the boy was holding 
 the lantern in his hand all ready. We could see the 
 flame double as the candle caught, then both went 
 swiftly out, for again the wind came rushing down. 
 It blew and blew. Then it blew so fiercely that to 
 blow again it stopped to take its breath. Quickly in 
 the second's pause the match flared up, the lantern lit, 
 and we could move. 
 
 As we drew out our feet the wicked sticking lava 
 sucked, and the boy held the lantern low to peer out 
 the cracks. Then he turned sharply to the left, and 
 the wind was gone. 
 
 We stood in a narrow roofless cave whose sides 
 were overhanging rock, whose floor was lava ash, 
 wet with big rain pools. This was the old crater. 
 Asama has three craters, and two are at present in 
 disuse. We were sheltering in one of these. It
 
 ASAMAYAMA 171 
 
 was a still haven of refuge after the fury of the 
 wind outside, and a sure. There were no cracks, no 
 sticky sucking lava here. With relief as from a heavy 
 burden we sat down upon the wet ash to rest and eat, 
 the lantern in our midst. 
 
 It was now 3 o'clock. Since midnight we had been 
 climbing, our clothes were soaked and heavy with rain 
 and cinders, and we were very tired. The boy pro- 
 saically unpacked the hamper, and by the flickering 
 light he set out plates and food. But before we could 
 take one mouthful, the wind rushed down the roofless 
 cave, upset the hamper, swept the lantern along the 
 ash before it, tore like a whirlwind from end to end, 
 and left us in an unearthly livid darkness that lighted 
 nothing. 
 
 For a moment we all stayed numbed, then the boy 
 sought the remnants of his lantern and we the 
 remnants of our meal. They were both embedded in 
 thick lava dust. 
 
 We could not go on up the crater now, for every 
 minute the wind blew fiercer, and the paper lantern 
 was torn in several places. We must wait for the 
 dawn to show us the way. So we huddled under the 
 shelter of the overhanging rock and waited. 
 
 The livid darkness that lay upon the mountain grew 
 more livid and less dark to our watching eyes, till we 
 could distinguish the faint outlines of things, though not 
 the things themselves. It was, oh ! so cold, and that 
 sense of stagnant terror, dispersed for a little by the 
 wind and the food, crept back and back, intenser, 
 dumber than before. 
 
 Then the mountain rumbled in its depths, and the 
 sound of pouring heavy stones came up again. This
 
 172 SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE 
 
 time it did not die away, it stopped abruptly, as though 
 by force of will. And we waited. 
 
 It was so cold that I could sit still no longer, and, 
 wrapping my cloak around me, tired as I was, walked 
 up and down, up and down. 
 
 The overhanging rocks, whose outlines showed so 
 ghostly against the livid darkness, rose high above 
 our heads. From time to time the sulphur thickened 
 in the air, making us cough. 
 
 And the deathness of that silence, the dumb horror 
 of that stillness spread and spread and spread. It was 
 all afraid. 
 
 The boy, curled under his rock, slept peacefully. 
 We walked and waited. 
 
 Then, in an instant, two great tongues of flame 
 shot into the darkness, leapt high toward the sky, and 
 two reports, as of the heaviest thunder, shook the 
 mountain. The boy, awakened, jumped up quickly, 
 looked at the flames as they sprang into the darkness, 
 and the thunder of the second report shook the ground 
 beneath his feet, turned to speak, when a sudden sharp 
 clatter came like a hiss past all our ears, calling 
 "Stones, stones," he threw himself flat on his face 
 and rolled right under the rock. 
 
 We, too, rushed to the overhanging rocks and 
 crouched down quickly, and the sharp clatter of stone 
 on stone went on all around us. 
 
 Asama had rumbled to some purpose, and she was 
 resting. 
 
 Then the utter silence, the dead, dumb horror came 
 back, came back again. Fear breathed beside us in 
 the darkness.
 
 ASAMAYAMA 173 
 
 Slowly the little stars above the rocks dropped out 
 of the sky, the livid darkness changed to livid light, 
 and it was dawn, a cold, grey dawn, but little lighter 
 than the night had been. Still we could see, see the 
 lava and the ash, so, rolling out from under our rock, 
 we shook ourselves together, chattering with cold. 
 
 The ground at our feet was sprinkled with pinky-grey 
 stones, daubed with bright yellow sulphur, and glowing 
 hot. They were as large as a clenched fist, with edges 
 sharp and jagged. We stooped to pick up one the 
 least hot and carry it wrapt in handkerchiefs, which 
 it burnt, and mackintoshes which it singed, back to 
 Karuizawa. 
 
 The boy looked at the stones, looked at us, looked 
 towards the crater, and asked with many warnings if 
 we were to go on. We, too, looked at the stones, 
 and thoughtfully towards the crater, and, as we looked, 
 the mountain rumbled slowly in its depths. 
 
 Seizing the basket, the boy fled, our one and only 
 guide. We followed him, over the cracks and the 
 spongy soft lava, too occupied with wondering how we 
 had ever passed over it safely the night before to be 
 afraid now too busy, too, watching the boy fleeing in 
 front of us, too occupied marking his path to think even 
 of eruptions. And somehow we got over safely, back 
 on to the solid cinder slope of Asama again, the slope 
 that went down straight as a shoot, and fell away as 
 abruptly on each side as a bridge. It was ground, and 
 after the cracks and the sucking lava, solid, though the 
 cinders did shift beneath our feet. We had leisure to 
 look round us, and found the mountain wrapped in a 
 thick white mist. By this time the boy had disap- 
 peared entirely, but we did not trouble now. There 
 seemed no choice of paths down. Our cinder bridge
 
 174 SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE 
 
 went on, sloping steeply downwards into the hidden 
 world below, and we followed it. 
 
 A little way below, the mist sank suddenly beneath 
 our feet, and we were walking in the yellow sunlight 
 walking down a cinder slope that shone jet-black 
 against a pale blue sky, while all around and all 
 beneath, and surging up against the cinder slope, 
 floated a wild wide sea of dead white clouds a dead, 
 still sea, with its waves stiffened into frozen snow. 
 Tossing, it lay beneath the clear blue sky, and the pale 
 sun glinted on its snow-white crests, glinted on the 
 still gigantic billows that stretched from cinder path- 
 way to the far blue sky. It lay a silent sea of milk- 
 white frozen waves that was such stuff as dreams are 
 made of. 
 
 And we went on, down. As the gods of old along a 
 sloping bridge that crossed the clouds and stretched 
 from the blue heaven to the hidden earth beneath, like 
 Izanagi and Izanami, as they crossed the rainbow 
 bridge from the High Plain of Heaven and stirred the 
 floating brine with their jewelled spear stirred till it 
 went " koro, koro " till it went " curdle, curdle," as the 
 old chronicle says, and the drops that dripping fell 
 from the celestial spear piled up into the firstborn of 
 the islands of Japan. 
 
 A sudden peal of echoing thunder shook our cinder 
 bridge, and we turned abruptly. Somewhere on the 
 other side of the topmost edge of cinder rose up a 
 huge column of thick smoke. The wickedest dead- 
 white smoke, which, slowly curling over at the tips 
 like ostrich feathers, showed shadows of deep mauve 
 and dull blue-purple, while from below the heavy
 
 ASAMAYAMA 175 
 
 pouring of great stones drove up and up. Asama 
 rumbled, rumbled in her depths. Half an hour sooner 
 we should have been up there still. Had we gone on 
 to the crater we should have been on the very edge. 
 The memory of the sharp-edged clattering stones, red- 
 hot and big as fists, came back to us. We looked at 
 one another silently, and went on, downwards. 
 
 Slowly the gigantic plumes of thick curdled smoke 
 drifted up into the blue, and they were very beautiful. 
 It was as though Asama wore a sweeping white panache 
 in her coal-black helmet. But the thundering roar of 
 the eruption had torn our sea of frozen snow, to pieces. 
 The blank white mist shut swiftly down, and hid the 
 mountain and the smoke, the cinders and the sky; only 
 the wide black bridge was left sloping straight 
 downwards. 
 
 We reached our horses drenched, to sit on high- 
 peaked saddles and journey back through dank dripping 
 trees, over rutty roads, across thick green commons 
 heavy with mist, back cold, wet and hungry to Karui- 
 zawa again. 
 
 But we kept our stone, and though we had not seen 
 into the crater, we had perhaps come nearer to that 
 mysterious force, itself unseen, unknown, which dwells 
 beneath the lava and the ash, and terrorises life.
 
 VI 
 CAMELLIAS 
 
 BLUE bay below as far as eye can reach. Blue sky 
 above, blue to the edge of the horizon. And in between 
 a steep cliff of green : dark fir, pale bamboo, and that 
 impenetrable undergrowth for which alone a botanist 
 has a name or names. 
 
 The time of the plum blossom has been, is gone, and 
 the world is drowsing in the dream of summer. Up here 
 in the green the quick sappy life is stirring, I can hear it 
 plainly ; for in all the world there is no other sound. 
 
 The trodden green path runs up, from blue to blue. 
 Midway between the two I stop. And the green 
 world closes in around me, shutting out the blue I 
 came from and the blue to which I go. 
 
 The tall dark firs sway slowly. The pale bamboos 
 wave slim fingers, green as March lime leaves in the 
 sun, their golden stems are elusive and bewitching, 
 sunned dryads of the East. 
 
 The green world has me in its hold. I forget the 
 steep path to the blue above. It is warm and still, and 
 the bamboos beckon as they sway. 
 
 How green it is ! All the greens a painter ever 
 dreamt of ... and the graceful bamboos beckon 
 Eastern Vivians to bewitch. 
 
 I stay to look and look never trees so graceful nor
 
 CAMELLIAS 177 
 
 the green world so fair. A step. I have left the path- 
 way, and then I stop. Beyond the pale bamboos 
 and above them, its dark green branches rising up- 
 wards to the blue, is a camellia tree. Each glossy 
 handful of leaves holds a single blood-red flower. 
 And the tree stands there beyond, above the swaying, 
 beckoning bamboos, stern, severe. 
 " And the Wages of Sin is Death." 
 
 I turn back to the path. The blue below spreads out 
 as far as eye can reach, the blue above lies shining 
 at the end of the pathway. The green world between 
 is still. 
 
 But the path is very steep.
 
 VII 
 RAIN 
 
 THE world is wet as when first parted from the waters ; 
 and the firmament above, uncertain in its new position, 
 seems slipping bodily down to join the waters below. 
 The sound of falling rain, unformed, continuous, seems 
 to have come from the time before Time was ; while 
 the tiny squelch of liquid mud oozing up between the 
 bare toes of the kurumaya alone marks the present. 
 
 It is dark. The paper lantern, swinging at the end 
 of the shaft, lights up the pools of the roadway with a 
 transient gleam. For the rest, alone in my minia- 
 ture hansom, with the apron up to my eyes, and 
 the roof down to my eyebrows, the world, with the 
 rushing swish of falling rain, seems dissolving slowly 
 into the waters, and the history of creation marching 
 backwards. 
 
 A splash of wheels behind me, and the black mush- 
 room hat of my kurumaya bobs up above the apron, 
 for the hill is steep. A shout, and the 'ricksha behind 
 me stops. My kurumaya stands still, holding the thin 
 lacquered shafts in his hands and shouts back. Then 
 he drags me to the roadside, and, putting the shafts 
 on the ground, steps over them and disappears with 
 his lantern. Balancing in my kuruma like the monks 
 on the miserere seats I am left all alone. 

 
 RAIN 179 
 
 What is the matter ? 
 
 A splash of wheels, the heavy panting of two men. 
 They are pulling the other kuruma up the steep hill, 
 and will come back for me. So I wait, rigid ; for the 
 hill is steep, the mud slippery and the angle of the seat 
 precarious. I strain my eyes to see a corner of 
 muddy road, half the blurred outline of a hedge. And 
 not all the light in all the world could show me more, 
 for the roof above my head is as a hand on my eyelids 
 pressing them downwards. 
 
 The wheels have splashed their way up the hill, and 
 I can hear them no longer. Only the sound of the falling 
 rain, driven momentarily away by the sharper splash of 
 the moving wheels, comes back, slowly, steadily, irre- 
 sistibly, submerging the world and me. 
 
 I am all alone, a stranger in a strange land, behind 
 me an unknown road, in front I strain my eyes to 
 see. Even the hedge has grown unfamiliar. It is no 
 hedge, nothing but impenetrable undergrowth. I am on 
 the edge of a forest. 
 
 And the road ? 
 
 For the first time I notice how strange even the mud 
 of a road can be. This is trodden all over with the 
 prints of naked human feet, and the endless knife cuts 
 of the gheta. 
 
 The loneliness is wrapping itself around me as a pall. 
 
 The dull swish of the rushing raindrops goes on and 
 on. How long have they left me in a dissolving world 
 alone. No sound above, no sound below. And the 
 rush of the falling rain is drumming in my ears. 
 
 A hideous nightmare possesses me. Surely the 
 trickling pools are carrying away the mud from under 
 my wheels. I shall slip down, down into nothingness 
 with the falling rain,
 
 180 SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE 
 
 I dare not move. My eyes are fixed on the narrow 
 strip of muddy road in front of me. The shafts are 
 surely slipping 
 
 Then the rush of the falling raindrops drowns the 
 world.
 
 VIII 
 THE BLACK CANAL 
 
 THE handle of the Japanese guitar, from which Lake 
 Biwa takes its name, is at Otsu, six miles from Kyoto 
 and three hundred feet above it. Between stands all 
 the thickness of Kyoto's girdle of mountains. Built in 
 the flat bottom of an immense bowl, dark green with 
 pine-clad hills, Kyoto, the ancient capital, is still the 
 artistic centre of Japan. It is a city of 350,000 inhabi- 
 tants, and many manufactories, but with little water or 
 water transit, while only six miles away, beyond the 
 mountains and above the town, Lake Biwa stretches 
 a long arm from the ports of the west coast towards 
 the city. 
 
 It was in 1890 that Tanabe Sakuro, piercing the 
 heart of the mountains, brought the waters of Lake 
 Biwa, running swiftly under the hills, into Kyoto. 
 And the Black Canal begins at Otsu. 
 
 Deep down in the last of the rampart of locks which 
 shuts out the lake lies the long narrow sampan, a white 
 gondola, carpeted and cushioned, a large torch flames 
 on either side, and the boatman stands ready behind. 
 We sit on the cushions on the carpet, for the canal is 
 but just the height of a man, and but just the width of 
 two sampan. The cement sides of the lock rise up 
 like walls ; in front is the black arch of a tunnel, cut
 
 1 82 SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE 
 
 like a tiny doorway in the base of '-'he great green 
 mountain. A moment, and we are inside, in the pitch 
 blackness ; rushing swiftly, silently along in the fresh- 
 ness of a subterranean night. The two huge torches 
 that we carry show the darkness falling like a thick 
 curtain before, behind us ; and the silence is the silence 
 of infinite ages asleep. 
 
 The rhythm of the rushing water passes like a 
 breath through the darkness, but the speed is unfelt. 
 Move your hand beyond the side of the boat, and the 
 contact of the wall will tear all the skin from the 
 knuckles in one swift scrape. For the water rushes, 
 rushes silent in the darkness, not a current but a force. 
 
 Suddenly in the blackness there is a light ; three 
 nude figures poised, their muscles strained, human 
 strength pitted against the water's force. Their boat 
 moves but slowly, we are by in a flash. The naked 
 orange figures form but one picture, one posture 
 against the blackness, a living red group from the 
 black urns of Greece ; seen, gone ; and the darkness 
 drops down in thick curtains all around. 
 
 Swiftly the water rushes, silent, the rhythmic breath- 
 ing of black night. The darkness deepens, deepens ; 
 then cracks. A thin, thin slit parts black from black, 
 and slowly grows a narrow streak of faintest grey. 
 
 It is light ; light like the thinnest edge of a sword set 
 in the far distance. But the crack broadens, widens, 
 rounds, and grows by imperceptible degrees into an 
 open archway, showing the bright water and the green 
 hills beyond. And swiftly we rush towards the light, 
 while the little picture no bigger than the reflection on 
 a camera grows curves and outlines, swells here, 
 retreats there, and passes from a flat reflection into a 
 rounded reality.
 
 THE BLACK CANAL 183 
 
 The tunnel itself is no longer black. The walls, the 
 rounded roof, lie like shadows, deep brown, growing 
 quickly greyer. And above, on eithe side, the bats 
 are clinging thickly, in long rows. 
 
 We shoot into the light and see that walls and boat 
 are covered with a fluttering half-dead mass of ghost- 
 grey moths. They coat the tunnel from wall to roof, 
 they lie in struggling heaps on boat and carpet, our 
 clothes are full of them. 
 
 With one last swift glide we are out of the grey 
 shadow, out under the blue sky. The green hills rise 
 on either side, the water dimples in the sun. Slowly 
 the grey moths flutter back to the darkness. For 
 through the heart of the mountain Lake Biwa has 
 come to Kyoto.
 
 IX 
 THE INLAND SEA 
 
 THE little steamer lay tilted up against the end of the 
 pier, for all the waters of the ocean were rushing 
 madly through the Straits of Shimonoseki into the 
 Inland Sea. The waters lay encircled as a lake, for 
 the space between the inner and the outer strait is 
 narrow, but they ran swift as a mountain river. The 
 square-sailed junks, all sails set, were racing down the 
 stream in the very eye of the wind, while those coming 
 up with a strong breeze behind them hardly seemed to 
 stir. And the little steamer at the end of the pier 
 tilted herself up higher and higher. 
 
 She was a foreign- built boat, though only about the 
 size of a launch, but she looked like a Moorish house 
 afloat, for all the boat was cabin, and all the deck was 
 roof, whitewashed, ribbed roof, with a striped awning. 
 As we left the pier and struck the full force of the 
 current, the striped awning and the uneven deck 
 dipped down and down until the Moorish roof turned 
 Gothic. We were in the full force of the current now, 
 and tearing down the stream with, as somebody said, 
 "all our engines going the wrong way." Up the side 
 of the boat the water climbed, pulling it down with 
 long strong hands, until the flat deck was turned to a 
 gable roof.
 
 THE|INLAND SEA 185 
 
 For five breathless minutes we balanced between 
 air and water, and then we were through the inner 
 strait which turns the waters of the Inland Sea between 
 Mojiand Shimonoseki into one big lake, and the coast 
 of the South Island began to fall away. The tide 
 was running less swiftly now, the ridge of our 
 gable roof sank slowly into the water, and the little 
 steamer floated a white, flat-roofed, Moorish house 
 once more. 
 
 "There is nothing," said the steward, "for the Ijin 
 San to eat." 
 
 He had been standing behind us, balancing himself 
 on the steep gable roof, for some while, but the current 
 and the laws of gravitation had been absorbing all our 
 attention, and like a true Japanese he was much too 
 polite to interrupt. 
 
 " There is nothing, nothing," said he, " to eat." 
 
 For the rare missionary, or the rarer tourist, who 
 patronises the coasting steamer of the Inland Sea 
 comes provided as for an Arctic expedition. 
 
 " But we shall eat Japanese food," we explained. 
 
 He bowed, a low, polite bow, but I do not think he 
 believed us. Then he went away, and returned bearing 
 foreign cups with saucers, full of a hot brown liquor 
 called, he told us triumphantly, "coffee." It was of 
 the kind bought ready mixed in cakes, and made with 
 hot water. We were pleased to know it was coffee, 
 and the attention touched us, still, Japanese tea would 
 have tasted better. We thought the pinky-brown 
 soup flavoured with orange peel, the fried fish with 
 chestnut preserve, the custard stuffed with shrimps, 
 and the bowls of rice eaten with salted plums and spiced 
 roots off which we dined infinitely preferable ; and the 
 steward who fanned us with one hand, and served us
 
 1 86 SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE 
 
 with the other, saw that there was " something for us 
 to eat." 
 
 It was eight o'clock when we climbed the steep ladder 
 which led to our Moorish roof, eight o'clock on a July 
 evening, and already the tall, deep-dented mountains 
 of Kyushu lay dark and indistinct. They lay cut sharp 
 against a twilight sky as though they had no thickness. 
 And slowly the coast-line fell away grey into the sea. 
 Kyushu was dying as the ship and sun moved on, 
 Shikoku was but a blur upon the ocean, and between 
 them the open sea made a pathway to the sky, all 
 silver-grey and trembling, a road of light to that sunken 
 light beyond. 
 
 The sun had set, and the fleeting twilight of the 
 East was night already. Japan's green hills were 
 turning grey. Night held sky and islands fast, but 
 the pathway shone and trembled until it died in the 
 last long streaks of light on the edge of the horizon. 
 Night was come. 
 
 From Kobe to Shimonoseki stretch the two 
 hundred and forty miles of the Inland Sea ; and in it 
 are gathered together most of the islands of Japan. 
 Continuous as a mainland the coast of the big island 
 runs down, while on the other side Kyushu and Shikoku 
 with ancient Awaji, the first-born of the Gods, dip 
 their high green mountains in the sea ; between, in 
 lines and clusters, lie thousands upon thousands of 
 baby islands ; some large enough to hold a village, 
 others too small for a single house ; some green with 
 trees and rice-fields, others a mere speck of rock 
 reaching up out of the water. From morning until 
 night we sat under the striped awning of our roof top, 
 and watched as they glided past, green islands on the
 
 THE INLAND SEA 187 
 
 blue water ; and always on our left hand the tall, deep- 
 dented mountains of the mainland ran on and on. 
 
 In the morning sunlight Miyajima's granite tori 
 stood knee-deep in the pale blue waves. Its temple 
 roofs were brown against the dark, green pines, and 
 the sacred island, where neither Birth nor Death may 
 come, slept blue-black with shadows in the dawn. 
 
 And still they glided by, the green islands on the 
 blue water. The sun travelled up the sky ; it grew 
 hot hotter. 
 
 At mid-day we had reached the narrow channel, 
 where mainland and island are so close that the sea is 
 but a canal between the houses ; and the children of 
 the two villages throw stones across the stream. 
 Here, at the end of the passage, a great stone lantern 
 stands deep in the idle water. Then, abruptly, as we 
 turned, the canal was gone ; and the wide, blue sea 
 lay shimmering among the green islands in the 
 summer sun. 
 
 Under the striped awning of our roof-top it was cool, 
 but outside the sun was smiting sea and land, until 
 sea and islands quivered, quivered, losing themselves, 
 colour and outline, in one mist of shimmering, 
 shadowy blue. And the ship and the sun travelled on. 
 
 Five sturdy naval cadets shared our luncheon with 
 us, and knew the number and the tonnage of England's 
 smallest gunboats, and for all their blue uniform and 
 " foreign " dirk, their Sayonara as they left us were 
 courteous with an old-time courtesy. 
 
 And the sun grew hot and hotter. The light like 
 a mist wrapt sea and islands round. The continuous 
 quivering hurt. On the other side the deep-dmted 
 mountains of the mainland, grown bare and scraped
 
 1 88 SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE 
 
 now, caught the sunshine on their rocky patches, and 
 sent it in glittering arrows of light across the still air. 
 And yet in the brown villages, at the mountains' feet, 
 the blue-tuniced, brown-legged peasants were working 
 in the sun ; and at each stopping-place the bare- 
 headed men and women came off in boats to offer their 
 fruit and sake in long-handled fishing-nets, scent-bottles 
 full of sake flavoured with plum-blossom, sake flavoured 
 with chrysanthemum or peach-blossom, white rice, 
 " woman's " sake^ sake to ward off old age, or all and 
 any of the nine different kinds of sake for which 
 Tomotsu is famous, and all in scent-bottles, artistically 
 tied up and labelled, and costing, bottle and all, is-sen. 
 One old lady was highly indignant when after much 
 excitement we had contrived to haul up in the fishing- 
 net the exact scent-bottle we coveted, and had sent 
 her down one sen in return, for the patois of the 
 district makes is-sen of jis-sen (10 sen = 2^.), to the 
 unaccustomed ear. 
 
 And the ship and the sun travelled on. 
 
 As the shadows grew the quivering ceased, the 
 light no longer like a veil of darkness hid the land and 
 sea. The islands grew a gradual green, as they 
 drowsed on the clear blue water. And slowly the still 
 sea opened wider ; the islands passed more slowly until 
 they ceased to pass at all ; and then on the blue water 
 there grew that indefinite look of ocean space. The 
 Inland Sea was ending. Away on the still sweep of 
 waters lay Awaji, the First-born of the Gods, the Eden 
 of Japan. 
 
 " And when," says the legend, " the first man and the 
 first woman met after they had journeyed round a 
 pillar set upon the land the woman cried, ' How joyful
 
 THE INLAND SEA 189 
 
 a thing it is to meet a lovely man ! ' Whereupon the 
 man, displeased that language had been invented by a 
 woman, required the circuit to be made again, that he 
 might speak first. So again they journeyed round the 
 pillar, and again they met, and loudly the man cried 
 out, ' How joyful a thing it is to meet a lovely woman ! ' 
 And thus," says the chronicle, " was Speech invented, 
 and the Art of Love and the human race begun." 
 
 Dim grey on a grey sea lay Awaji ; before us stretched 
 the broad sweep of the landless ocean ; the Inland Sea, 
 dreaming among its islands, lay behind.
 
 THE LAND OF THE GODS
 
 " That which I saw seemed to me a smile of the Universe." 
 
 " Paradiso," canto xxvii.
 
 ACROSS THE LAGOON 
 
 WE sat still on the deck, with our backs propped 
 against portions of the ship's cargo, and watched. 
 
 It was necessary to sit still, for a rise of only a few 
 inches would have sent the awning over our heads 
 into the blue waters of the lagoon ; and each newcomer, 
 as he stepped from the wharf on to this Kensington 
 Garden craft, doubled himself in two and stayed so. 
 First-class passengers lay flat, for a square hole in the 
 side of the boat opened into a three-feet-high saloon 
 elegantly carpeted ; we had matting. When the first 
 half of the passenger was inside, a big-headed boy 
 removed his gheta and piled them up on the deck, re- 
 shoeing him in the same way when he emerged. The 
 difficulty of extracting foreign boots in this manner 
 would alone have deterred us from using our first- 
 class tickets ; and then the deck passengers under 
 the awning had at least six inches more room, 
 besides ventilation. So we sat on the matting and 
 watched. 
 
 Anything out of a toy-shop so tiny as this absurd 
 little steamer was never seen. She might with 
 generosity have been fifteen feet long ; yet she 
 carried some twenty passengers besides cargo down 
 the lagoon and up the river, from Matsu6 to Shobara,
 
 194 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 with safety and Oriental speed ; and did it twice a 
 day too. 
 
 The carpeted saloon was reasonably filled with half 
 a dozen passengers ; the deck overflowed with the rest. 
 The brown-skinned, bullet-headed, ugly, good-natured 
 Japanese peasant, sitting on his heels with his dark 
 blue kimono tucked up above his brown legs, and his 
 fan in his hand ; or his little wife, wrinkled and meek, 
 her white cotton towel, with its bamboo design in blue, 
 folded round her head and tucked up under her hair 
 behind in something between a night-cap and a sun- 
 bonnet ; quiet and sweet, but never abject, and always 
 respected. Here and there a shopkeeper or a clerk, 
 or some one from the town in a grey kimono, with a 
 face pale yellow against the other's brown. We all 
 sat bare-footed on the matting to keep it clean, with our 
 gheta in our hands, fanning ourselves with rice-paper fans 
 decorated with storks flying across the moon, or sprays 
 of plum-blossom or pine-trees, each man of us showing 
 his well-turned leg and thigh, with all the muscles 
 brought into strong relief by the weight of the body on 
 the toes. All polite, all amused, all conversational. 
 
 After a great deal of snorting on the part of our 
 very small steamer, we casually left the wharf and shot 
 into the lagoon. Matsue, hidden by the sunlight, dis- 
 appeared ; and even the wide sweep of waters wavered 
 indistinct beneath the hard glitter of the morning light. 
 It was not yet nine o'clock, and already the distant 
 blue shore was blurred with the shimmering heat, and 
 the near green one fitful with the scissor-grinding of 
 the semmi. The heat was dropping down on the world 
 with the swiftness of a tropical night and the glitter 
 of it hurt. 
 
 Away over the surface of the waters a red-brown
 
 ACROSS THE LAGOON 195 
 
 head floated, lazy, the nimbus of straw hat against 
 the light glowing yellow as a halo. Slowly, idly, the 
 head moved over the water, suspended between blue 
 and blue. Too hot to doubt or question or deny, I 
 accepted the head and shut my eyes, only to find on 
 opening them again two, three, a dozen heads strolling 
 slowly over the lagoon. 
 
 " Honourably please to understand, dredging for 
 mussels," said a voice at my elbow. And the pas- 
 sengers repeated the information in a sort of Greek 
 chorus with many bows. 
 
 Matsue's only representative of the vast world of the 
 Ijin San is one missionary ; but these peasants, with 
 the refinement of true breeding, accepted our out- 
 landish dress and faces, our boots on their matting 
 too, without a stare of curiosity, although when our 
 attention was apparently absorbed elsewhere, the 
 whiteness of our skins, the aristocratic bridge of our 
 noses (it is only the noblesse in Japan, and not all of 
 them, who possess an aquiline nose), were commented 
 on with interest and admiration. 
 
 The near green shore ran in and out, and in and 
 out, wooded thick with the slim green fingers of the 
 bamboo, until it opened into a tiny green bay, with 
 a thin bamboo landing-stage running out into the 
 silent water. Here we stopped with such an amount 
 of "ay-aying" on the part of the captain a short 
 man in a grey kimono, who sat in a hole in the 
 deck the other side of the funnel reading Chinese 
 poetry and the crew, a tall youth in "foreign" 
 trousers, who greased wheels, that we might have 
 been an Atlantic liner approaching an unknown 
 shore. There were no passengers for the invisible
 
 196 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 village behind the landing-stage but the captain, 
 who climbed over the side of the boat up on to the 
 landing-stage, and disappeared. 
 
 By-and-by from out of the green there came a 
 charming little figure in a sea-blue kimono, lined with 
 lacquer-red, followed by a maid bearing neatly matted 
 parcels. The crew wiped its hands and moved for- 
 ward, while the sea-blue kimono, kneeling on the land- 
 ing-stage, handed down the parcels on to the boat for 
 safe carriage to Shobara. They seemed to require 
 quantities of explanation those parcels, accompanied 
 by irrepressible giggles, principal giggles on the part 
 of the mistress, and secondary giggles on the part of 
 the maid ; while the crew listened, replied, grew 
 eloquent. It was one of the most effective flirtations 
 I ever saw, but alas ! conducted in that Izumo dialect 
 so hard for the Tokyo-taught foreigner to understand. 
 And it went on like the hum of the semmi, while the 
 water, the world, and the boat drowsed in the heat. 
 
 Suddenly, from out of the nowhere, appeared our 
 captain, who swung himself down from the landing- 
 stage on to the boat as imperturbably as a stone 
 Buddha. The sea-blue kimono, still on its knees at the 
 edge of the water, swayed in one last enchanting 
 giggle that showed all the lacquer-red linings in a 
 quiver of flame, while the supplementary giggles of the 
 stout little maid followed us regretfully out of the bay. 
 
 With more "ay-aying" we shot back into the hard 
 glitter of the lagoon. The captain retired to his hole 
 and his Chinese poetry, the crew had completely dis- 
 appeared, but the big-headed boy, emerging from some 
 unknown region behind the captain, carried out a 
 hibachi and a kettle. He set the kettle on the brass
 
 ACROSS THE LAGOON 197 
 
 tripod over the hibachi and blew up the charcoal fire 
 with a large fan ; and we all watched him with interest 
 as he made Japanese tea in a green china teapot, 
 rather larger than the kettle, with a black handle and 
 with dividing lines of black separating the green into 
 leaf-like petals. At this we all sat up, thirstier with 
 anticipation, and the little china bowls filled from the 
 green kettle-teapot vanished from the tray. Then 
 the big-headed boy handed round manju cakes (like 
 boiled chestnuts in a white coat of sweet rice-paste), 
 and collected payment, one sen (a farthing). We all 
 promptly demanded more tea, and the little bowls 
 were filled and refilled until the green kettle-teapot ran 
 dry ; and we all subsided again. Only the ttnk, tink, 
 of the metal pipes, knocking out the glowing wad of 
 tobacco on to the deck in order to light a fresh 
 pipeful from the burning remains of the old one, 
 broke the drowsy silence. Three little whiffs and the 
 acorn bowl of a Japanese pipe is empty, so the tink, 
 link, of the metal on the deck was rhythmic as the 
 vee-iim of the semmi. They were all smoking, men 
 and women, and the scent of the bright brown 
 tobacco, fine-cut as hair, lay under the awning. 
 
 The near green shore ran in and out, and in and 
 out, until all the wide sheet of glittering light, spread 
 over the blue waters, lay behind us ; in front a 
 bright green bank of rushes hemmed in the light. 
 The lagoon was ended, and still we went on, seemingly 
 with the intention of stranding ourselves among the 
 bulrushes. But the bulrushes stood back as we 
 came on, and ranging themselves on either hand, 
 left a water pathway down which we went, until 
 the bank of rushes following the lagoon lay far
 
 198 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 behind, and we found ourselves in a narrow river that 
 seemed half natural stream and half artificial canal. 
 
 Ourunnautical captain, who, ever since we had entered 
 the rushes, had been intoning directions to the invisible 
 crew as though he were reading poetry aloud, got up 
 out of his hole. The tink> link, of the metal pipes on 
 the wooden deck died gradually away as each smoker 
 knocked out his last wad of tobacco and put away his 
 pipe. Then with a sudden and terrific snort the absurd 
 little steamer, an end in either bank, stood still. The 
 big-headed boy, hanging over the side of the boat, 
 kicked violently with his heels, while the unexpected 
 apparition of the crew's head rose up at our feet. The 
 head took a look round and sank again, and the engines 
 rattled. Still with an end in either bank, and with the 
 big-headed boy clasping the gunwale in his arms, we 
 proceeded to turn slowly round, and then, assisted by 
 several ropes and several haulers, to back majestically 
 into the main street of Shobara. 
 
 Our journey was ended. The big-headed boy, leav- 
 ing the gunwale, rushed to reshoe the first-class passen- 
 gers as they wriggled from the saloon on to the road- 
 way. The bullet-headed peasants and their little brown 
 wives bowing low bows to each other, the captain and 
 to the Ijin San, took up their bundles and trudged 
 off, while we, like a Royal arrival, were received by 
 the authorities of Shobara, in the person of a fierce 
 little policeman in a new white suit, and duly escorted 
 the three-and-a-half paces from the ship's side to the tea- 
 house door in a procession, the people lining up the way. 
 And the last we saw of that absurd little steamer, 
 as we turned into the tea-house, was a glimpse of the 
 crew looking down the funnel, while the big-headed 
 boy, standing amidships, handed out the cargo to its 
 owners on either bank.
 
 II 
 TO KIZUKI 
 
 THE green earth lay burning in the sun, wrapt round 
 and round with heat. Between the tall blue lines of 
 hills it stretched, the flat green floor of a deep blue 
 cavern, whose roof-top was the sky. And through the 
 green the long white road ran out of sight. The only 
 living thing that moved was the running kurumaya, 
 all else lay sleeping in the bright night-time of heat, 
 a heavy drugged sleep that neither rested nor refreshed. 
 
 Inert the green earth stretched between the blue 
 hills, weighed down with heat ; a palpable heat through 
 which we moved as a fish moves through water; a 
 visible heat which was lying there heavy on the land, 
 floating round the blue hills, quivering against the 
 white sky, humming in the still air, rolling in great 
 drops down the bronzed back of the kurumaya, drows- 
 ing me to sleep as with the soft waving of a heated 
 fan, a heavy, encompassing heat that stunned. 
 
 And always the white road ran on through the green 
 earth, and the long, straight lines of hills on either side 
 shut off the sky. 
 
 Between the fields of rice, here and there among the 
 green, a brown-thatched house like an open shed rose 
 up, its roof supported on the square pillars of the four 
 corner posts, its walls rolled out of sight. And on the
 
 200 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 matted floor the women and children lay sleeping, their 
 necks supported on a narrow stool ; the men stretched 
 on their backs, or lying prone, their heads between their 
 arms. 
 
 Not a living thing in house or field, in land or road, 
 was moving save the running kurumaya. Heat had 
 slain the world and life itself was senseless. 
 
 On either side the straight blue hills stretched out 
 of sight, the green earth lay like a narrow passage-way 
 between ; and on and on we ran, until the green floor 
 contracted, and the white road became a broad still 
 street, where brown houses shut out the hills. 
 
 A rapid spurt through the empty village, for a kuru- 
 maya never stops except at the top of his speed, and we 
 arrive at the tea-house. Dazed, weary, and stiff with 
 two hours of continuous running, we struggle from 
 under the shawls and wraps that keep out the sun, and 
 sink on to the matting ; while the crowd which has 
 grown no man knoweth how, from out of an empty 
 village, stands silently, staring. With equal sudden- 
 ness a small policeman starts up in front. He inquires 
 our names, ages, residence and destination ; orders 
 back the crowd with one wave of his arm, commands 
 that we be taken into an inner apartment, remote from 
 public gaze ; and, in short, declares we may repose on 
 him. 
 
 We are taken into an inner apartment, a room that 
 is almost cool, while the crowd drifts patiently round 
 the house trying to look in. One little wide-eyed 
 nesan brings us tea, and then house and world sink 
 back into slumber again. 
 
 The nesan, reluctant, but at last dismissed, lies down 
 on the matting, beyond the courtyard, and falls
 
 TO KIZUKI 201 
 
 asleep. Her neck rests on a narrow wooden pillow 
 that has the curves of a tori ; she lies like a long- 
 stalked flower on the ground, rigid, quite graceful. 
 Every fold of her kimono, every twist of her hair, is 
 in place. She is fast asleep, unconscious, perfectly 
 tidy, with a neatness that has passed into its essence, 
 grace, and is natural as the feathers to a bird. 
 
 We cannot sleep, the mere transition from the 
 greater heat outside to the cooler heat of this open 
 matted space makes us wakeful. It is cooler here 
 actually, in degree, and imaginatively, from the green 
 palms of the baby garden. The garden of a doll's 
 house, which any moderate-sized bath-towel would 
 have roofed, yet with a forest of dwarf palm-trees in 
 one corner, a winding pool in another, the cool grey 
 outlines of a stone lantern to hold the eyes, and a 
 sense of still greenness, of limpid freshness, which 
 not rivers of water or forests of giant trees could 
 more distinctly convey. To look at that garden 
 was to take a mental bath and drown out the sense 
 of heat. But the heat itself remained, intense and 
 stagnant, a heavy presence in the house that permeated 
 all things. 
 
 Out in the courtyard one shaft of burning light shone 
 down, turning the cotton towel on its bamboo line to a 
 white-hot banner, the polished passage to a molten 
 pool, while the water in the big stone font was warm 
 as condensed steam. Like the flaming sword of the 
 Archangel Michael, the shaft of burning light cut the 
 passage-way in two, and the sharp white-heat of it 
 seemed to cut. It was absolutely still, only the heat 
 moved awake in a house and a world asleep. 
 
 Very slowly the little nesan sat up ; some one had
 
 202 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 called her. A moment, and she was on her feet, neat 
 as a growing flower. 
 
 "The kurumaya awaits," she said, kneeling on the 
 matting, " when it honourably pleases the august ones 
 to come." 
 
 Then she touched her forehead to the floor and 
 waited for what it honourably pleased the august ones 
 to do. 
 
 They came, down the polished passage, under the 
 flaming sword of light, out into the open space before 
 the tea-house, where the little policeman waited to 
 command them to be packed into their kuruma, to 
 deliver stringent orders for their safe conduct to the 
 kurumaya, to authoritatively bid them the politest of 
 sayonara. 
 
 The crowd had disappeared, harangued out of 
 existence ; the village street was empty as a desert, 
 the houses dead ; and then the steep line of blue hills 
 grew up on either side, shutting in the sky, and the 
 long white road stretched away through the green 
 earth. 
 
 Palpable, visible, the neat lay over the land, quiver- 
 ing against the white sky, floating round the blue 
 hills, humming in the still air, drowsing me into a 
 somnambulant life that was neither sleep nor 
 waking. 
 
 Between the green earth and the white sky the 
 telegraph wires cut a bronze line against the quivering 
 blue ; and the rows of little birds, all sitting with their 
 tails to the road, hung drowsily there, rows on rows 
 of them. And still the long white road ran on 
 and on. 
 
 Beneath the short thick hair of the kurumaya the 
 heat gathered in wet patches on the white scalp, rolled
 
 TO KIZUKI 203 
 
 in big drops over the black head, trickled down the 
 bronze neck, and was wiped off with one rapid move- 
 ment of the blue cotton towel, as the running kurumaya 
 sped swiftly on ; gathered again, rolled again, trickled 
 again, was wiped dry again ; gathered, rolled, trickled, 
 until the automatic movements, repeated and repeated, 
 grew part of Time itself. They were Time. 
 
 Then I awoke. It was as if some one had slid a 
 thin lining of fresh air along the tops of the blue hills, 
 beneath the burning sky. A thin, thin sheet of fresh 
 air, but the green earth gave a great sigh, the kurumaya 
 a little shake, and I awoke. 
 
 The peasants in their brown thatched houses, open 
 as a shed, were stirring, the naked red figures in their 
 white cloths were moving down the road. 
 
 In the fields the long bamboo poles that shot up out 
 of the green earth like masts were dipping up and 
 down, drawing water for the thirsty rice. 
 
 The little birds on the telegraph wires were chirping 
 sleepily, flying off in twos and threes, and settling down 
 again, audibly fussing over the laziness of their friends 
 and relations. 
 
 The bright night-time of heat was over and gone. 
 
 I sat up in my kuruma and looked. We were 
 running through green rice-fields, under a blue sky. 
 And it was a hot summer's afternoon.
 
 Ill 
 
 IZUMO'S GREAT TEMPLE 
 
 " So they made fast the temple pillars on the nether- 
 most rock-bottom, and they made high the cross- 
 beams to the plain of high heaven ; " and the god 
 Onamuji, the " Master of the Great Land," King of 
 Izumo, in accordance with his compact with high 
 heaven, entered into that temple and dwelt there. 
 
 So the province of Izumo and the kingdom of 
 Westernjapan passed under the rule of the great Sun- 
 Goddess whose descendants endure to this day. But 
 the Master of the Great Land, the god Onamuji, is 
 worshipped from end to end of the Emperor's 
 dominions, and his temple and his priests are sacred 
 as the mirror of the Sun-Goddess in their eyes. 
 
 All through the year, the pilgrims in thousands 
 journey into Izumo to remote Kizuki, whose name to 
 their ears is still resonant with the beating (tsuku) of 
 the pestles (ki) which made the foundations of that 
 first great temple firm and everlasting, while in the 
 month of October the immortal gods themselves, from 
 every shrine throughout the land, come to visit 
 Onamuji, and that desolate month known in Japan as 
 kami-na-zuki (month without gods) is called in Izumo 
 alone kami-ari-zuki (the month with gods).
 
 IZUMO'S GREAT TEMPLE 205 
 
 At the foot of the everlasting hills the temple stands, 
 and the far-off ripple of the Western Sea, half a 
 memory, half a dream, wanders through its sunlit 
 courts, a sound to listening ears. 
 
 The long dark avenue of twisted trees, so old that 
 many are almost limbless, the three giant tori, hewn in 
 solid granite, lie behind us ; we have reached the white 
 sunlight of the outer temple space, and the scattered 
 buildings of the shrine are in front. Our landlord, in 
 his Sunday-best kimono of silver-grey, leads the way. 
 He has walked, since we left the inn, exactly three 
 paces behind us, while three paces behind him came 
 our kurumaya. In Kizuki it has not been considered 
 consonant with our dignity to allow us to move any- 
 where without them. 
 
 Our landlord, with the profoundest bow, moves on 
 in front. He has a letter to deliver on our behalf, so 
 that when we reach the long, low building at the end of 
 the first enclosure, an authoritative young priest in long 
 white robes is there to greet us. He wears a wonder- 
 ful head-dress of black lacquer, the model of a meat- 
 cover, tied on under the chin, with two red cords in the 
 manner of a doll's bonnet ; but his chin is human, not 
 inflexible, so I watch to see the meat-cover tumble. 
 It never does, not even when with a low bow he invites 
 us up the steep polished steps into the room above. 
 We take off our shoes and climb. 
 
 The room is long and low, with a " foreign" table 
 covered with a green baize cloth. There are bright 
 blue velvet chairs, an inkstand, pens ; just a second- 
 hand committee-room greatly the worse for wear, 
 which impresses our landlord, so that his strangled 
 h's of admiration sound like paroxysms of coughing. 
 We sit on the velvet chairs and wait. Our landlord,
 
 2o6 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 the letter and the priest have disappeared into an 
 inner apartment. And the sound of much discussion 
 comes to our ears. " How far are we to be allowed 
 to go ? " And then the terms " learned Ijin San" and 
 " august sage " reach us. At last they are all agreed. 
 The "learned Ijin San" the "honourable teacher," 
 the " august sage " shall be permitted to enter the very 
 Holy of Holies ; but the " honourable interior," being 
 a woman, must not cross the sacred threshold. Then 
 there is a long pause before the authoritative young 
 priest comes out and explains the position to us. We 
 bow the profoundest thanks and follow him down the 
 steps, and the reason for the pause is evident. He 
 has changed his clothes, and is now in the fullest and 
 most resplendent of sacerdotal robes. 
 
 Under the shadow of the gate of the ita-gaki, the 
 second enclosing fence, stands the High Priest himself, 
 whose fathers for two thousand years have led the 
 temple rites. He is the eighty-second descendant of 
 the mythic Susa-no-wo, and is still termed by many 
 Iki-gami, which is the " Living God." An old, old 
 man, whose face is almost white, a mystic sacred face, 
 quiet as the eternal smile of the Eternal Buddha. He 
 wears a lacquered head-dress, the most imposing of 
 meat-covers, and his robes are of white and purple 
 adorned with gold. 
 
 We pass within the ita-gaki, and the landlord, the 
 kurumaya, the crowd of other worshippers are left 
 behind. Before us rises the low fence of the "jewelled 
 hedge," which encloses the sacred shrine itself. Again 
 before the gateway there is a pause. The minor 
 priests, even our authoritative young friend, do not 
 enter here. It is explained to us that the " honourable
 
 IZUMO'S GREAT TEMPLE 207 
 
 interior " must not pass within the temple. She is a 
 woman, but it is permitted to her, as the wife of the 
 most "honourable one," to look into the shrine from a 
 room above the gateway. The High Priest removes 
 his sandals, we our shoes, and over the rounded, 
 water-washed, grey pebbles, hot as burning plough- 
 shares, we enter the holy court. 
 
 A long, low wooden building is the temple, primaeval 
 in its form, the broad ends of its roof-tree sticking up 
 like pointed anchors through the roof. Six feet around 
 it on every side the pebbles stop, and the space is 
 filled with the whitest, smoothest sand. All those who 
 go up to the god leave the mark of their feet behind. 
 
 Within the temple there is nothing ; bare space, 
 dim, obscure ; but the High Priest, reverently kneeling 
 on the matting, creates the god. And into that narrow 
 empty space the shadow of the Eternal Presence comes. 
 
 Slowly the splash of the breaking waves drifts into 
 the stillness, faint as the whisper of God in the heart 
 of man, a still, small voice. Over the temple there is 
 peace, the peace of two thousand years, unbroken, 
 sacred. And the dreamy ripple grows a sound in the 
 silence. Faint, faint, faint, is it the song of the limitless 
 sea, the voice of the peace and the stillness, or a 
 broken murmur of the beyond that the listening pilgrim 
 hears ? Half a memory, half a dream, it dies at the 
 gate of the shrine, where the stir of the world grows 
 loud ; yet the soul has heard, has believed. 
 
 Out in the sunlit court beyond the "jewelled hedge" 
 the little group of priests still wait. And as we come 
 slowly over the hot round stones, our shoes once more 
 upon our feet, they greet us with an added respect. 
 Even the " honourable interior," whose sacredness is
 
 208 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 but indirect, transmitted through a space of court and 
 two open shoji, has become a personage. 
 
 The old, old priest, with the face of a Chinese sage, 
 goes on in front. We cross the second court obliquely 
 over the stone-grey pebbles, each rounded with the 
 rubbing of running water, and enter another building, 
 the treasure-house of the temple. Here in a shaded 
 upper chamber, where the white sunlight filters through 
 the yellow matting, a long low shelf runs round, and 
 on it lie the temple's treasures relics of dead heroes 
 and of living legend. One by one the High Priest 
 points them out, and in the thin frail voice of age tells 
 their story : A biwa, a sword, some pieces of tattered 
 brocade, the old, old relics of Old Japan. The tales 
 are long, as the old man tells them with the slow- 
 moving utterance of one who has had eighty years in 
 which to speak. But there is a personal vibration in 
 his voice that brings back the long two thousand years 
 of service that he and his have given to the temple, 
 recalls the eighty-two High Priests, his fathers, who join 
 the living man before us to the god Susa-no-wo, from 
 whom the Great Master, Onamuji himself, descended. 
 
 All this time, the authoritative young priest has 
 been respectfully but quite obviously waiting to show 
 us something. At last he draws us across the room to 
 where a life-sized plaster statue stands, the Sun-Goddess 
 herself in the flowing robes of Old Japan, a figure full 
 of majesty and power, with round her neck a string of 
 those prehistoric jewels of which the Kojiki is full, 
 comma-shaped polished jewels of jade and crystal, 
 threaded on a scarlet string. And in the loose sleeves 
 of the plaster figure and about the folds at the neck are 
 touches of brightest red. A modern plaster statue of a 
 figure old to unbelief.
 
 IZUMO'S GREAT TEMPLE 209 
 
 And the young man tells the story. He is so eager, 
 so proud to relate what has indeed become the great 
 central fact of the story, that who or what the statue is, 
 or how or why it came there we never hear ; but it had 
 gained a prize at the Chicago Exhibition ! 
 
 And all the rest of the clergy intone a little chorus of 
 triumph and delight. Even the High Priest himself 
 seems pleased, and a faint smile passes over his face as 
 he bids us examine the ticket. 
 
 It is quite true. From the out-stretched wrist of the 
 Sun-Goddess hangs a much-worn ticket, stating in 
 printed Roman capitials that " This Exhibit has won a 
 Prize at the World's Fair of Chicago." And the figure 
 stands there, in the long low treasure-house of Izumo's 
 Great Temple, while the white sunlight, filtering through 
 the yellow matting, falls on the white-robed priests who 
 serve a temple worshipped through two thousand years, 
 falls on the old High Priest with the mystic sacred face, 
 whose fathers stretch back into the mists of Time, and 
 falling, trembles on the faded ticket on the arm of the 
 Sun-Goddess : 
 
 WORLD'S FAIR, CHICAGO. 
 This is to certify 
 
 " If the august sage will honourably please to 
 descend." 
 
 And we descended. 
 
 In the hot still court the High Priest takes his leave, 
 with long polite phrases of strictest ceremony. The 
 authoritative young priest who escorts us back through 
 the ita-gaki into the outer court is equally ceremonious, 
 and our polite Japanese is heavily taxed to keep up with 
 him. At theouter court he bids us say onara, and our ^ land- 
 lord and our kurumaya, who have been respectfully wait-
 
 2io THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 ing, form into procession again. We have become 
 great personages in their eyes, very great personages 
 indeed ; and the pilgrims, kneeling before the shrine 
 in the outer court, look at us with reverence. We 
 have entered the Holy of Holies, we have visited the 
 god Onamuji in his shrine. 
 
 It is with the lowest of bows that our landlord leads 
 us out of the side of the temple court, westward, to where 
 the tall dark trees of the mountain have grown down 
 into the plain. Here, set in the silence of the crypto- 
 merias at the foot of the everlasting hills, is the home 
 of the High Priest. So still, so ordered, so spotless, 
 the house and garden lie like a snowdrop in a forest. 
 And the sound of the sea drifts in as we stand. 
 
 Then for the last time we cross the courtyard where 
 the pilgrims are praying in the sunshine, and the 
 temple dancing girls, dim figures in the distance, 
 glide round and round in the long slow circles of the 
 sacred kagura. Court and temple are burning in 
 the sunlight. Beyond the "hedge" and the "jewelled 
 hedge " the great beam-ends of the roof-tree rise out 
 through the temple's thatch. Within the shrine 
 hangs the mirror of the great Sun-Goddess. For the 
 heart of man, says the Shinto faith, is good and pure. 
 And even as this mirror, when undimmed, reflects the 
 sun, so in the tranquil soul God's self is imaged. 
 
 Over temple and courtyard there is peace ; the 
 peace of long centuries dead ; the peace of enduring 
 belief. Down from the mists of the past the teaching 
 comes : " Know thyself; in the stillness of peace, 
 know but thyself, and thou shalt see God."
 
 IV 
 KIZUKI'S BAY 
 
 THE Sea of Japan, as it wandered down the western 
 coast, took a sudden and unexpected bite out of the 
 land of Izumo ; and that bite is the bay of Kizuki. 
 It is the tiniest of bays, with but half a mile of sandy 
 shore between the two steep lines of hills that run 
 straight out to sea : green hills that stretch so far, the 
 green has time to grow a misty blue before they curve 
 toward the water in a deep blurred line. Landwards 
 a length of sandy dune shuts out the village street ; 
 and the little bay, set between the hills, and cut off 
 from the sea, lies like an ebbing lake. 
 
 On the sandy shore it is still and cool ; and from 
 the dozens of Japanese families comes only the high 
 pitched laughter of the playing children. Kizuki is 
 the Margate of the West, and the pilgrims who 
 journey to its shrine stay to breathe its sea air, and 
 combine a religious pilgrimage with a summer 
 holiday in a manner so usual in Japan. 
 
 The big hotel under the great north wall of green, 
 with its ground floor, and, wonder of wonders, two, 
 yes two storeys, is full. So full that the landlord was 
 forced to tuck away his distinguished guests in a back 
 room of the old inn up the village street. The square 
 two-storied house, with all its shoji pushed back and
 
 212 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 the contents and occupants of every room exposed to 
 public view, looks for all the world like a big doll's 
 house with the door gone. And its inhabitants eat, 
 drink, play, laugh, sing with the natural unconcern 
 which we could only reach secure behind brick walls, 
 curtained windows, and Venetian blinds. The un- 
 concern is so simple, so unaffected, that the Yokohama 
 foreigner, feeling dimly that his own behaviour could 
 never be so natural under such conditions, suspects 
 "play acting," and will sometimes speak of a "nation 
 of mountebanks " with the scorn of a man among 
 monkeys. 
 
 The hotel is built just where the blue beyond 
 of the Western Sea, glowing between the head- 
 lands, draws eye and mind away, adding the unbroken 
 curve of Infinity to the quiet lake's rounded life. 
 
 The sun has set ; perhaps behind that great green wall 
 he still drops swiftly to the horizon, but in Kizuki there 
 is twilight, a luminous grey twilight that has no 
 shadows, which, spreading, blots all colour from the 
 world. Between wall and wall of hill the sky stretches 
 clear and green. The bay is flooded with a golden 
 light. And there, a black line from gold to green, its 
 base in the yellow water, its crest on the sunset sky, 
 stands Kizuki's second wonder, the third beauty of 
 Izumo a tall pointed rock. For the Japanese, who 
 seek much more for line than colour in their beauty, 
 glory in its curves ; and the little bay of Kizuki owes 
 its visitors not to the purity of its air, its fishing, boat- 
 ing, bathing, or casino, but to the beauty of its solitary 
 rock and the nearness of its sacred temple. 
 
 From shore to sky the luminous grey twilight climbs. 
 The flood of golden light is dead. The great green 
 walls that make the bay are dark. Only in the sky
 
 KIZUKI'S BAY 213 
 
 the faintest stain of colour lingers ; and there the 
 rock's lone crest blots a black line upon the dying 
 green. 
 
 My kurumaya, in his long parson's coat and waist- 
 coat, blanched the purest white, asks if I have ever 
 seen a bay more beautiful. And all the dozens of 
 Japanese families stand looking out to sea, for the cult 
 of the stone is in their hearts. 
 
 Slowly the luminous twilight draws the world in 
 Chinese ink. It climbs the sky, and the colour dies ; 
 only the sombre lines of rock are left. 
 
 The little bay is grown a mystic kakemono.
 
 V 
 IN MATSUE 
 
 WE had journeyed in trains and in steamers, in big 
 boats and in little boats, in kuruma and sampan, and 
 had reached the Land of the Gods and the inn at 
 Matsue". 
 
 Not the least of our difficulties had been to find that 
 inn, for our landlord at Kyoto, on hearing we were 
 bound for Matsu, had offered to make all arrangements 
 for us through a "friend in the Prefecture." And the 
 arrangements had been made, but when we asked for 
 explanations, the address of the friend or the name of 
 our inn, he only smiled, a polite unexplanatory smile, 
 spread out his hands with ceremony, and bowed. All 
 was "yoroshi" 
 
 With this much information we had started, with this 
 much and no more we had arrived. The baby steamer 
 ran alongside the wharf at Matsu6, her first-class pas- 
 sengers wriggled out of her cabin, her deck passengers 
 crawled from under the awning ; and we sat still, our 
 luggage piled around us, wondering if, like the Peri at 
 the Gates of Paradise, the Land of the Gods would 
 admit us or not. 
 
 Just then, when the pause had become really embar- 
 rassing, a white-uniformed policeman boarded the 
 steamer ; with much ceremony he announced under
 
 IN MATSUE 215 
 
 the circumstances he could hardly have inquired that 
 we were the Ijin San from Kyoto. We assented, and 
 he promptly led us outside, where a tall, loose-jointed 
 Japanese, with a Red Indian face hatcheted out of 
 iron wood and wearing " foreign " clothes, stood wait- 
 ing. The white-uniformed policeman politely per- 
 formed the ceremony of introduction, and stood 
 aside. This was the friend from the Prefecture ; and 
 once we had thoroughly and properly and cere- 
 moniously replied to this fact, which took time, our 
 friend from the Prefecture, who had the smile and the 
 teeth, and the difficulty in concealing them, of the 
 famous Mr. Carker (only he was amiable), introduced 
 our landlord, a little, bright, black squirrel of a man 
 grasping an immense umbrella. More ceremony of 
 course, while the crowd gathered round and the police- 
 man patrolled the group. We were personages. One 
 gesture from the amiable Carker of Matsue Prefecture 
 and hvekurumaya burst through the crowd, while twice 
 as many assistants rushed off to bring out our luggage 
 under the eagle eye of the policeman ; and with his 
 personal assurances as to our safety and comfort in Mat- 
 sue, we and our luggage were packed into three kuru- 
 ma, the amiable Carker and the black squirrel of a 
 landlord climbed into two more, and the procession 
 started. The policeman saluted ; the crowd, at the most 
 respectful distance, silently stared ; Matsue received 
 her visitors as the most distinguished of strangers. 
 
 The kurumaya, uplifted with pride, tore along at 
 the top of their speed in the exact centre of the road, 
 and the traffic scattered before us. We did not run, 
 we flew, over the stone bridge built just where the 
 canal ends and the lagoon begins, up the long, long 
 street parallel to the lagoon, then a dive to the left
 
 216 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 over a canal bridge, a dash through a green turning, 
 another dive, another bridge over another canal, and 
 with the most imposing clatter we tore into a gravel 
 court in front of the inn, and pulled up short in the 
 recess of the entrance. In an instant the shoji slipped 
 aside and three women in dark blue kimono were 
 bowing, knees and forehead, on the polished wood. 
 We had reached the inn at Matsue. 
 
 The three figures got up, as we left our shoes on the 
 long thick block of rough-hewn granite which forms 
 the front door-step between the gravel and the house, 
 and led us in a long procession to an open matted space 
 in the garden. This was our room. It had but half a 
 wall, where the tokonoma stood ; the other half was open 
 shoji, leading to the house, and two square pillars at 
 the corners supported the roof. Here we all subsided 
 upon the kneeling-cushions in the strictest order of 
 precedence, based on nearness to the tokonoma. Our 
 black squirrel of a landlord and the amiable Carker of 
 the Prefecture, who had also arrived, sat on their heels 
 with great ceremony, though the " foreign " clothes of 
 our friend from the Prefecture got sadly in his way, 
 and then the interchange of polite phrases began. It 
 was exhaustive, for they were, oh ! so ceremonious, and 
 although two little girls with goggle eyes fanned us vigor- 
 ously, and the blue waters of the lagoon filled what should 
 have been wall in front of us, we grew hotter and hotter. 
 
 Then the plain daughter of our comely landlady 
 brought in an immense white meat-dish of railway- 
 buffet thickness, and set it down with conscious 
 pride before her mother. It contained piles of chipped 
 ice, which the comely landlady shovelled into minia- 
 ture tumblers, the size of dolls' tooth-glasses, with an 
 imposing iron ladle. She sifted over it white sugar
 
 IN MATSUE 217 
 
 from a pie-dish, and the plain daughter presented 
 it to the company. The drink of the Gods themselves 
 was never more divine ! Though like Sam Weller's 
 orthography, which " varied according to the taste and 
 fancy of the speller," you can eat this drink or you can 
 drink it. Either way is inelegant, but both are 
 delicious. 
 
 It was only by relays of this amphibious refreshment, 
 which went on as long as there was anything besides 
 a large pool of water in the meat-dish, that the polite 
 phrases flowed, on our part at least. At last etiquette, 
 even Japanese etiquette, was satisfied, and our amiable 
 friend from the Prefecture bowed himself away. 
 
 The plain daughter removed the meat-dish, not resist- 
 ing to tell us it was " foreign " as she did so, and 
 retired. And we lay out to cool upon the matting. 
 
 The lagoon, the garden and a green courtyard 
 filled the three sides of the room where walls might 
 have been. Even the shoji here had been removed, 
 for there were no houses visible ; a high green hedge 
 of thick bamboo bounded court and garden, beyond 
 were the pale blue hills. 
 
 It was not a room, it was a nest, we lived as freely 
 in the open air as the birds or the flowers ; a brown 
 roof hung like a sheltering leaf above our heads, a cool 
 clean matting covered the ground beneath our feet, but 
 the rustle of leaves and of rice-fields, the restless hum of 
 insect life, the rippling rhythm of the wide lagoon, the 
 whole stir of a growing world was ours. We did not 
 peep at it through a window, we lay in it, we were it ; 
 and it rippled and hummed and grew part of us, for Pan 
 is not dead, in the Land of the Gods he is living still. 
 
 Then the comely landlady called us to our bath ;
 
 2i 8 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 "the honourable hot water was ready," and the plain 
 daughter assisted us out of our clothes into our kimono 
 with an attention which, to our sophisticated code, was 
 embarrassing, and led us down a passage whose 
 wooden wall opened into the bathroom. Here our 
 landlady received us. She was just sliding down the 
 wooden plank, which shut off the pipe filled with glow- 
 ing charcoal from the rest of the bath-tub, and looking 
 up she said the bath was " yoroshl" 
 
 The water was positively bubbling, at that delicious 
 temperature of no degrees which the Japanese love ; 
 but we were not yet used to literal boiling, so we de- 
 manded cold water. And the two little girls with goggle 
 eyes ran away to fetch it in high wooden pails with stiff 
 wooden handles. They ran out by the wooden shoji on 
 the opposite side, which opened straight on to the gravel 
 courtyard of the entrance, and their dark-blue kimono 
 were tucked up into their obi, showing the bright red 
 kimono underneath. And they were laughing. 
 
 When we demanded still more cold water they laughed 
 again. TheS/inSanhsid strange ideasof baths evidently. 
 At last, in deference to their feelings, we desisted. 
 The water was no longer bubbling, so we pronounced 
 it " yoroshl" and they all retired. 
 
 The bathroom had a grey stone floor and walls of 
 wooden shoji ; at one end stood the high barrel-bath, 
 and wooden buckets, pails and dippers lay all around. A 
 three-foot-high platform ran all down one side and ad- 
 joined the passage-way by which we had entered ; from 
 it one stepped into the bath, on it one washed and dried 
 oneself. A bath in Japan, which is used by all the 
 family or hotel in succession, is not intended for wash- 
 ing that is done outside. The two shoji walls, just 
 sliding panels of wood, opened, one on to the passage-
 
 IN MATSUE 219 
 
 way, the other into the front court, and had no fasten- 
 ings. The Japanese have attained to that sense of 
 modesty which we still feel immodest. They say to 
 bathe is necessary ; you cannot take a bath with your 
 clothes on ; a necessary action is never immodest, 
 neither has it any prurient attractions for healthy 
 minds. But a Japanese cannot see the low-necked 
 dresses of western women or the pictures of Modern 
 France without a blush. To him a bathing woman is 
 neither modest nor immodest, but simply indifferent ; 
 while exposure, merely to attract, is indecency itself. 
 Obscenity exists in grosser minds as in every country 
 in the world ; but the people of Japan have a moral 
 simplicity of thought and action that is at one with 
 the conclusions of abstract ethical philosophy. 
 
 Like lobsters going to be cooked, we bathed, and 
 got out swiftly but not silently. A yard of cotton 
 towel, where a bank of purple iris grew out of a pale 
 blue stream, was all the towel we had. It would have 
 adequately dried our finger-nails, but the design was 
 comforting if the towel was not. At last, in grey crepe 
 kimono and straw sandals, clothes as naturally a growth 
 of the climate and the country as its trees or people, 
 we went back to our wall-less room and sat in peace. 
 
 The heat of the day was passing, and the colours 
 of the sky and trees deepened before they died. 
 For light in this land of sunshine can hide as well as 
 darkness ; it covers the land as a pall, all white and 
 glittering, which blinds as surely as the night. But 
 in that half-hour which comes before the swift de- 
 scending twilight of the East, all the colours deepen 
 and intensify ; they take a strange opaque lustre which 
 makes the thinnest leaf look solid. Mere colour seems 
 thick, almost as though distinct from what it colours
 
 220 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 and the colours deepen, deepen, till, emerging from a 
 glittering pall of white, they sink beneath the grey- 
 black pall of night. It is the intensest hour of all the 
 day. The world is not working as at the dawn, nor 
 sleeping as in the heat, but strong with the beating 
 pulse of Life that fills even the stillness. 
 
 So we sat and watched the deepening glowing earth 
 glow and deepen, and heard the throb of life grow 
 ever louder, till from the streets came up the sound of 
 children's laughter, and from the town the stir of men. 
 
 Rich in richest colours lay the world, with greens and 
 blues of polished jewellery. And then the hurrying twi- 
 light settled like the swooping pinions of a bird. The 
 colours lost themselves in grey, the forms they coloured 
 in a broad, still sweep of darkness. On the white 
 bridge, set between canal and lake, the lanterns were 
 already glowing, and the indistinct brown lines of roof 
 melted from the light into the darkness. 
 
 For a little while the curved earth-bridge of our 
 miniature garden, the pebbled pathway that in a frag- 
 ment of a circle led across the winding pond, traced 
 a clear black line against the open sky. Then the chil- 
 dren's laughter in the street grew silent, the stir of men 
 and women stilled. 
 
 Slowly, among their shadows, the houses each hung 
 out a light and disappeared. The purple darkness grew 
 with each moment deeper and more black. 
 
 Then in a flash the shadows and the lights themselves 
 went out, for our inn had lit her lamps. 
 
 Then they brought us dinner on black lacquered 
 trays : pink soup and many kinds of fish, and rice with 
 pickled cucumbers, white and brown and purple. And 
 we did eat. And all the time our landlady and her 
 plain daughter, kneeling on the matting, filled up our rice-
 
 IN MATSUE 221 
 
 bowls from the wooden rice-box, or our tea-bowls from 
 the china teapot, and the bronze kettle which filled 
 that teapot itself needed filling many times, for we 
 were thirsty. And the landlady and her daughter sat 
 placidly on their heels, watching our many social 
 crimes, for there is an etiquette of chopsticks, as strict 
 or stricter than ours of knives and forks, and in 
 equivalent terms we probably were eating with our 
 knives, putting our dirty spoons upon the tablecloth 
 and exhibiting the general manners of the stable. 
 
 As a sign that you have finished in Japan you eat 
 your last bowl of rice flavoured with a bowlful of 
 tea. Hardly had we reached this stage when the 
 bright black squirrel of a landlord arrived to announce 
 a visitor, and " Might he come in ?" 
 
 Considerably surprised we said "Yes," and who 
 should enter but our amiable Japanese Carker, this 
 time in his own clothes. From an insignificant and 
 somewhat common individual he had, by the mere 
 change from a misfitting yellow suit into a grey silk 
 kimono with striped silk hakama, changed from an un- 
 derbred clerk into a courtly gentlemen. His manners, 
 always the same, were now at ease with himself, and 
 no longer incongruous or even somewhat ridiculous, 
 they became the perfection of grace and breeding. It 
 is a change that one may often see in Japan. 
 
 Again we all sat on our heels on the kneeling- 
 cushions in the strictest order of precedence, and ex- 
 changed the politest phrases of ceremony in the 
 courtliest of Japanese. We heard all about the great 
 Temple of Kizuki, the pride of Izumo, and we told of 
 our journeys in the Far East, to Korea and Siberia ; 
 and the landlord's son, who had come in behind the 
 visitor, " half expected he might go there some day
 
 222 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 with the army," a wish which may well since have 
 been fulfilled. 
 
 In true Japanese fashion our guest had brought us 
 presents, photographs of Matsu6 and of Izumo's Great 
 temple. We could only present him in exchange with 
 our cards, a map of the world with the British posses- 
 sions marked very red, and an old copy of a railway 
 novel. The gifts pleased him, and the whole family 
 examined the map with great interest. They wanted 
 to hear all about England, and the fact that cows and 
 sheep (which they have never seen) walked over our 
 fields, and that it was sometimes light at nine in the 
 evening struck on their imagination. They asked many 
 questions about the sheep, and "what the light looked 
 like ? " which was difficult of explanation. 
 
 In spite of more amphibious drinks from the white 
 meat-dish, which seemed served here (probably as a 
 concession to our foreign tastes) instead of the inevit- 
 able tea to visitors, the struggle after faultless politesse, 
 the intricacies of a ceremonious Japanese made us 
 grow all limp with heat again. And when we had 
 bowed our last bow, uttered our last " Mata o-me ni 
 kakarimasho" ("Another time may my eyes honour- 
 ably behold you "), we were reduced to a really pitiable 
 state of exhaustion. Our comely landlady, who had a 
 large brain and a seeing eye, did not wait to question. 
 She cleared the room, sent the two giggling girls with 
 the goggle eyes to hang the green mosquito net, like 
 an imposing martial tent, from the four corners of the 
 room, while the plain daughter brought futon like thin 
 eiderdown quilts to sleep upon, undressed us carefully 
 and retired, bidding us " honourably resting deign " 
 as she did so. 
 
 As the lamp went out the ample folds of the square
 
 IN MATSUE 223 
 
 tent stood out like a royal pavilion. We crept beneath 
 and lay down upon the matted sheets which covered 
 the futon. In deference to our foreign bones we had 
 several futon underneath us, and one rolled up beneath 
 our heads ; but for all that the hardness of the matted 
 floor, stuffed though it was, rose up and hit us before 
 the night was out. 
 
 We slept beneath our transparent tent, in our wall- 
 less room, as the flowers sleep, part of the living night. 
 All the little sounds of leaf and lake stirred round us 
 undisturbed ; the rice-ears rustled in the silent night ; 
 the great trees stretched their branches -as they slept. 
 Dreaming, the waters of the salt lagoon moved towards 
 the sea, and all the wealth of insect life, turning in its 
 sleep, called faintly. The still small voice of the sky 
 whispered softly in the breezes, and the great green 
 Earth reached up to listen through her dreams. Bound 
 in the chains of man, it is at night-time that she stirs 
 so restless, when all the humming, conscious life is laid 
 to sleep, when men and insects slumber. Then the 
 green Earth wakes ; but she has endured so long that 
 even in her waking she is half asleep. Bound down 
 with streets and houses, she never wakes at all. And 
 so all night we listened to the voices of the world. At 
 the dawning, when all Nature stands hushed before 
 the coming of the sun, we slept. But the dawning in 
 this southern land is short and swift. With no clouds 
 to dim his strength, the sun soon sat flaming on his wide 
 blue throne ; and all the insects of the tropics, warmed 
 into life, rose up to buzz and hum. And we awoke. 
 
 In the Land of the Gods there are no clocks, and 
 although one in the main street of Matsue proclaimed
 
 224 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 its " foreign " time, the inhabitants beneath go their 
 own way, and the baby steamers arrive and depart in 
 open disregard of the hours upon the dial. So some 
 time between the dawning and the noon we woke. 
 The house was getting up. All the little sounds of 
 rising men and women, of a day's beginning, were 
 about us, so we got up too. Crawling from under our 
 vast green tent, we went down the polished passage- 
 way to the inner courtyard, where in a cool green 
 cloister all the rooms of the inn looked out. A long 
 stone font filled with water, a hanging wooden dipper, 
 a row of shallow brass pans on a wooden shelf stood 
 waiting. Here the whole inn washes. With water 
 from the font, cool and fresh from its night's sleep in 
 the grey stone basin, you fill the bamboo dipper and 
 pour out into the shallow pans ; and then, standing in 
 the passage-way, with all the rooms around you, you 
 wash. And unless a nesan^ attracted by the whiteness 
 of your skin, should stop a moment to look and wonder, 
 no one is interested. The usual lengths of cotton 
 towelling hung beside the dipper, like banners on their 
 poles ; and a crevice of sunshine piercing into the 
 green courtyard quivered on the round brass pans. 
 
 Tent and futon had vanished when we returned, 
 and the two little goggle-eyed girls, still with their 
 blue kimono tucked up to show the red ones under- 
 neath, were sweeping the matting with bamboo brooms. 
 We dressed in corners unattended, and sat down to wait. 
 
 From the sounds of passing feet, and the directing 
 words of our comely landlady, it seemed that great 
 things were preparing for us quite what remained a 
 mystery. At last the plain daughter, bubbling with 
 the pleasure of our surprise, came to call us. 
 "As for the morning meal," she said, "all is prepared,"
 
 IN MATSUE 225 
 
 and even the ceremony of her bows suffered from her 
 eagerness. 
 
 We went through the half-wall of shoji panels, 
 across a room, into another, where the family, all 
 assembled, almost (had it not been entirely un-Japanese) 
 clapped its hands in pride. 
 
 There on the matting, and each leg protected by a sup- 
 porting slab of wood, stood a foreign table ; four foreign 
 chairs, their legs too nailed into long slats of wood, 
 stood round. Across a corner of the table lay a thin 
 strip of cotton cloth, and on this, in all the majesty of its 
 solid ugliness, reposed the white meat-dish of our god- 
 like drink. This morning it was full of something 
 smoking, dimly resembling Irish stew. 
 
 The comely landlady beamed as we approached. 
 
 " Sea-food forthcomes," she said proudly. 
 
 And to our " foreign" breakfast we sat slowly down. 
 How bad it was ! But the family, even to the old, old 
 grandmother, were so delighted, so proud of their 
 unexpected triumph, that we ate that abominable stew 
 till not a fragment of its tough meat or a spoonful of 
 its gluey gravy remained. 
 
 Many times since have I wondered how that Napo- 
 leonic landlady organised the feast ? How did she 
 get the meat ? Who cooked it ? and where did they 
 learn ? Did she invent the recipe out of her own 
 head ? Perhaps she raided the garrison ? She was 
 capable of it. There was bread too. Matsue was 
 quite in the front of the fashion ; not like poor Kizuki, 
 which was sadly out of date ; they hadn't even blru 
 (beer) there. 
 
 All this she told us as she helped us, always with 
 the iron ladle, to that terrific stew. With the foreign 
 food too, we had " foreign " china, horrible railway-
 
 226 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 restaurant plates and cups, clumsy and thick, sprawled 
 all over with a large design in bilious blue ; knives 
 and forks that never matched, and, of course, the 
 inevitable cruet. This hideous article is always 
 the first vestige of " foreign " fashion in a Japanese 
 hotel, where it accompanies every meal. Once it may 
 have been of German silver ; it is all drab now. Long 
 centuries of use have left it bent and dinted. Its 
 bottles leak, their stoppers never fit, and whatever 
 they once held, all now drip oil and taste soy. We 
 thought of our dainty lacquered trays, our delicate 
 white china with drawings in faint blue, the refinement 
 and the art of that meal, and we sighed. The fish 
 they could not spoil, and their tea is always good, so 
 we breakfasted. And the plain daughter, whose ambi- 
 tions (or her mother's) soared to Tokyo heights of 
 fashion, asked if everything was really "yorvsfo ' upon 
 the table, and, if not, " would we show her how ? " 
 The knives and forks had puzzled her woefully ; how 
 ought they to be laid ? So we laid the table, and we 
 set the forks, and we placed the bread, and we handed 
 plates and glasses, and the ancient grandmother shook 
 with astonishment. Was ever like seen under the sun ? 
 And even the capable landlady exclaimed. So the 
 conscientious plain daughter worked through her knives 
 and forks, her bread on this side and her glasses on that, 
 with the zeal of an earnest student ; and afterwards we 
 caught her displaying her great accomplishment to a 
 circle of admiring friends. 
 
 We were to see the sights of Matsue\ Our friend 
 from the Prefecture and the black squirrel of a landlord 
 had talked it over exhaustively the night before. We 
 were catered for like Royal visitors. We did not need
 
 IN MATSUE 227 
 
 to plan, or ask, or seek. " Honourably trouble not. 
 It happens." And it did. 
 
 That morning the landlord, in a long polite speech, 
 made us over to his son, a quiet clever lad who 
 might have been the twin of his plain sister ; and 
 we set off. We wished to stop for many things, 
 temples and toy shops, the peeps of life on street 
 and wharf, but our guide, though never contradicting, 
 was so preoccupied, so intent on something that 
 we gave in and meekly followed down the long streets 
 over the many canals, whose bridges showed an 
 arch like the young crescent of the moon, along the 
 hot white road, until we reached an ugly wooden 
 building in the style called " foreign," all decorated with 
 flags and policemen. Here we entered. The police- 
 men drew up in line as we passed, and the scurrying 
 feet of a dozen officials all clothed in long frock-coats 
 came down the vestibule. 
 
 It was an Exhibition of the Arts, Industries, 
 and Manufactures of the Province of Izumo, and 
 quite inadvertently we had arrived to open the 
 proceedings. The distinguished strangers from 
 England, received by the phalanx of frock-coats, were 
 conducted majestically through the whole building. 
 We were not allowed to miss a single room. If, after 
 peeping into one, and finding it contained nothing but 
 sacks of rice, or samples of raw silk, we retreated, 
 instantly a frock-coat or a policeman appeared to lead 
 us round. We did not miss the least little exhibit of 
 the least little room. We saw them all : bags of rice, 
 cocoons of silk, hollow candles with growing designs in 
 faint pale colours, Izumo crystals famed throughout 
 Japan, lengths of piece-silk, twists of sewing-silk, 
 embroideries, china, the famous yellow china of
 
 228 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 Matsu, all the roots and grains and wood of the 
 province, fishing nets and field tools, and a whole large 
 section of the beautiful Izumo matting. In our admira- 
 tion we wished to buy, and instantly all the frock-coats 
 ran after one another, each official going to consult his 
 chief. They arrived in groups and talked ; they went 
 away and came back again. We had unknowingly 
 placed the whole officialdom of Matsue on the horns of 
 a dilemma. We were the distinguished visitors from 
 England ; we wished to buy Matsue's most especial 
 production ; the honour was great but the regulations 
 said no exhibit might be taken away before the close 
 of the exhibition ; and the Japanese respect the law as 
 they respect the Emperor. So we waited. At last a 
 most wonderful frock-coat appeared resplendent with 
 decorations ; solemnly he made a speech explaining the 
 difficulty, excusing the delay, expressing great honour at 
 our request, and at a sign his attendant handed over the 
 matting to our attendant, and with many bows we parted. 
 
 That afternoon, as we lay upon our matting in our 
 wall-less room, fanned by the plain daughter, our land- 
 lady brought in the local newspaper, and sitting down 
 on her heels she read to us a long account of the 
 arrival in Matsue of the " distinguished strangers from 
 England," and a kind of "Stop Press telegram" 
 announcing their gracious purchase of matting at the 
 exhibition that morning, besides an editorial advertise- 
 ment of a description of their visit to the exhibition for 
 the next issue. Our rooms at the inn were described 
 at length, our appearance " with faces white as milk" 
 the foreign simile showing great learning on the 
 part of the reporter our ages politely overstated, for 
 the young here, women as well as men, desire to be
 
 IN MATSUE 229 
 
 old so that to be thought older than one's age is the 
 greatest of compliments ; the paper therefore called us 
 most politely " upwards of forty," causing our dear 
 landlady to beam with delight, and the plain daughter 
 to utter a long series of those curious strangled "h's" 
 by which the Japanese express intense admiration, as 
 she fanned us more vigorously. Then, a propos of our 
 " milk-white faces," the landlady, with much hesitation, 
 asked a favour " so great that to speak unable am." 
 Might she have our soap ? Japanese soap they had, 
 but somehow, possibly, that "foreign" soap of ours 
 might account for some of our strange whiteness. So 
 she and the plain daughter retired with the soap ; and 
 for the rest of the afternoon they scrubbed diligently in 
 the bathroom. 
 
 And we sat quiet upon our matting in the heat, 
 while the green hills and the rice-fields, the pebbled 
 pathway of our garden bridge, and all the wide still 
 spaces of the lake hung as frescoes round our room. 
 The hot blue sky burned fiercely, the blue of a heated 
 brick-kiln, and our living frescoes hung motionless as 
 the work of man. There was neither change nor 
 shadow. Hills and lake and rice-fields lay still against 
 the sky flat as it were upon a flattened background, 
 and in that light which did not shine but suffused itself 
 through all things, there were no shadows, a deepened 
 blueness here and there, but neither shadow nor per- 
 spective. The sense of distance, as the sense of shade, 
 was quite annihilated. Those old Japanese artists saw 
 truly, despite our western dictums, light does not lie here 
 as we see it, still less as it lies in the actual tropics ; it 
 has effects of light and distance which are all its own, 
 and the Japanese, seeing them, reproduced them, not
 
 230 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 because there are no others, but because these are so 
 truly Japanese. And we, knowing neither the country 
 nor the climate, but strong in our arrogance of " laws," 
 called it " false, a childlike art ignorant of science." 
 
 In the Land of the Gods we sat and learnt wisdom, 
 and Japan and its people, its life and its pictures took 
 a new meaning in our eyes, and the false became true. 
 
 When our landlady and her daughter came back 
 from the bathroom they brought a small thin oblong 
 of soap, and their hands were all wrinkled with 
 washing. 
 
 " Mada kuro gozaimas kara omachi nassatta ho ga 
 yd gozaimas" they said in a melancholy, half-laughing 
 voice. " Still brown because, leaving off had best 
 be done," and they held out their four hands for 
 inspection. 
 
 The Ijin Sans whiteness was not in the soap. 
 But when we went we left as a present a whole new 
 cake of " foreign " soap ; and their supplementary 
 scrubbings must have been many. 
 
 That evening we were entertained by a small boy 
 with the snubbiest of noses, who peeped slyly at us 
 from out of the darkness of the garden. When he 
 was induced to come in he brought all his lesson 
 books, which he turned over for our amusement, and 
 between each page he chuckled, but he never told ust 
 why. Whether it was the recollections of his lost 
 lessons or a subtle sense of absurdity that we could nor 
 read the Chinese hieroglyphics of his primers we never 
 knew, but his chuckles were deep with joy. Then in 
 the pauses he would count solemnly up to ten, all the 
 English he knew, and chuckle again.
 
 IN MATSUE 231 
 
 Two wide-eyed little maidens were brought in next 
 morning to see the Ijin San. In a very awestruck 
 whisper they inquired " if we were real." 
 
 These little babies were very solemn and very 
 good, but not one scrap shy or frightened. In all their 
 little lives they had never met a grown-up being who 
 was harsh to them. Though obedience is the first 
 requisite of Japanese children young or old, they give 
 it as the plants their flowers, not from a sense of hard- 
 learned duty, but as a natural product of an eternal 
 law. 
 
 The babies made the funniest little bows as they 
 touched their little foreheads to the ground. And 
 then they sat and looked at us with wide, wide-opened 
 eyes. To them we belonged to the world of the 
 mythical Kirin, and the terrible Kitsunk who takes 
 bad babies away and feeds them on frogs and 
 snails ; we belonged to the realm of the sea-goddess 
 who married Urashima, to the land of the fairies. So 
 they asked if we were real. 
 
 They could not be induced to talk to us, though 
 they were wonderfully polite, and quite knocked their 
 little foreheads on the floor when they said " Good- 
 bye." Did we figure as goblins or as fairies in their 
 dreams, I wonder ? 
 
 That afternoon a stall-owner from the exhibition 
 came to show us Izumo crystals. 
 
 For two hours he knelt upon the matting opening 
 the beautifully made boxes of white unpainted wood. 
 And we looked at large divining-crystals without fleck 
 or flaw, at the pale clouded crystals shading from mist- 
 white to palest crimson, at the agates and amethysts ; 
 and all the time our comely landlady and her plain
 
 232 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 daughter sat on their heels and admired with taste 
 and great discrimination. 
 
 There was not in all this shopful of precious stones 
 anything to wear. A few crystal hair-pins, a few 
 " foreign " studs, but no jewellery as we understand it. 
 The Japanese never wear jewellery ; neither rings, nor 
 bracelets, nor chains, nor pins, nor brooches, nor tiaras 
 nothing. One wonders how much crime and heart- 
 burning has the nation missed. Precious stones they 
 have, but they buy and keep them for their shape 
 or for their colour, as a picture or a bronze, not to 
 adorn themselves. All the rest of the world, in all 
 times, barbarous and civilised, have fought and stolen, 
 slain and ruined themselves just to heap upon their 
 fingers or their heads strings of gleaming stones. 
 In this island-empire alone men and women have 
 looked at precious stones, have handled and admired, 
 but never worn them. One wonders was it purely 
 the artistic instinct of the race which kept them 
 from it, or the stern morality of the samurai, preach- 
 ing denial and self-control. 
 
 And again one wonders if too much jewellery be 
 barbaric, where in the scale of civilisation does a 
 nation come that wears none at all ? Surely art can 
 produce worthier things than jewellery, and are not 
 morals better without it ? 
 
 Our inn was full of guests, quite full, and all the 
 rooms have paper panels. There are no keys, no 
 locks, no bolts, the whole inn, were it so minded, 
 could go in and out of every room ; and yet we all 
 sleep in peace and quite secure. It is true that an 
 innkeeper here must bear an unblemished character 
 or his house is shut, and that the guests often
 
 IN MATSUE 233 
 
 come with a letter from their last innkeeper, but not 
 always, and yet we all sleep with half an inch of 
 rice-paper between us, and walls of sliding panels. 
 Could a hotelful of civilised Europeans be so trusted ? 
 If not to steal, then not to pry as well ? But here 
 nobody looks. Although we have become great per- 
 sonages indeed, nobody looks. And in the big towns 
 as in the country villages, in railway hotels as in this 
 remote corner of the Land of the Gods, we have slept 
 in absolute security in rooms that are always open. 
 Only once in all our wanderings did someone push the 
 shoji. It was an Ijin San who thought it was " a lark." 
 
 And so we lived in the Land of the Gods and learnt 
 wisdom, wisdom from the lake, and the hills, and the 
 rice-fields, from the night and the daylight, and the 
 inner beauty of the land lay before our eyes, still dim, 
 for western eyes are blind to eastern meaning through 
 want of power to focus, but in part we saw, and the 
 joy of that seeing has never passed away. The town, 
 the inn, the comely landlady, and the wee, wide-eyed 
 children all taught us wisdom and the meaning and 
 the beauty of the land. Slowly we saw, dimly too, for 
 western eyes are very blind to eastern meaning, and 
 race, religion, training and the whole up-make of our 
 ideas and beliefs stand so often in the way. Still in 
 part we saw, and the lessons of that seeing have never 
 passed away. We had come in all humility, so the 
 Gods were kind. They opened our eyes that we might 
 see. 
 
 When we announced that we were going the house- 
 hold was upset. And on the last morning of our stay 
 they all, landlord, landlady, plain daughter, goggle-
 
 234 E LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 eyed waiting-girls, came in a procession bearing gifts. 
 We had fans to keep us cool upon the journey, white 
 towels with pictures of the inn in blue, and above 
 all, gifts of the beautiful Matsu6 china which we 
 had so much admired. Everything was tied up in 
 the neatest parcels wrapped in pieces of brocade, and 
 presented on lacquered trays. On the top of the 
 Matsud china lay a tiny white paper cone lined with 
 red in which was stuck a splinter of bamboo cane, the 
 modern symbol of the old-time fish which was always 
 presented with each gift. And the meaning of the 
 whole is peace, plenty, and prosperity. We had 
 nothing so beautiful to give in exchange, only a cake 
 of foreign soap and a visiting-card. The cake of soap 
 was considered by the rest of the household, including 
 the old grandmother, who had come in, as a palpable 
 hit, and the visiting-cards were much prized. 
 
 Then with every one carrying our luggage we were 
 escorted to the gravel recess of the entrance, where 
 our kurumaya stood waiting, and all the household 
 went down on its knees on the polished wooden plat- 
 form and said sweet sayonara. 
 
 And there in the walled-in recess with the wooden 
 gheta lying on the big grey block of stone the kneeling 
 figures stayed. Clad in their dark blue kimono with the 
 bright-coloured obi at the waist, they knelt on the 
 polished wood, their heads on their hands, their hands 
 on the floor ; and as they knelt the rolls and whorls of 
 their coiffures seemed to grow like flowers from bending 
 stalks of blue. 
 
 "Sayonara," they said, and all the blue stalks swayed. 
 
 '\Sayonara " we called back. " Farewell." Oh, 
 dear Land of the Gods that has taught us wisdom, not 
 you, but we have need to fare well.
 
 VI 
 THE TWO SPIRITS 
 
 OUT of the town and above it, the daimyo of Matsue 
 once built him a castle, and he filled it with the stern 
 warriors whose soul was their sword. Daimyo after 
 daimyo lived and died, and still a daimyo ruled over 
 Izumo ; and warrior after warrior fought and was slain, 
 and still the samurai learned the laws of the bushi, 
 the way of the warrior, and the strong fortress of 
 Matsue, with its moat and its walls, was guarded and 
 kept by men whose lives were one long servitude to 
 honour and duty. The grim ideals of a code which 
 feared no death and no torture, which exacted the 
 sternest courage and self-control, were taught and 
 practised in the castle of Matsue, until the Son of 
 Heaven ruled in Tokyo and daimyo and samurai were 
 feudal lord and loyal vassal no longer. 
 
 The grim walls are standing now, the castle with its 
 moat still rises above Matsue to possess it, but the 
 spirit of its fierce dominance is gone ; instead, that 
 twin-soul of the Japanese race has entered into the 
 stronghold, the Love of Beauty has cast out the Love 
 of Battle, the sword is changed to flowers, for in the 
 moat of the castle the lotus is blooming. 
 
 Stern and very strong the grey walls rise high into 
 the air, they have not lost their grimness though their
 
 236 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 feet are bathed in flowers. It is true the gateway is 
 broken, and where the drawbridge once fell there is 
 now a broad path of stamped earth, but the long lines 
 of solid wall are firm still and uninjured. They still 
 rise frowning from out the deep waters of the moat ; 
 but to-day the moat itself has disappeared, in its place 
 the broad thick leaves of the lotus stretch like a silvery 
 green river around the walls. So broad, so strong, so 
 helpless, the great leaves hang like unsteady giants on 
 their stalks, and the pin-points of water gather and 
 gather on the hairy surface, till the leaf curls to a cup 
 and a big waterdrop, molten as quicksilver, runs 
 gleaming over the green. 
 
 The lotus leaves lie all lazy at angles of rest, but 
 the flowers seem to rise on their stalks as birds taking 
 wing. All pure white or palest pink, each single 
 flower is a giant's handful of blossom, and yet the 
 petals are delicate, almost transparent ; thin, too, in 
 their texture, but of a satiny softness, they curl with the 
 grace of a rose above the pure gold of their hearts. 
 
 The lotus leaves dream inert, each on its stalk hangs 
 drooping, often awry : they encircle the walls like a 
 green river of water that stagnantly sleeps ; but the 
 flowers are awake and they rise from their leaves as 
 the Spirit of Beauty once rose from the waters. All 
 pure white on this side of the gateway, all pale pink 
 on that, the great cups of blossom stand stately. Very 
 fragile in their texture, and yet so ample in their form 
 the lotus flower seems the meeting-point of luxuriance 
 and grace ; the point where more of either were really 
 less of both. 
 
 With its roots deep down in the mud, with its 
 leaves often frankly ridiculous in the large un- 
 couthness of their attitudes, with its beauty in no way
 
 THE TWO SPIRITS 237 
 
 ethereal, the lotus is yet the symbol of Death, not 
 of Nirvana, but of Death, of the completing of one 
 brief period in this long cycle which we call Life. So 
 in Matsu they planted the moat of the castle with 
 the flower of the lotus for the life of Old Japan, of 
 castle and daimyo and samurai, is ended. It is Death 
 but a new Beginning. 
 
 Beyond the gateway, a grass-grown flight of granite 
 steps leads to the castle, and we climb. 
 
 All the castles in all Japan are the same, bigger or 
 smaller, with details of decoration or style that differen- 
 tiate them, they are yet in the broad outlines of their 
 architecture one and the same. A Japanese house 
 is Japanese, but the castle comes from China, at least 
 originally, and its pagoda character is very evident. The 
 castle at Matsue had its ground floor of stone, rough- 
 hewn blocks of granite which fitted closely to each other 
 without mortar. The stone storey, as all the succeeding 
 ones of wood above it, tapered gradually inwards so 
 that the top-most wooden storey would have fitted into 
 the one below it, and that into the next, and all into 
 the square stone box of the ground floor, as neatly as 
 the nest of baskets sold in the streets of the town 
 below. 
 
 Inside, the rough-hewn stone walls were left as bare 
 as the outside, and a long steep ladder of a staircase, 
 which began abruptly in the middle of one floor to end 
 with equal abruptness in the middle of the floorabove, led 
 from storey to storey. The stone storey was divided into 
 two, the rest were of wood, and all now were absolutely 
 bare and unadorned ; the mere outer shell of a building 
 which had once lived and sheltered lives. Only in the top 
 floor, where on all four sides sliding panels of glass had
 
 238 THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 replaced the rice-paper skoji, was there any sign of life. 
 This room had been turned into a sort of Military 
 Museum with relics of the China war, swords and guns, 
 and a whole long series of wonderful coloured prints, 
 with the Chinese always fleeing, their long, long pigtails 
 floating in the breeze, the Japanese always pursuing 
 with impossible profiles and highly polished boots ; and 
 gravely studying the pictures was a group of school- 
 boys. Their comments were mostly bloodthirsty ; the 
 best way of sticking the pink Chinaman on the left, or 
 of beheading the yellow one on the right ; but they 
 did not seem moved with any animosity or any sense 
 of triumph,.they merely discussed the sword-cuts scientifi- 
 cally, seriously, as though it were a grave business of 
 life and they wished to arrive at a right conclusion. 
 
 Matsue's castle is beyond and above the town, and 
 the daimyo who built it and the warriors who guarded 
 it looked down on this side over the grey roofs of the 
 houses to the wide blue waters of the still lagoon, on 
 that side over the grey roofs of the houses and the 
 sweep of the quiet rice-fields where the river, like a 
 broad path of steel wanders through the bright green 
 fields ; and further round they looked to where the tall 
 trees climb the steep hillsides, and further still to the 
 great blue lines of the hills themselves shutting in the 
 sky. And the old warriors in their watch-tower looked 
 out over this wide fair world which lay so still around 
 them. They guarded the castle and they kept it, and 
 the light that was set in that tower was the light of 
 courage and of duty. Over the world beneath their 
 feet it shone out clear and bright, but the world was 
 wider than their horizon. After many years they 
 learned that lesson, and then they came down from
 
 THE TWO SPIRITS 239 
 
 their watch-tower, and the light which once burned 
 there in the castle is gone to-day through all the land. 
 Then the Spirit of Beauty, the soul of that world 
 which lay so still beneath the tower, went up to the 
 castle, where with courage and duty the love of battle 
 and of death had ruled so long, to possess it. And 
 in the waters of the moat the lotus is blooming. 
 
 With its roots in the mud, say the Japanese Bud- 
 dhists, the lotus flower is an emblem of man, of a good 
 man in this wicked world. From among the sins and 
 the passions of life Buddha himself rose perfect, pure 
 as the lotus, and perfect. So for a sign and a comfort 
 to all men, Lord Buddha himself sits throned on the 
 lotus, showing how Goodness Eternal came, not from 
 good, but from the midst of things evil. 
 
 In the moat of the castle the people of Matsue" have 
 planted whole fields of the lotus, that the flower which 
 is perfect might grow from the sins of the past, grow 
 with each cycle of Life ever more perfect.
 
 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE
 
 "Shakspeare would have us know that there is no devotion 
 to truth, to justice, to charity, more intense and real than that 
 of the man who is faithful to them out of the sheer spirit of 
 loyalty, unstimulated and unsupported by any faith which can 
 be called theological." 
 
 DOWDEN, " Shakspeare, his Mind and Art."
 
 TOKYO 
 
 TOKYO is a city of one million five hundred thousand 
 souls, and in its heart of hearts stands the Palace of the 
 Son of Heaven. 
 
 The city through its girdle of brown streets works 
 hard, its wharfs and factories, its shops and warehouses 
 are dense with human life and resonant with human 
 labour. The low brown streets so thick with flimsy 
 paper houses stretch for ten miles along the plain. In 
 them the children play, the kuruma pass quickly, the 
 heavy laden hand-carts of the coolies push and jostle, 
 but the heart of this great capital lies still. 
 
 From circumference to centre as you come, through 
 street on street of houses, wharves and shops, the magic 
 of the city grows. First the streets space out and out, 
 then the houses dwindle as the trees and gardens grow, 
 greener, wilder, stiller, till the heart of Tokyo's city is 
 a moated park of peace. 
 
 Up nine steep hills the city spreads, and sea and 
 river, and the wide green rice-fields lap it round, while 
 far away across the land, above the level blue of sky 
 great Fuji rises peerless in the midmost heaven. 
 
 Engirdled by the thronged and busy streets the nine 
 tall hills peaceful with well-kept houses and secluded 
 gardens, make a crescent round the moated park. For
 
 244 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 in this strange city whose centre is a palace and a 
 peaceful walled-in pleasaunce the " suburbs " lie within 
 and not without the town. 
 
 And through the town and over street and roadway, 
 in the gardens and the courtyards the gaunt beaked 
 crows flap coal-black wings as they sail past, and their 
 cynical " Haw, haw " is sarcastic with an utter disbelief. 
 With stately swoop, black wings outspread, they drift 
 past the ear of the newcomer confident with a three 
 weeks' visit that he understands the East, and in the 
 midst of his cocksureness they drop their cold, sarcastic 
 "Haw." 
 
 Brown and so crowded are the streets, bewildering 
 with their jostle of blue-clad men and women, their 
 open stalls, their unmade roads of earth stretching flat 
 between the houses on each side, where man-drawn 
 carts, and kuruma, passengers, and children get in 
 each other's way. The white uniformed policeman, 
 sword on thigh, stands, a bronze statue, at each busy 
 corner, and to him even the criminal is polite. And 
 down the streets and through and through the town, 
 cut straight or winding, the brown canals, valleys of 
 black mud, or slow streams of dark water, run to the 
 river and the sea. And thousands upon thousands, 
 too, seem the bridges, some flat and narrow as 
 gangways, most arched in a crescent curve, and the 
 brown canals run from the sea and from the river far 
 within the town. 
 
 On one of them, at high tide, a steamer like the ark 
 of Noah plies. It seems to go indifferently stern or 
 bow foremost, and is no larger than a big-sized rowing 
 boat. The one landing-stage to which I traced it was 
 like a pasteboard on two rolling-pins, and stood as the 
 threshold to the back door of a house. A European
 
 TOKYO 245 
 
 picture hung above the entrance, bright with greens 
 and blues and reds and yellows, where this resplen- 
 dent steamer floating amid green waves, showed at 
 alternate windows a head, male, Japanese, dressed 
 " foreign"; a head, female, Japanese, dressed Japanese. 
 A policeman and a soldier both in uniform balanced 
 on the deck at either end. The ark's ports of call, as 
 its starting-place and destination, remained a mystery. 
 At low tide the canal was an inch of water between 
 two banks of mud, and only at high tide could this toy 
 ark float at all. 
 
 One long, straight street, broken into sections at the 
 bridges, and then reset at different angles, runs from 
 end to end of Tokyo, runs from Shimbashi to Ueno, 
 from the " Mercantile Marine Store," which sells dried 
 fishes, to the Parcels Office of that delicious " Internal 
 Railway," otherwise unknown to fame. This is the 
 main street of the town, here is the Ginza, with its red 
 brick sidewalks, its shop-boys who speak English, even 
 its plate glass windows. Here, too, is the goldsmith 
 who advertises : 
 
 "RINGS, BRONCHITIS, AND OTHER 
 JEWELRY. BEST KINDS ONLY KEPT IN 
 STOCK"; 
 
 And the residence of that mysterious baker who 
 keeps : 
 
 -BEARDS, VINE CAKES AND SLOR FOR 
 SALE." 
 
 And down it from end to end runs Tokyo's main 
 tramway. With the river on the east, the moated park 
 upon the west, north and south the broad street runs, 
 and the park of Shiba lies at one end and the park of 
 Ueno at the other. Shiba, where the tombstones of
 
 246 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 the dead shogun lie in their sumptuous lacquered 
 temples ; Ueno, where the lacquered temples stand 
 bullet-pierced, for the soldiers of the shogun and the 
 soldiers of the emperor fought their last fight here 
 before the great Tenshisama came back to his 
 own again. Once the closed gardens of Buddhistic 
 monasteries, both parks now are open to the town, 
 bicycles ride through them, nursemaids, their babies 
 on their backs, loiter in them, little girls play classic 
 games of bones, boys catch grasshoppers, while beneath 
 the trees the low red blanketed tables of the chaya offer 
 \d. teas. 
 
 The Park of Shiba is green and quiet, smaller than 
 Ueno, for its temples hold so large a space. It is a 
 forest growing in the heart of a town. Ueno is 
 lighter, brighter, fuller of flowers and festivals, with 
 long avenues of cherry-trees, and a lake where the 
 lotus flowers grow thickly. 
 
 And over the lake and the temples, over the cherry- 
 trees and the tea-stalls, over the city below and the 
 playing children within, the big bronze bell of Ueno 
 sends forth its great booming note that note which 
 is outside our music, deeper, more liquid, which comes 
 with its low, booming sway, just when daylight 
 turns to darkness. Cast of bronze and silver, rung by 
 a wooden beam that strikes a boss outside, the note 
 of the great bell comes swaying as though the air 
 were water. And slowly over the city the bell booms, 
 trembling, and he who hears it sits still and thinks ; 
 sits lost and dreams of the song of the seven spheres. 
 
 When Ueno's avenues of cherry-trees are pink with 
 flowers, when the stalls beneath the trees are full of 
 flower hairpins, then Tokyo through its gardens and
 
 TOKYO 247 
 
 its roadways blushes too, for the whole city is planted 
 thick with cherry-trees. Not only on the river bank, 
 where the long two -mile avenue of Mukojima is a 
 perpetual fete, but everywhere, in private gardens 
 and in public streets, the delicate, pale pink blossoms 
 on their brown leafless branches catch the sunshine 
 and the showers, and fall as little rosy clouds from 
 heaven on to the ground beneath. For Tokyo is a 
 city holding the country in its lap. Not an artificial 
 bedded-out country, stiff as a Versailles park, but the 
 real wayward country, though tended with a loving, 
 understanding care. 
 
 And Tokyo is a city brimful of flowers. Between 
 the cherry-trees of April and the chrysanthemums of 
 November most of the flowers can be seen within 
 the city in temple courts or nursery gardens or public 
 parks. The lake of the lotus at Ueno is famous through 
 Japan, and in the temple of Kameido grow the age-old 
 wistarias. 
 
 Trained on horizontal trellis work, their long 
 pale tassels hang down towards the water, stirring 
 with each breeze. The trailing clusters of the flowers 
 grow four feet long sometimes, and droop towards 
 the surface of the lake in thick swaying pendants of 
 pure colour. Behind these living curtains, in a twilight 
 of pale mauve or soft white light, on the edge of the pond 
 whose shape spells "heart," sometimes afloat on the 
 pond itself, the tables of the chaya stand, and those who 
 make holiday because the flowers are blooming, all 
 Tokyo, sit and look, drinking wee bowls of pale green 
 tea, or writing poems to the flowers. 
 
 On the waters of this lake of the letter " heart " 
 float the pale mauve petals and the petals of pure 
 white, which fall and drift and sink, and fall and drift
 
 248 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 and sink, until the waters are hidden with flower 
 flakes and the wistaria is over and gone. 
 
 Kameido lies on the far bank of the Sumidagawa, 
 in a network of poor streets, for the left bank of the 
 river, like the big island at its mouth, is denser 
 with yards and factories than is the right. The streets 
 are narrower, fuller of children and the noise of 
 hammers and of wheels. Yet in this poor wage- 
 working quarter the festivals of the plum-blossoms, 
 the wistaria, and the peony are held. 
 
 In all Japan there is no other flower /&te which in the 
 least resembles a horticultural show except that of 
 Botan, the tree-peony. For when the peony blooms, the 
 little trees, large as dwarf rose-bushes, are placed on 
 tiers inside a matted tent. There the resemblance 
 ends. These plants are set each in a framework of 
 space, and the colours are grouped and blended with 
 the thought and the instinct of an artist. 
 
 The flowers of the peony are as large as the largest 
 chrysanthemum, larger than ours, but their petals are 
 rich, made of satin where ours are of cotton, delicate, 
 fragile, and sheeny. The colouring is soft and 
 subdued, and the faint sweet scent which comes from 
 them is like the dream of a rose. The colours are 
 simple, white warming to cream, paling to snow, and 
 all the tints of pale reds, deep reds, and crimsons. 
 
 The matting which covers them is of pale yellow, 
 but somehow the light, as it comes through it, touched 
 perhaps by the flowers, is the light of a dream as 
 sunlight without heat, as moonlight warmed and living, 
 a light that shimmers, holding colour fast within, yet 
 fast asleep. To-day the light in that peony tent at 
 Kameido remains to me as definite as the flowers, as 
 distinct as the scent, as real and, in truth, more
 
 TOKYO 249 
 
 beautiful. It was as though one saw the radiance of an 
 unknown, unmade jewel, light but not yet substance. 
 
 All this left bank of the river from Fukagawa to 
 Eko-in is full of workmen and workshops, of small 
 trades and smaller traders, and here in the month of 
 May in the grounds of the temple raised to the 
 memory of the hundred thousand citizens killed in the 
 great fire of 1657, the yearly wrestling contests are 
 held. The Smo, tall, broad, powerful men, many six 
 feet high or more, who dress in large checked fctmonoand 
 wear their hair in the old-fashioned top-knot, are adored 
 by the populace who come in thousands to see them. 
 
 The little round platform of stamped earth sprinkled 
 with sand, set in the midst of a huge amphitheatre of 
 faces, shows small as a raft on the sea, and slight 
 despite its purple trapping. The crowd, a Tokyo 
 crowd in kimono and foreign head-gear, cap, bowler, 
 and felt hat, sit from morning until night, day in day 
 out, for the three long weeks of the wrestling matches. 
 
 The wrestlers stand, knees bent, body horizontal, their 
 outstretched hands almost touching the ground, and 
 grip. And the bout is long because the grip must be 
 accepted by both of them, and because between each 
 false grip the two retire slowly to their respective 
 sides and wash out their mouths with tea. This 
 may be repeated a dozen, twenty times, but when 
 the real grip comes, then the action can be swift 
 as lightning ; the opponent forced beyond the straw 
 rope which lies upon the sanded earth of the ring, 
 before one realises that the wrestle has begun, or 
 pushed down over it with the slow resistless force 
 of flowing water, or the two may sway about inter- 
 minably before one is beaten.
 
 250 THE HEAF.T OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 Bulk is not the one ideal of the wrestler, the 
 young and strong rely on their activity ; it is only 
 when a man is getting older that he weights himself 
 with fat, that his bulk and heaviness may prove too 
 great for his opponent easily to push over. The wrestlers 
 all wear waistbands and stiff fringes of blue silk, and 
 the rippling of the muscles beneath their golden brown 
 skin is such a joy as the Greek nation knew at the time 
 of the Olympiads. 
 
 A man with a fan, an average-sized Japanese who 
 hardly comes above the elbows of some of the wrestlers 
 acts as starter, as umpire, and as referee, and the sharp 
 s-s-sh of his shutting fan can be heard distinctly in the 
 silence of the amphitheatre. The judges, four old tried 
 wrestlers, sit under purple hangings and decide dis- 
 puted points, while half the front tier is reserved for 
 the Smo themselves. 
 
 But to the non- Japanese it is not the wrestlers but 
 the spectators who are the centre of interest. Here 
 gathered together within the amphitheatre, concen- 
 trated on one thought, absorbed, therefore natural, sit 
 samples of all Tokyo. For the Smo, like our prize 
 fight of last century, is beloved by the populace and 
 patronised by the aristocracy. Every one takes some 
 sort of interest in it, and results are as widely 
 known as the Derby or a test match. The crowd, 
 a crowd of men and boys, for the fathers bring 
 their little sons with them, knows, as well as the 
 umpire himself, the forty-eight falls, the twelve lifts, 
 the twelve throws, the twelve twists, the twelve throws 
 over the back, alone allowed the Japanese wrestler. 
 The excitement at disputed points is intense, the whole 
 amphitheatre arguing with its neighbour. The enthu- 
 siasm at a brilliant, a quick, or a well-contested
 
 TOKYO 251 
 
 throw is intoxicating. Spectators will rise in their 
 seats and throw down presents, tobacco-pouches, 
 purses, hats, or other property, which the owner 
 redeems next morning in money. 
 
 The Smo are the idols of the street boys, and tall, 
 huge, unintelligent, in gaudy kimono and well-oiled 
 top-knots, they stride through the Tokyo streets 
 haughty, and sometimes overbearing. 
 
 We think of the Japanese as unalterably small, yet 
 here is a class, bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh, 
 who are huge, strong, large-framed men, taller than the 
 tall races of the north. They are another and a living 
 contradiction of the imaginary minisculism of the nation. 
 If the Japanese desire to produce big things, in war, in 
 statues, or in men, they take thought, they take care ; 
 much thought, infinite care, and somehow it is done. 
 
 So Tokyo wrestles, works and plays, and this left 
 bank of the river toils and lives hard. Across the 
 water Tsukiji, secluded in its " foreign " residences, 
 dwells genteel, and gossips. The Ginza shops. The 
 suburbs far within the circle of the streets grow hedged- 
 in gardens and long avenues of trees, where the houses 
 lie unseen. The schools, the training colleges, and the 
 university, a cityful of students study, and boys in 
 cotton hakama and dark-peaked soldiers' caps walk 
 through the streets boys who are passing from the 
 indulged childhood of Japan to the iron self-control of 
 manhood. 
 
 The*re is apparent in their ways and manners a touch 
 of self-assertiveness, a touch of almost self-conceit, 
 which at no other time in their own lives, and at no 
 time at all in any other member of the community, will 
 ever be observable. It is but a touch, and would pass
 
 252 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 unseen in any other land, in any other setting ; here it 
 stands out palpable. A little hard these boys look and 
 very earnest. They will strike work if they think a 
 teacher is not competent to teach, so bent are they on 
 learning. They seem to have accepted school as the 
 modern training of the samurai, and to study in that 
 spirit. 
 
 The scholarship boys at Government Colleges work 
 harder still and on the narrowest of means. They can 
 afford so little for their board that one whole college 
 gave up playing base-ball in its recreation hour because 
 " it made them too hungry." 
 
 And at the University, where the students matricu- 
 late at twenty and stay till twenty-four and five, for 
 beside their own learning, beside the ten thousand 
 Chinese symbols and all the philosophy of the East, 
 they must to-day add the learning of the West, the 
 languages of Europe, the laws, the sciences, and the 
 arts of another civilisation and of an alien race, at 
 the University the students live lives of hardest brain- 
 work and rigidest economy. Many spend their even- 
 ings in earning the money that buys their day. Some 
 deliver newspapers and sleep in the porches of 
 " foreign " houses. Many die of consumption, brought 
 on by over- work and under-feeding. Across the river 
 the hammers ring, the wheels whir round, the hum 
 of a people's toil sounds in all ears. Here within the 
 girdle of the streets, between the factories and the 
 palace is a work doing, silent, less perceptible but 
 harder, higher and undertaken for that end. 
 
 Between the hard work of hand and brain Ginza 
 and Nihon-bashi shop, and at night the wire-drawn 
 twang of the samisen comes from the lighted restaurants.
 
 TOKYO 253 
 
 Restaurants where each diner or each party occupies 
 a separate room, and geisha girls are sent for to enter- 
 tain the guests, with puns and games, with polite con- 
 versations and endless repartee. They sit on the kneel- 
 ing cushions throughout the meal pouring sake and 
 amuse. Then they dance. Posturing and swaying to 
 an accompaniment of samisen and song they glide over 
 the matting always graceful, always reserved. The 
 quality of their dancing rings passionless, dainty, grace- 
 ful, not cold but controlled. An air of serenity sur- 
 rounds them. They are not trained to the duties of 
 womanhood, but to its heaviest burden pleasing. 
 The licensed playthings of the nation, toys to amuse, 
 they reach up to their limited, low-scaled destiny, 
 through the perpetual sacrifice of self ; and the national 
 self-control encases them, so much their very own that 
 few perceive it. With very different fates and from 
 very different motives there is about them, as they 
 dance, something of the charm and of the aloofness of 
 Andersen's mermaiden ; and if their steps too are as 
 steps upon a sword, they, too, will smile untroubled. 
 
 So the city strives and pleasures, so the city learns 
 and toils. Full and full of life the streets, quiet and 
 very still the heart. The nine tall hills from ihiba to 
 Ueno make a crescent round the moat, the brown 
 streets lie without, the Mikado dwells within. Born 
 as a camp Yedo made its ruler's seat its centre, its 
 nobles' yashiki an enclosing wall ; and then beyond, 
 out of sight and sound, the necessary, unimportant 
 commonfolk had leave to work and sell. Tokyo to- 
 day is still as Yedo was. Yashiki are pulled down, 
 their ground is sold, but parliaments and embassies, 
 nobles' houses and their gardens, still make a circle
 
 254 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 round the palace, a space of suburb and of peace 
 between the city and its centre. 
 
 Over the streets and the roadways, through parks 
 and gardens, the black-winged crows sail past cynical, 
 unbelieving. The web of brown canals beneath their 
 high-arched bridges, the broad uncertain river some- 
 times slowly, sometimes fiercely, all flow towards the 
 sea. The land-locked ocean, and the pale green rice- 
 fields ripple round the streets. From sixty miles 
 across the plain great Fuji looks towards the capital. 
 
 And here in Tokyo's heart, in Dai Nippon's heart of 
 hearts, not the usurping shogun or general in his camp, 
 but Tenshisama, Son of Heaven, bestower of a 
 western constitution, augustly dwells.
 
 II 
 
 EAST AND WEST 
 
 EAST 
 
 THE large red building covered all over with Chinese 
 characters a white sign on each cardboard square of 
 red overlooks the canal. It seems too gaudy and 
 unsubstantial a building for sober work, and yet all 
 day long multitudes of dark-blue coolies, like Florentine 
 noblemen run to seed, go in and out. Fantastic key 
 patterns in white are traced upon the skirts of their 
 blue tunics, while on each back is a large red circle 
 covered with the hieroglyph of the building. They 
 may earn some 6d. a day for twelve long working 
 hours. 
 
 From among the pale straw-coloured bales emerge 
 two workmen. There are patches in their dark-blue 
 hose, and the brown toes stick out through the blue of 
 their divided socks. Even the blue designs on the 
 white towels around their heads have faded away with 
 much washing. 
 
 Catching sight of one another they bow low. A 
 step nearer, and the jaunty ends of white towel 
 tied in a knot on the forehead of one man, touch his 
 knee. 
 
 The other, whose towel is tied like a nightcap round 
 his head and under his chin, bends lower still.
 
 256 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 Another step, and the indrawn whistles of politeness 
 grow loud and shrill. 
 
 Another, and the white towels disappear entirely 
 between the blue legs. 
 
 Then the night-capped one straightens himself and 
 speaks : 
 
 " Shitsurei de gozaimas ga, c hot to hi o kashte 
 kudasai " ("Although this is great rudeness on my 
 part," he says, "would you condescend to lend me a 
 match.") 
 
 WEST 
 
 Between two rows of slovenly houses a long grey 
 street stretches away, wet and grimy. There is just 
 one break in the grey monotony where the gin palace 
 stands in all its gilt and plate-glass splendour. 
 
 Coming up the street are two workmen. The billy- 
 cock hats on their heads have lost their brim, and 
 show more dirty stain than original black. As they 
 catch sight of one another across the street they pause. 
 
 Suddenly one removes the clay pipe from his 
 lips and spits profusely. The other eyes him, his 
 hands in his pockets ; then he too takes the short pipe 
 from between his lips, and jerking his head in the 
 direction of the public house, slowly puts out his 
 tongue. 
 
 The first billycock replaces his pipe with care, 
 crosses the road, and with a sanguinary word they both 
 disappear within the doors of the gin palace.
 
 Ill 
 
 YONE'S BABY 
 
 IT lay on the matted floor, a little brown thing that 
 cried, and Yone sat on her heels and looked at it. 
 
 Huddled over the brazier in the corner, her skinny 
 hands stretched out to clutch the warmth from the 
 sticks of glowing charcoal, the old grandmother dozed 
 and grumbled. 
 
 And Yone did not move. The Ijin San for whom 
 she worked had told her she ought to take care of her 
 dead daughter's child and bring it up ; but Yone's con- 
 science, the conscience of her race, the inherited up- 
 bringing of her dead fathers, made her instinctively 
 turn towards the O Ba San in the corner. She could 
 not feed two mouths. Life was hard for Yone ; and 
 the O Ba San had a good appetite though she was so old. 
 
 So Yone sat on her heels and sullenly listened to 
 the quavering wail without moving. 
 
 "If the gods wanted the child to live, why had they 
 let its mother die ? Why had its father divorced the 
 little wife ' for temper ' before the baby was born ? It 
 was Fate. And after all the baby was very small and 
 ugly, a little, cross sickly thing that cried. No, it had 
 much better die, much better." 
 
 And Yone got up, and went to get ready the even- 
 ing rice for the O Ba San. As she did so the shadow
 
 258 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 of the Ijin San herself fell across the floor, and her 
 voice, in very English Japanese, asked after the baby. 
 Yone was down on her knees in a moment, drawing 
 in her breath through her teeth in long whistles of 
 politeness. 
 
 "The baby was not well, as theT/Vtt San could see. 
 It did nothing but cry ; and after all what was the use ? 
 It had much better die." 
 
 The Ijin San sat down on the little platform, the 
 shoji pushed back between her and the room, in con- 
 sternation. After all she had said the day before, all 
 she had urged, Yone still clung to that awful idea. 
 The Ijin San had a shrewd suspicion that the old lady 
 in the corner had something to do with Yone's idea 
 "it was better baby die." It would be quite easy for 
 " baby to die " too, and that without much active doing 
 on Yone's part. So she sat there perplexed, the baby 
 cuddled up in her arms. Moral persuasions she had 
 tried, and appeals to Yone's conscience, her love for 
 her dead daughter, her duty all in vain. And she 
 looked down at the queer little atom in its bright red 
 kimono, with the wide flapping sleeves, wondering 
 whether it would look quite so odd dressed like other 
 babies, her own for instance, and she smiled. It was 
 a last chance any way. 
 
 " Yone," she said, holding up the baby. " How 
 would you like to see him dressed like the Bofckan" 
 
 " He," cried Yone", turning round, her vanity awake 
 in a moment. 
 
 "Well, if you'll take care of him, I'll dress him in 
 foreign clothes, and he'll look just like the Bofchan" 
 
 Yone's strangled " h's " of admiration grew deeper 
 and deeper. Her admiration for the Ijin Sans 
 Bofchan knew no bounds ; and then the pride of having
 
 YOKE'S BABY 259 
 
 a foreign-dressed baby of her own ! Why, not one of 
 her acquaintances, not even the rich sakt merchant at 
 the corner, dressed their children "foreign fashion." 
 It was a height beyond their ambition, a dizzy pinnacle 
 only reached by the samurai and the Court ! And 
 Yon6's strangled " h's " of admiration and her indrawn 
 whistles of politeness knew no bounds. Even the 
 O Ba San in the corner turned her head round and 
 showed some signs of interest. And the baby stopped 
 its feeble cry and lay back on the Ijin Sans lap and 
 smiled. 
 
 With a sudden swoop Yone* caught it up. " I take 
 care, I take care," she said, " let the Ijin San bring 
 the clothes." 
 
 And from that day she went about her work with 
 the quaintest little brown morsel in a foreign pelisse 
 and a white bonnet nodding over her shoulder. And 
 neither the O Ba San nor the baby ever went 
 hungry whatever Yone might do.
 
 IV 
 THE GRAVES OF THE RONIN 
 
 THE white wing of a blossoming plum-tree casts a pale 
 shadow across the pebbled steps of the causeway, and 
 the spring sunshine is warm. Behind, under the great 
 gate of the temple, is a stall with souvenir tea-bowls 
 of the Forty-Seven Ronin and the red blankets of a 
 tiny ckaya. In front, at the end of the causeway, 
 stands a Japanese father with his little son, buying 
 bundles of incense sticks from the Buddhist sexton. 
 Coming up the path are two peasants with bare, brown 
 legs, one wearing the old-fashioned gunhammer top- 
 knot. And the plum-tree, its scent warm and fragrant, 
 lies a white wing above the path. 
 
 The Japanese father, samurai from his face, and 
 modern by his clothes, and his son have passed into 
 the graveyard before us. But we all stand together in 
 the little square garden on the side of the hill, with its 
 thickly clustered tombstones, shaped like Moses' Tables 
 of the Law in the Child's Bible, set in the flat brown 
 earth. 
 
 Below, a sharply falling line of dark green shrubs ; 
 above, the overhanging trees of the hillside ; and the 
 garden is quiet and still, with a little chill of damp and 
 death that sobers and subdues. 
 
 Before each stone tablet on the earthen path are
 
 THE GRAVES OF THE RONIN 261 
 
 bamboo vases filled with freshly cut branches of ever- 
 greens, and the burning incense sticks trail a thin scarf 
 of smoke along the ground. 
 
 The two old peasants are busy sticking their thin, 
 brown incense tapers into the little heaps of grey ash 
 to become grey ashes in their turn. The little son has 
 already lit his before the tomb of Oishi Kuranosuke ; 
 and the father, gravely feeling in the pocket of his 
 "foreign" coat, takes out a visiting-card, and lays it 
 reverently among the pile of others on the grave. 
 
 Then they go away slowly. And I catch the names 
 of Asano Takumi no Kami and Kira Kotsuke no Suke, 
 and I know that the little son is listening to the story 
 of the Forty-Seven Ronin. 
 
 For two hundred years now they have come up the 
 pebbled pathway into the graveyard, country peasant 
 and Tokyo gentlemen coming with incense sticks and 
 flowering branches, to keep green the memory of the 
 loyal retainers who died to revenge their lord : coming 
 in kimono and topknot : still coming in foreign clothes 
 and shappo, for the old spirit lives though the outer 
 form is changing. The fierce unswerving loyalty, the 
 utter self-sacrifice, the tenacity and strength of the 
 Forty-Seven Ronin still stir the soul of the modern 
 Japanese under their foreign envelope as it stirred 
 the heart of those fierce old samurai^ with their hands 
 ever on the hiit of their long two-handed swords. 
 
 " Thou shalt not live under the same heaven nor 
 tread the same earth as the enemy of thy father or thy 
 master," says the Scripture. And the Forty-Seven 
 died, and more than died, to fulfil the commandment. 
 
 In the temple below their wooden effigies stand to 
 this day. Among them are old men and young boys- 
 one with the grey locks of seventy-seven, one with the
 
 262 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 boyish cheeks of seventeen but neither the old man 
 nor the young boy faltered, through all the long months 
 of waiting, in the dangerous moment of the struggle or 
 after. They plotted and endured ; they fought and 
 slew ; they brought the bloody head of Kira Kotsuke" 
 no Suke\ washed in the well beyond the plum-tree, 
 here to the grave of their dead lord ; they gave them- 
 selves up to Justice ; they carried out the sentence of 
 death on their own bodies with their own hands all 
 with the same quiet self-control which only the sense 
 of a supreme, absorbing duty can produce. 
 
 And the Forty-Seven were buried here, in the quiet 
 cold graveyard, beside the body of their lord. And 
 when they had been laid to rest there came a fierce 
 two-sworded samurai to the little garden, and, kneeling 
 down in front of the tomb of Oishi Kuranosuke\ he 
 took his dirk from his belt and stabbed himself above 
 the grave. For he had insulted Oishi Kuranosuke\ in 
 the long months of the waiting, thinking he had for- 
 gotten his lord. 
 
 So they buried him among the Forty-Seven, and 
 before his tomb are flowering branches and burning 
 incense tapers. 
 
 The two old peasants are gone, but the sound of 
 coming steps is on the pebbled pathway. 
 
 It is the feet of the nation. They come to keep 
 their age long watch above the graves of the Loyal 
 Ronin.
 
 THE DOLLS' FESTIVAL 
 
 ENSHRINED in their white wooden boxes the dolls look 
 down ; and the gently drifting crowd stare their fill. 
 
 It is the eve of the Dolls' Festival, and for a hun- 
 dred yards along the wide Odori, the street is wreathed 
 across and across with swaying lines of paper lanterns. 
 
 On each matted floor, raised knee-high from the 
 ground, a shopman sits on his heels, his hands eternally 
 stretched out over the charcoal fire of the hibachi. 
 
 The background of dolls on three sides of him seem 
 as interested in their sale as he. The crowd drifts, 
 talks, points, looks, but he sits still, absorbed in his 
 occupation. Occasionally he will turn a languid head 
 over one shoulder in the direction of an inquiring voice, 
 and tranquilly name a price four times bigger than he 
 expects to get ; but unless the customer pursues the 
 bargain with vigour he does not stir. Even then, all 
 the talking is done without moving more than a head. 
 And when the culminating point arrives at which the 
 would-be buyer shakes the dust off his feet and makes 
 vigorously for the next shop, he murmurs an impassive 
 11 Yoroshi" ("All right"), and warms another finger, 
 while a boy in the background, who for ever dusts 
 the stock-in-trade, does up the parcel and takes the 
 money.
 
 264 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 I wonder would anything stir this blast image of 
 indifference ? 
 
 Perhaps if a fool or a foreigner, interchangeable 
 terms in the East, paid the price he asked he might 
 
 . No, " YoroskT, yoroshi" he murmurs, and does 
 
 not interrupt the warming of his hands by a finger's- 
 breadth. 
 
 For ten long days now the dolls, all in the quaint 
 robes of old, have looked down on the gently drift- 
 ing crowd, emperor and empress, lords and ladies, 
 and court musicians. The red silk trousers and the 
 flowing hair, the cut-glass chandelier-like head-dress 
 and the wide, wide sleeved kimono ; the court lady 
 leading her lap-dog ; the musicians with their instru- 
 ments ; and along the lower shelves, the long pro- 
 cession of lacquered bowls, and tables and furniture, 
 the old, old shapes of Old Japan, the realities buried 
 for ever in museums, and only these, their midget 
 substitutes, enjoying a brief life once a year. 
 
 They are so neat and pretty, of such exquisite work- 
 manship and finish, that I stay to look and look. 
 Behind me the crowd closes in thicker and thicker, 
 looking too but at me ; so thickly that they obstruct 
 the rails of Tokyo's main tramway, and cause it much 
 embarrassment. 
 
 To-morrow is the Dolls' Festival, and all the world 
 is buying ; I, too, would like to buy. So I sit still on 
 the edge of the matted floor and watch. I shall 
 learn what I ought to give and how to conduct the 
 intricate matter of a purchase. But though they were 
 here before me, and though they stay long after me, 
 and though I wait with what I consider quite Oriental 
 patience, they do not buy, not one of them, they 
 only talk. So I am compelled to conduct my own
 
 THE DOLLS' FESTIVAL 265 
 
 purchase without the aid of native example, and 
 to the certain advantage of the impassive shopman. 
 
 Does any one ever buy anything in Tokyo ? 
 
 In all my many wanderings I have never seen them, 
 patiently as I have stalked them. They are always 
 just going just going just going 
 
 Perhaps that is why the impassive shopmen are so 
 impassive.
 
 VI 
 
 
 
 WITH DEATH BESIDE HER 
 
 " Go-han wa skoshi mo arimasen" ("Not another 
 grain of rice, not a grain "). And O Matsu sat back 
 on her heels, the lid of the wooden rice saucepan 
 clutched in her hand. 
 
 " Skoshi mo arimasen " And the grey head, with its 
 cropped hair gathered into a slide behind, bent des- 
 pairingly over the saucepan. 
 
 The O hachi was quite empty, O Matsu had eaten 
 the last grain yesterday ; she knew that quite well, but 
 the trembling old fingers went on feeling round and 
 round the bare sides of the saucepan, for she was very 
 hungry. All through the long months of the rice 
 famine O Matsu had managed somehow. To-day the 
 empty O hachi lay on the ground while O Matsu sat 
 staring slowly into it. Then Death stared back at her, 
 and she knew it. 
 
 With a trembling little movement she got on to her 
 feet and moved across the matted floor into the zashki. 
 The sun was shining on the rice-paper panes of the 
 shoji, and she pushed them back and stood out on the 
 little platform of polished wood, trying to warm her- 
 self ; but the piercing winter wind made her blackened 
 teeth chatter, and she came in again. In the hibachi 
 the grey ashes were dead and cold, the last stick of
 
 WITH DEATH BESIDE HER 267 
 
 charcoal had boiled the water for her tea last night. 
 There was neither fire nor food. O Matsu stood still 
 watching, while Death and his Shadow grew, as a ghost 
 in the twilight. 
 
 Slowly the familiar walls, the matted floor, the half- 
 opened shoji insisted that the house was yet unswept, 
 the first duty of a housewife still undone ; and with a 
 painful effort O Matsu went and fetched the bamboo 
 broom that swept the matting, and the damp cloth to 
 polish the platform. The broom felt heavy to the weak 
 old hands, and the task of polishing the platform 
 almost beyond her strength ; so she worked on slowly, 
 stopping often, for hunger made her faint, but always 
 going on again. At last, zashki and platform finished, 
 she crept back into the kitchen, longing to rest. 
 The empty O hachi lay on the floor. She made a great 
 effort, and, picking it up, carried it outside to scrub, 
 for cleanliness is a supreme duty in Japan. 
 
 When she came back she put the freshly scrubbed 
 O hachi in its place. Then she sat down. There was 
 nothing more to do. The house was as clean as a 
 house could be. O Matsu was inexpressibly weary, 
 and the desire for food was almost beyond control. 
 Instinctively she wandered back to the empty O hachi 
 and took off the lid. The copper bands, dim and 
 splashed with the washing, caught her eye. It seemed 
 to her the hardest thing of all her life to go and fetch 
 her little cloth and sit down to polish them, but she 
 did it. And Death and his Shadow sat down at her 
 side. 
 
 Somehow as she rubbed, two tears gathered in the 
 dim old eyes, and rolled down the withered cheeks. 
 O Matsu dropped the cloth, and holding the long 
 sleeve of her kimono before her face, sat still and wept.
 
 268 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 There is nothing in all the world so lonely as a 
 Japanese woman without husband or children. She 
 has no claim on her own family, and little on her 
 husband's ; and in a land where the children, once 
 grown up, provide for their parents, what can a 
 childless widowed old woman do ? 
 
 The sun moved round the house, and O Matsu still 
 sat in her kitchen rubbing softly at the copper bands 
 of the saucepan. And death, in infinite pity, laid his 
 hand upon her head, and his Shadow vanished. 
 
 " O meshi wa skoshi mo arimasen" she said. And 
 the shaven old eyebrows puckered themselves together. 
 " Skoshi mo arimasen" And the bent little figure 
 went on rubbing. 
 
 When the policeman came in the grey dawn of the 
 morning, surprised that the amado were not drawn, 
 he found O Matsu, the polished copper bands of the 
 O hachi glittering in her lap quite dead.
 
 MIDNIGHT and yet as hot as midday. Over our heads 
 the velvet darkness lay as a visible lid above the streets, 
 warm and still. Not a breath of air was stirring from 
 one end of Kyoto to the other ; the city seemed a vast 
 dark house with all its windows shut. Only the rapid 
 running of the kurumaya produced the slightest breeze, 
 and that was but the fanning of a heated ballroom ; 
 and when it stopped the hot still air settled down 
 hotter, stiller, than before. 
 
 We had reached the bank of the river, the bridge 
 and Theatre Street lay beyond ; and, as suddenly as one 
 opens a door in a dark passage, we were there, inside, 
 in the press and the noise, the lights and the crowd of 
 Kyoto's nightly soiree, 
 
 Restaurants and hairpin stalls, geisha booths and 
 theatres, the interesting show of the two-headed fish, 
 or the tragic story of the Forty-seven Ronin, em- 
 broideries, and birv., jugglers and phonographs, cheap 
 stalls for the sale of shaved ice and sugar syrup, 
 elegant restaurants with fish dinners ; dancing-booths 
 at two sen a head, where white-painted geisha girls 
 continually sang four notes and assumed four pos- 
 tures, and sang the same four notes and repeated 
 the same four postures to a tightly packed audience
 
 270 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 sitting on its heels, silent but appreciative ; and 
 all, restaurants, booths, theatres, stalls, blazed with 
 lights and posters, deafened with the banging of 
 big drums and the invitations of the proprietors, 
 reeked with the smell of burning tallow, the fragrance 
 of boiling tea, the scent of crushed geranium, the odour 
 of an eastern summer's night and of the press of clean- 
 washed, hot humanity. 
 
 Along the street, inside the stalls and out, the crowd 
 was dense, cheerful, polite and contented. There was 
 no pushing, no ill-humour, no fights, no drunkenness, 
 nor one policeman. The people of Kyoto were en- 
 joying themselves like well-bred guests in a ballroom, 
 with the courtesy of self-control, and the self-abandoned 
 pleasure of a child. The road with its shifting crowd, 
 and the two long lines of brightly lighted buildings, 
 covered with paper lanterns and cotton banners on 
 bamboo poles, looked more like a "set" in a theatre than 
 real houses in an out-of-doors street. Not a candle-flame 
 quivered, not a banner stirred, and the long perspective 
 of the arched bridge was still as a painted background. 
 
 Down in the river, in the actual bed of the stream, 
 were more lights, whole crowded restaurants afloat. 
 Sitting on the tops of tables, whose four legs driven 
 down into the sand brought them within six inches of 
 the water, supper parties innumerable ate and talked ; 
 while the children, slipping off their gheta, paddled 
 their feet in the stream. Even the little waitresses, as 
 they ran from customer to customer, would leave the 
 long polished gangways that led from tea-house to 
 table, and take the shorter way through the water. 
 Every one was eating, and every one was happy 
 shaved ice with sugar syrup, at two sen a glass, or 
 dishes of brown eels and rice at two yen, gratuitous
 
 KYOTO'S SOIREE 271 
 
 tea or blru in thirty-sen bottles. And with the summer 
 night above, the water all around, the hundreds and 
 hundreds of little tables floated on the water bright 
 with kimono and lanterns. The broad shallow back- 
 water either side the bridge was full of them, and the 
 gentle rushing of the actual river beyond the circle of 
 bright light lent a sense of freshness to the shadows 
 that they did not in themselves possess. 
 
 Up on the bridge the crowd grew thicker, Theatre 
 Street more full ; the hairpin stalls were surrounded 
 with women and little girls, buying long hairpins 
 carved at the end, or ornamented with silk lanterns 
 or flowers, or ingenious designs of tortoises made of 
 shells, with legs that quivered realistically. And the 
 velvet blackness lying above the streets and beyond 
 the river was warm to feel. 
 
 Suddenly, as when one throws a stone into the 
 water, the crowd surged forwards, then rippled slowly 
 back ; half a dozen white-uniformed policemen, with 
 the distinctive, distinguished face of the samurai, 
 were coming over the bridge, driving the people 
 before them, back and back. The confused noise of 
 indistinct shouting filled the air. Suddenly on to the 
 bridge came running in a sort of jog-trot a crowd of 
 bareheaded men, their short white tunics hardly 
 reaching to the thigh and their brown legs naked 
 beneath, all tugging and straining at a huge unwieldy 
 car, which moved in jerks on its wheels of solid wood. 
 On each side ran bands of men brandishing flaming 
 torches in their hands, while priests in gorgeous 
 apparel came behind. And priests and people, torch- 
 bearers and car-pullers, were chanting as they ran, a 
 fierce, wild cry, which went on and on. The car- 
 pullers swayed from side to side, tossing their hands
 
 272 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 above their heads, the torch-bearers rocked, sending 
 great flaming fragments among the crowd, and we all 
 stood pressed together, shrinking back from the 
 burning torches, and the feet of the car-pullers, singed 
 here, trampled there, in one sweating mass of hot 
 humanity. 
 
 In the middle of the bridge the car stood still. The 
 men in white tunics moved restlessly on their feet, 
 straining at the cords ; the torch-bearers chanted 
 louder, tossing their torches in the air ; the priests 
 hurried to the front, and stood gesticulating while the 
 wild, monotonous cry, gathering fierceness and frenzy 
 from its very monotony, thundered and roared. Then 
 with a sudden swirl the car turned round, and torch- 
 bearers, car-pullers and priests were rushing back 
 again to the same fierce wild cry, the same frenzied 
 swaying of the bodies, and the same mad tossing of 
 the arms. The sacred procession had come, was 
 gone. 
 
 Slowly the crowd rippled back, on over the bridge, 
 back down the street, the policemen disappeared, the 
 drums of the geisha booths and the invitations of the 
 stall-owners rang out again. Down on the surface of 
 the river the floating tables grew fuller and fuller, 
 
 Kyoto's nightly soiree was at its height,
 
 VIII 
 NO 
 
 A ROOM whose sloping floor is cut into chess-board 
 squares ; each square flat and matted, so that the back 
 is twelve inches high and level with the front of the 
 square above ; a bare still wooden room long and 
 crowded. Each matted square thick with kneeling 
 men and women, the long-headed aquiline faces of 
 the nobles and the samurai. At the end a platform 
 with an opening vaguely leading from it. No scenery, 
 no footlights, no curtain. It is the theatre for the 
 performance of the No. Those sacred old world 
 plays written many hundred years ago, acted by 
 samurai for samurai, the religious mysteries and 
 moralities of Japan. 
 
 In the West the theatre long ago shook off, escaped, 
 forgot the Church. Here the elder child, the mother 
 rather, still lives by the side of her offspring, and lives 
 unchanged. The No to-day is as the No of five 
 hundred years ago, the No which grew out of the 
 sacred dances of an immemorable antiquity. Like the 
 drama of the Greeks it has its choruses, its chants, its 
 unities, its one or two actors masked, richly dressed, 
 impressive, who move with a religious solemnity, and 
 speak as voices, not as men. Its plays, too, are drawn 
 from sacred legend, from the mythology of Shinto
 
 274 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 deities, from the mysteries of the Buddhist faith, and 
 from the fairy tales of the race. Over it all there is a 
 glamour as of a stolen glimpse into the buried past. 
 To-day its language is archaic, but preserved by con- 
 stant repetition, handed down from father to son in 
 the families of nobles who, since No first began, have 
 played in No, it remains the language and the speech 
 of those dead Japanese, who towards the fourteenth 
 century organised the No. 
 
 The chant is strange and piercing, its very notes 
 and phrases are outside of all that we consider music, 
 as unfamiliar as the speech of insects, or the song of 
 the remotest fathers of mankind. It echoes like a 
 voice from out the long dead worlds, piercing yet re- 
 mote, and the tink of pipes dies out. There falls a 
 stillness in the room. 
 
 It is the afternoon of the last day of the lidamachi 
 No. As in the theatres of Greece the plays, each of 
 which lasts about two hours, are given one after 
 another throughout the whole day, while between them 
 comes the Kiogen (mad words), or folies dramatiques, 
 farce-like, Greek-like comedies, shorter even than the 
 No. Many of the spectators have been here since 
 the morning, and on the matting of the shallow square 
 boxes are lacquered trays of food, on all teapots and 
 tobacco-stands ; others come to see a special play or 
 so and go away again ; but to one and all it is not an 
 amusement, it is a study, a homage paid to the past, a 
 rite. 
 
 As the first notes of the strange piercing chant wail 
 down the room, the pipes and cigarettes go out, the 
 tiny teabowls are set down, and a silence falls. 
 
 The actors, in their rich brocaded robes of a make 
 and texture of a long dead past, come slowly through
 
 NO 275 
 
 the passage-way on to the platform. Their masks are 
 made of lacquer, and they speak in a slow nasal deep 
 voice that seems to come from the very back of their 
 throats. They speak with every muscle strained and 
 taut. It sounds almost as outside of speech as the 
 chant is outside of music, and they move in strange 
 long strides. Such movements are not merely for 
 artistic effect, nor to mark agitation, or to reproduce 
 nature ; they are often used to mark the passing of a 
 period of time. 
 
 For all its stiffness and its rigour, its archaic make- 
 believes, its unnatural realities, there is an intensity 
 and a thrill in it as of a living thing that matters. The 
 strange music of the tambourine-like instruments, the 
 thin wailing of the bamboo flute, the beating of the one 
 small drum, shaped like an hour-glass with three sup- 
 porting pillars, breaks in again and again upon the 
 intoned speech of the actors with its repeated irregular 
 cadences in notes outside of speech. And the long- 
 robed figures, masked and rigid, stalk slowly across 
 the stage ; and the chant of the chorus, as in the 
 plays of Greece, explains, comments, describes the 
 action. 
 
 It is the story of the fisherman who found an angel's 
 robe of feathers on a tree, and would not give it back 
 though the angel begged and begged. Without it she 
 cannot reach her home in the blue of the heavens 
 above, and for a heavenly spirit to stay for long on 
 earth means death. Already the chorus is chanting 
 her dirge when the fisherman, seeing her beauty fading 
 and her life ebbing fast, relents. He will give back 
 the robe if she will dance for him. She promises, but 
 implores first her robe that the dance may be more 
 perfect. The fisherman fears she will deceive him
 
 276 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 and fly back to heaven at once. But the spirit turns 
 upon him. 
 
 " Fie on thee, fisherman," she cries, " deception was 
 born of man ; the high heavens know not of it." 
 
 And, touched, he gives back the robe. She dances, 
 while the chorus sings the beauties of the landscape, 
 of Japan. How 
 
 " Heaven has its joys, but there is beauty here, 
 
 Here 
 
 Where the moon in bright unclouded glory 
 Shines on Kigomi's lea. 
 And where on Fujiyama's summit hoary 
 The snows look on the sea." 
 
 Even the angel would stay awhile in a land so 
 beautiful 
 
 " Blow, blow ye winds that the white cloud-belt driven 
 Around my path may bar my homeward way, 
 Not yet would I return to Heaven." 
 
 And still the angel dances, and the vision of Heaven 
 descends upon earth. She sings, 
 
 " And from the cloudy spheres, 
 Chiming in unison the angels' lutes, 
 Tabrets and cymbals, and sweet silv'ry flutes 
 Ring through the heav'n that glows with purple hues." 
 
 Then the voices fall away. And to the strange, 
 tuneless music, whose notes are not our notes, the 
 spirit dances on, round and round in gliding circles, 
 with the slow, smooth movements of the sacred 
 Kagura. 
 
 " Fragrant and fair too fair for mortal eyes." 
 
 The chorus sings again. And gliding round and 
 round in circles ever smoother, ever slower, the spirit 
 passes from the platform and up the vague passage-way 
 that leads to the green-room beyond.
 
 NO 277 
 
 The fisherman starts. The play is ended. In long, 
 stiff strides, so slow, so slow, that an appreciable space 
 of time seems set around the movement of each muscle, 
 the actor goes across the stage, up the vague passage- 
 way, into the room beyond. 
 
 It is five minutes before the last slow solemn stride 
 takes him beyond our sight. Then hour-glass drum, 
 the flute, the two tambourine-like instruments that 
 wail, shake out their last weird tuneless tune. The 
 chant of the chorus ends on a note that to us is a 
 middle and stops. 
 
 My ears still wait the end of the phrase when the 
 hush of intense silence dissolves. There is a rustle 
 in each square shallow box, a lighting of tiny bronze 
 pipes and cigarettes, a filling of tea-cups, a tapping of 
 chopsticks. 
 
 The No is over. 
 
 NOTE. In quoting from this No, "The Robe of Feathers," I have 
 followed Mr. B. H. Chamberlain's translation in " The Classical Poetry 
 of the Japanese."
 
 IX 
 A JAPANESE BANK-HOLIDAY 
 
 THE bulletins grew longer, and all the world waited 
 and watched. 
 
 The Japanese papers were full of minute descriptions 
 and hopeful prognostications. The cherry-trees were 
 doing well ; they were expected to bloom next week. 
 
 Then came a cold wind and rain ; " for flowers," as 
 the proverb says, " bring showers." And the bulletins 
 became paragraphs. 
 
 But the sky grew blue again, and even the foreign 
 papers broke through their Western disdain, and 
 announced that " Marquis I to had gone to Kyoto to 
 see the cherry-trees." Imagine the 7^imes gravely 
 recording amongst its official intelligence that " Mr. 
 Balfour had gone to Devonshire (not a third of the 
 journey) to see the apple-blossoms " ! But the Japanese 
 are, of course, uncivilised ! 
 
 On Easter Monday the trees were out, and all the 
 world with them. The two long miles of river-bank at 
 Mukojima were crowded. The river itself was thick 
 with sampan. And still all Tokyo pours itself out 
 over the bridges, across the canals, out under the long 
 double line of cherry-trees. 
 
 The chrysanthemum may well be the Imperial 
 crest ; the cherry-tree is the national emblem, and its
 
 A JAPANESE BANK-HOLIDAY 279 
 
 flowering a national f&te a Japanese Bank Holiday, 
 with Mukojima for its Hampstead Heath. 
 
 The two long miles of raised hank is a sea of heads, 
 a second black river set between pale pink banks ; 
 and it washes slowly, undisturbedly onwards. No- 
 body pushes, nobody shouts, nobody calls rude remarks. 
 And the blue-tuniced coolies, like Florentine noblemen 
 out at elbows, with the work-a-day blue towel round 
 their heads replaced by a pink one, the very shade of 
 the cherry-blossoms above, say polite " Go men nasai" 
 ("I beg your honourable pardon") if in looking up- 
 wards they stumble against each other. 
 
 The kurumaya has drawn his wife and children to 
 Mukojima, and they wander slowly under the trees, 
 the little ones in their gay-coloured kimono, covered 
 with the largest of large flowers. Even the little 
 tonsured babies blink up at the pink wonder over- 
 head from the warm pouch on their mother's backs. 
 And the old grandmothers, with their cropped grey 
 heads and shaven eyebrows, tell how the cherry-trees 
 were much finer when they were young. The little 
 girls, with their hair oiled into lengths of black ribbons 
 and tied in loops on the top of their heads ; the young 
 wife, with the wonderful whorls of the married woman's 
 coiffure ; the bare-legged, blue-knickerbockered ricksha 
 man ; the schoolboys, with their striped cotton hakama ; 
 the fathers, in their grey kimono all the working 
 world, all the people are here. 
 
 Below the level of the bank, raised high here, for 
 the Sumidagawa, like all the rivers of Japan, is fierce 
 in its floods, and set thick together, are the chaya. 
 These range from the humblest little roofed shed, 
 with its broad, low tables, like a series of large trays 
 on dwarf legs, covered with coarse red blankets, to the
 
 280 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 superb tea-houses with their snow-white matted rooms, 
 their painted shoji. And they are all full. The 
 kurumaya drinks his bowl of pale green tea, sitting on 
 his heels on the red blanket. The little wife tries the 
 immensely popular drink of ramune (lemonade) out of 
 a doll's tumbler. The coolie, with his festive pink towel, 
 pours warm sake from slim china vases into tiny china 
 bowls, and the smile on his broad, bullet-headed face 
 grows broader. For the sake drinker, unlike Western 
 drunkards, only becomes politer and politer, until the 
 Japanese smile of courtesy broadens into a large, fixed, 
 unending, amiable grin, and the sake drunkard goes 
 politely, though stumblingly, home to sleep. But of even 
 sake drunkenness there is little, for the most part o cha 
 (honourable tea) and o kashi (honourable cakes) con- 
 tent these uncivilised Bank Holiday-makers, who have 
 come out to see just the pink cherry-blossoms against 
 the blue sky. And will go home again content. 
 
 On the river the red towels are perhaps more 
 numerous, for all the fishermen, all the dock labourers, 
 the whole riverside population of Tokyo have come in 
 their sampan to Mukojima. And they float past now, 
 little and big, crowded with blue tunics or grey kimono. 
 Some with an awning of paper lanterns, and all gay 
 with flags and banners. And full as the river is with 
 boats, and jammed together as they are under the 
 bank, nobody shouts, nobody quarrels, nobody swears. 
 A garden party at Windsor Castle might be better 
 dressed, it could hardly be better behaved. Nor in 
 the whole length of those two miles of crowded bank, 
 with the line of sampan on one side and the line of 
 public-houses on the other sampan, avenue, inns, all 
 full to overflowing are there three policemen. More, 
 the trees, with their exquisite cloud of pink flowers,
 
 A JAPANESE BANK-HOLIDAY 281 
 
 are within easy reach of a man's arm, and nobody 
 breaks them. The municipality of Tokyo has not 
 even considered it necessary to affix a notice regarding 
 the penalty for damaging trees. I should doubt if it 
 had even thought to invent one. 
 
 And yet the blossoms are beautiful enough to 
 make a man's heart long to possess them. 
 
 " A little pink cloud of the sunset has caught in the 
 bare branches of the cherry-tree." And not all Western 
 imagery can surpass the simile, for the pink is the pink 
 of a cloud at sunset, and soft as the softest mist. 
 When the wind stirs the trees, the blue sky seems 
 scattering pink snowflakes to the ground. 
 
 " What is the soul of Japan ? " asked the poet. "It 
 is the mountain cherry-tree in the morning sun." 
 
 But a soul so simple, the civilised nations, of course, 
 disdain !
 
 X 
 THE PALACE OF THE SON OF HEAVEN 
 
 KYOTO is a city of immense distances where the brown 
 earth streets, set in between their rows of low brown 
 houses, run on interminably. Even under the weltering 
 summer sky the streets are full ; for Kyoto, the once- 
 time capital, is still the second city of the Empire, and 
 the art centre of Japan. My kurumaya scatters men 
 and children as he runs ; and the sounds of busy bar- 
 gaining, the inevitable takai (too much), following the 
 ikura des ka (how much ?) pursue me as I ride. 
 
 At each corner two more streets stretch out, as 
 straight as interminable, as full of life. And still my 
 kurumaya runs. 
 
 I am going to see the Emperor's Palace. Through 
 many hundred years, through most that is history in 
 Japan, the Son of Heaven dwelt in the heart of this 
 city, and these long interminable streets so full of Mfe 
 stretched all around him. The Tenshisama lived in the 
 midst of his people, and neither saw nor heard. 
 
 We have left the streets at last ; on either hand stand 
 railed-in squares of growing trees ; the road is wide 
 and smooth, the busy thousands in the streets drop out 
 of sight and sound. My kurumaya runs more swiftly. 
 
 Here is neither shop nor house, nor passer-by, the 
 restless hum of life itself has ceased. It is quieter than
 
 THE PALACE OF THE SON OF HEAVEN 283 
 
 a forest, for in these artificial squares of railed-in trees 
 nothing stirs. Men's gardens are always three parts 
 dead. 
 
 The broad road widens still ; white as fuller's earth 
 and hard, it stretches like an avenue between high 
 walls of smooth white brick, laid flat and thin as 
 Roman tiles, on thick layers of pale white mortar. 
 Two carefully paved-in streams of fresh grey water 
 run between wall and road. And streams and road 
 and walls go on and on. It is the Palace of the 
 Heir Apparent. 
 
 The walls are twelve feet high, the stream is three 
 feet wide ; and still my kurumaya runs. The pale 
 white walls stretch down the road like parallels in 
 Euclid. It is the Palace of the Princes of the Blood. 
 
 And still he runs. The pale white walls, thin tiles 
 set in their thick layers of mortar, run as he runs. 
 
 I have lost sense of the city now, lost memory of the 
 gardens, lost belief in life itself. The world is a dead 
 white road between white walls. This is the Palace 
 of the Son of Heaven, one speck of brown breaks 
 the interminable line of white, the carved gateway 
 whence the great Tenshisama issued once a year to 
 visit the temple. One other speck, the gate by which 
 he returned. And then the pale white walls, thin tiles 
 set in thick layers of mortar, stretch out of sight. 
 
 Inside these miles of walls, in his artificial solitude, 
 year in, year out, the Son of Heaven dwelt. The 
 life of the city, surging through its streets, surged up 
 in vain ; he could not see it, hear it, nor conceive it. 
 Lord of a world he did not know, the Son of Heaven 
 lived, while all around the sons of earth fought and 
 toiled, were born and died, and not a murmur of their 
 being passed his Palace walls. Shut up in his rose-
 
 284 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 garden world, fictitious, quite unreal, the Son of Heaven 
 augustly ruled. And while the thousands in the city 
 and the millions in the land held him divine, so that 
 whoso looked upon his face did surely die, the men 
 who looked usurped his power, crowned or deposed 
 him ; ruled in his name, but reigned supreme, and 
 fought to reign. The history of Japan lies there. 
 War and worship, divine unquestioned right and civil 
 strife, never rebellion, each army fighting in the name 
 of the ever-sacred Son of Heaven, to use victory for 
 its own ends. 
 
 And the living son of these dead Emperors, brought 
 up as they, Son of Heaven still, though without the 
 walls, a modern monarch holding levees and cabinet 
 councils, does that fictitious rose-garden world lie about 
 him yet shutting out the real ? 
 
 " And always in Japan," says my kurumaya, " the 
 Son of Heaven augustly rules." 
 And he sings : 
 
 " Kimi ga yo wa 
 Chiyo ni yachiyo ni 
 9azar6 ishi no 
 Iwaho to narite 
 Kokd no musu mad6." 
 
 " The descendants of the Emperor shall live for a thousand times 
 ten thousand years, until the little stones are grown great rocks, until 
 the great rocks are all green with moss."
 
 XI 
 AND SHE WAS A WIDOW 
 
 O MM SAN looked into her son's eyes and saw that 
 they were sad. 
 
 It was in the month of the plum-blossom, when 
 throughout the length and breadth of Japan the 
 soldiers of the Empire were daily leaving for the 
 front ; for the war with Russia had been declared, and 
 the rich were giving of their wealth, the poor of their 
 poverty, and every one of his sons. In Tokyo the 
 rival newspapers had agreed to bury their political 
 differences until the war was over. An Osaka 
 merchant had offered his priceless art treasures for 
 sale. On the western coast the poor fishermen, 
 forbidden to fish in the sea of Japan because of the 
 danger, sent a petition to the Government asking to 
 be allowed to go out " as scouts." Noble students on 
 the far-off banks of the Sungari were risking an igno- 
 minious death as they crouched beneath dark bridges 
 with dynamite in their hands. Everywhere, every one 
 was giving, giving, giving. Even in this remote 
 country town each day mothers saw their sons march 
 away, and bid them a last " Sayonara" 
 
 O Mm6 San had been waiting many days, expecting, 
 hoping, dreading, and to-night in the sad eyes of her 
 son she read the long delayed summons. "He has
 
 286 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 heard at last," she thought. And for one moment her 
 heart grew very tender over this, her fatherless son, 
 her only boy. 
 
 Then she put away her weakness, for she was the 
 wife and the daughter of samurai, and she knew that 
 it was the proudest privilege of a warrior to fight for 
 his lord, that it was the most sacred duty of her 
 race to give her life and her son's life to the 
 Emperor. So, looking towards the curved swords of 
 the family, which lay on the tokonoma, she began to 
 talk of her husband, of the grim old samurai his 
 fathers, and to tell old tales of battle and of death that 
 made her boy's eyes glisten, and then look sadder 
 than before. But he said nothing, and O Mme San 
 wondered. She knew that he had been down to the 
 Prefecture that morning. O Kiku San's two sons had 
 left last week, O Hana's eldest was going to-morrow. 
 Surely her boy must know when he was leaving, or 
 why did his eyes look so sad ? 
 
 Then she began to tell him of all the plans she had 
 thought of for managing without him, for they were 
 poor. And at last her son looked up, and said, very 
 gently as he took her hand : 
 
 " Honourably trouble not ; as for leaving, it is not for 
 me." 
 
 And this time it was O Mme San's turn to be 
 silent. 
 
 When dinner was over her son went out to his 
 work, and O Mme San wondered and wondered. The 
 wife and daughter of a samurai she was eager to give, 
 give even her only son for Dai Nippon, and the Son 
 of Heaven. And yet her boy was not going, what 
 could it mean ? 
 
 It was O Hana San who brought the answer.
 
 AND SHE WAS A WIDOW 287 
 
 O Hana came in, very proud and pleased to tell all the 
 last news about her eldest and his regiment. 
 
 "They say these Russians are seven feet high," 
 she said, as they sat opposite one another on the 
 kneeling cushions sipping tea, " and that they never 
 wash. And, just think, over there in Cho-sen (Korea) 
 everything is still frozen." 
 
 O M m San listened. " A warrior is always warm 
 enough when he fights," she said, looking at the long 
 curved swords which lay on the tokonoma. 
 
 O Hana San followed her glance. There were no 
 swords at home on her tokonoma. 
 
 "Oh! fighting's very different nowadays," she said. 
 " My boy hasn't got a sword at all. They only carry 
 guns now." 
 
 For O Hana was not above a certain feeling of 
 pleasure at getting even with a samurai. 
 
 O Mme San bowed, and gently offered more tea. 
 "That is the Emperor's will," she said, in her soft, 
 low voice. " My son will also carry a gun," 
 
 " But your son isn't going," cried O Hana San. 
 "Didn't you know? The Prefect said yesterday 
 something about the law of the Emperor forbidding 
 it. I forget why." And she gave a little giggle of 
 pride at the idea of her son going to the war when the 
 son of a samurai must stay at home. 
 
 O Mme San's hands trembled as she poured more 
 tea into the tiny bowls, but her voice was as low and 
 as gentle as ever, and she did not abate one bow or 
 one word of politeness ; but how glad she was when 
 O Hana was gone ! She sat back on her heels after 
 her last bow, her face flushed with anger. The 
 Emperor would not take her son ! O Hana must be 
 mistaken. It could not be true. But "the Prefect
 
 288 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 said." Then she would go and ask the Prefect. And 
 O Mme San got up resolute. 
 
 The Prefect was very busy, and refused at first to 
 see her, but, with the softest and gentlest politeness, 
 O Mme San still persisted, and at last she was admitted 
 into the ugly " foreign " room where the Prefect, in a 
 frock-coat and tweed trousers, sat on a "foreign" 
 chair. O Mme San sat on the edge of hers and held 
 her kimono tightly with both hands. She was not 
 used to chairs. 
 
 " You wish to know when Suzuki Tetsutaro leaves 
 for the front. Honourably please to wait a moment." 
 
 O Mme San waited. The Prefect, deep in his work, 
 almost forgot her. Something in the tremulous way 
 in which she had spoken made him think she was 
 afraid for her boy ; and he was a stern man, with the 
 sternest ideas of duty to the Emperor. So when the 
 answer came back to him, he turned to her somewhat 
 coldly. 
 
 " Suzuki Tetsutaro is exempt from service. It is 
 the will of the Emperor that the only son of a widow 
 shall stay and take care of his mother." 
 
 A great light sprang into O Mme San's eyes. 
 " Honourably please to say is that the reason ? " she 
 asked, bowing low. 
 
 The Prefect looked at her, at the strange light 
 shining in her eyes ; and in his heart he regretted the 
 old stern times when samurai mothers sent out their 
 sons to fight to victory or to death. 
 
 " That is the reason," he said, and he bowed her out. 
 
 That night O Mme San did not sleep. She sat up 
 looking at the curved swords of her fathers and 
 thinking.
 
 AND SHE WAS A WIDOW 289 
 
 She knew now why her son's eyes were sad. The 
 Son of Heaven, in his graciousness, had wished to 
 spare the widow's son, but but a subject's duty was 
 to give, give all, give himself, give everything that 
 was most precious to him ; above all, a samurai boy 
 must not stay at home when peasants' sons went out 
 to fight. And in the quiet night, with the blossoming 
 plum-tree stretching like a white wing above the 
 house, Mme thought. 
 
 This gentle, soft-voiced woman, tender as the white 
 blossoms overhead from which she took her name, was 
 delicate as they; but in her soul there dwelt that 
 subtle, untouched fragrance, the sense, of sacrifice and 
 duty, which, like the scent of the blossoming plum-tree, 
 penetrated all things. Brought up on the "greater" 
 and "the lesser learning," in the strict rule of the three 
 obediences to father, husband, son O Mm San had 
 lived her simple life, a loving, tender woman, exqui- 
 site in grace and courtesy ; but in her heart there 
 burned that ecstatic faith and fealty which we have 
 never truly known, but call by the cold name of 
 loyalty. So she sat there and thought in the still, dark 
 night, and all the thoughts and feelings of the dead, 
 all their resolutions and impulses, stirred back to life in 
 her all the long line of her samurai fathers, who had 
 fought and died, the yet longer line of patient mothers, 
 who had endured and given their sons, husbands, 
 fathers, called to her. They were not dead nor sleep- 
 ing. They were alive in her. She sat and listened as 
 their lives thrilled through her in the silence, and their 
 voices spoke aloud within her soul. It seemed a simple 
 thing to sacrifice herself. She had no fear of death, 
 rather a great desire. No haunting fear of Purgatory 
 or Hell beset her. Even the all-loving Buddha was 
 
 T
 
 290 THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 forgotten ; she trusted to the older gods to-night 
 Amaterasu, the great Sun-Goddess, from whom the 
 Son of Heaven himself descended. Beyond the 
 shadow of this life the great gods lived, and all the 
 long line of her fathers stood waiting to welcome her. 
 When she slipped into that light her son's father him- 
 self would stoop to take her hand, content that she 
 had proved herself worthy to be a warrior's wife. 
 
 The snow-white mme, the blossoming plum-tree, 
 stirred in the cold night wind. " Chastity, purity and 
 strength, womanly strength," it whispered, and its 
 pale soft blossoms sighed. The fragrance of them 
 floated by in the chill spring air ; floated wide from 
 end to end of Great Japan. 
 
 " Strength, womanly strength," it said, and O 
 Mme San looked up and smiled, a little sad, sweet 
 smile. For the strength of a woman lies in the sacri- 
 fice of herself. And getting up she went to look at 
 her boy tossing in his sleep. 
 
 Then she too slept, for she knew what she had to 
 do ; and Shinigawa, the Lord of Death-Desire, drew 
 near and touched her as she slept. 
 
 It was nearly dusk the next evening before every- 
 thing was prepared. All her son's clothes mended and 
 ready, the house put straight, the letter written, telling 
 her boy quite simply that, having learned the reason 
 why the Emperor in his graciousness would not take 
 him for his soldier, she had taken her own life that he 
 might be free to fight. On her knees she thanked the 
 gracious Tenski-sama, but her son and her son's life 
 were his not hers. 
 
 Then she sharpened her dagger, and when O Mme 
 San felt its edge was keen enough, she knelt down on
 
 AND SHE WAS A WIDOW 291 
 
 the matting, took off her long silken under-girdle, and 
 tied it carefully around her knees, for a samurai woman 
 must lie modestly even in death. Then she felt in her 
 throat for the artery, and with one quick thrust drove 
 the dagger home. 
 
 The Prefect was sitting with his family that evening 
 when Suzuki Tetsutaro came to the house. He 
 carried a paper in his hand, and he was trembling. 
 
 "Honourably please to take notice," he said, "that 
 I am qualified to serve, for my mother is dead." And 
 he handed the Prefect the paper. 
 
 When he had read it the stern official turned to the 
 lad. 
 
 " The detachment has not yet left for headquarters," 
 he said, writing rapidly as he spoke. " Go straight to 
 the station. Give this card to the officer in charge. 
 I will bury your mother and perform the rites." 
 
 Then he laid his hand on the boy's shoulder. 
 "Suzuki Tetsutaro," he said, "your mother was 
 worthy of her race. Go, that her spirit may have 
 peace. " 
 
 So Suzuki Tetsutaro went straight to the front.
 
 GLOSSARY 
 
 Aino. The aboriginal inhabit- 
 ants of Japan, only found now 
 in the North Island. A remark- 
 ably hairy, remarkably dirty 
 race, with the flattened shin- 
 bone only occurring in skele- 
 tons of the cave-men. They 
 are great hunters and fishers. 
 
 Amado. Sliding wooden walls 
 which are drawn all round a 
 Japanese house at night, com- 
 pletely enclosing it. 
 
 Amaterasu, lit. " Heaven- 
 Shiner." The Sun -Goddess, 
 born from the right eye of the 
 Creator Izanagi. 
 
 Amida Butsu. Buddha as 
 Amida. Originally Amida 
 was an abstraction, the ideal 
 of boundless light. 
 
 Benten. One of the seven 
 Deities of Luck, frequently 
 represented riding on a ser- 
 pent. Her shrines are mostly 
 on islands, and from her 
 connection with the sea she 
 has certain points of resem- 
 blance with Venus. Benten 
 always has a white face. 
 
 Biwa. A musical instrument 
 with four strings, something 
 like a lute. 
 
 Boy. Term universal among 
 foreigners in the Far East for a 
 male servant, of whatever age. 
 
 Bot'chan. A little boy ; baby ; 
 Japanese baby language. De- 
 rived from bosan, a Buddhist 
 priest (bonze), Japanese babies, 
 like Buddhist priests, having 
 completely shaven heads. 
 
 Bushi. Warrior. 
 
 Bushido. Way of the warrior. 
 
 Cha-no-yu. Tea ceremony, from 
 cha, tea. The people of Tokyo 
 and the initiated call it chanoyt. 
 This ceremony, religious in its 
 inception, has in the course of 
 the 600 or 700 years of its 
 existence passed through a 
 medico-religious, a luxurious, 
 and an aesthetic stage. A 
 little of the religious element 
 still clings to it, tea enthusiasts 
 usually joining the Zen sect of 
 Buddhism, while diplomas of 
 proficiency are obtained from 
 the abbot of Daitokuji at 
 Kyoto. 
 
 Cha-ya. Tea-house. 
 
 Cloisonne. A species of mosaic, 
 its characteristic feature being 
 a network of copper, brass, or 
 silver wire soldered on to a
 
 294 
 
 GLOSSARY 
 
 solid foundation of the same 
 metal. The cloisons, or spaces 
 between the network, are then 
 filled in with enamel paste. 
 
 Daimyo, lit. Great name ; a feu- 
 dal lord. Before the Restora- 
 tion of 1868 Japan was divided 
 into provinces, each ruled by a 
 daimyo. Every daimyo was 
 the head of a clan of armed 
 retainers, the samurai, and 
 all samurai had to belong to 
 some daimyo. Shortly after 
 the Restoration the daimyo 
 voluntarily gave up their 
 lands, powers, and possessions 
 to the Emperor. 
 
 Fuji. Usually translated as " The 
 Peerless Mountain," from the 
 two Chinese characters with 
 which, in poetry, it is usually 
 written, meaning " not two," 
 "unrivalled." In prose it is 
 generally written with Chinese 
 characters meaning ' ; rich 
 samurai." It can also be 
 written with ideographs mean- 
 ing " not dying " and so 
 * deathless." Most probably 
 Fuji is derived from the Aino 
 word push, to burst forth. 
 
 Futon. A sort of eiderdown 
 quilt made of silk wadding. 
 The Japanese spread one of 
 these on the matting at night 
 to sleep on, using a second as 
 a covering. The native pillow 
 is a shaped and padded piece of 
 
 wood or lacquer which sup- 
 ports the neck. 
 
 Geisha. Girls trained to the 
 profession of dancing, singing, 
 playing, and socially entertain- 
 ing. They are the usual ac- 
 companiment to a Japanese 
 dinner. 
 
 Gheta. A sort of wooden clogs 
 kept on by straps passing 
 between the big and second 
 toes. Gheta are only worn in 
 the street, and are left outside 
 houses, temples, or other 
 buildings. It would be as dis- 
 respectful to enter a house or a 
 temple with your gheta on as 
 for a man to walk into a church, 
 or a drawing-room, in his hat. 
 
 Godown. A fire-proof building 
 for storing valuables. De- 
 rived from Malay word gddong, 
 a warehouse. 
 
 Hakama. A divided skirt of 
 either cotton or silk, pleated 
 into a broad stiff band in big 
 pleats. Worn by the samurai 
 on official or ceremonial occa- 
 sions. Always worn by both 
 teacher and pupil in the class- 
 rooms. Also worn nowadays 
 by the girl students. 
 
 Hibachi. A brazier in the shape 
 of a lidless box of wood or 
 bronze containing charcoal, 
 the warming apparatus of 
 Japanese houses. 
 
 Holland. Considered as a tribu- 
 tary kingdom of Japan during 
 the Tokugawa shogunate. be-
 
 GLOSSARY 
 
 295 
 
 cause the Dutch shut up in the 
 island of Deshima. near Naga- 
 saki, sent yearly presents to 
 the shogun. 
 
 Ijin San. Barbarian ; foreigner ; 
 or perhaps simply " strange 
 man," and so foreigner. 
 
 lyeyasu. B. 1542, d. 1616 
 The founder of the Tokugawa 
 shdgunate, which lasted from 
 1603 to 1868. lyeyasu was 
 one of the greatest generals 
 and perhaps the very greatest 
 ruler, Japan has ever pro- 
 duced. He went to school in 
 the Temple of Rinzaki (p. 17), 
 and the room where he learnt 
 to write, his ink-slab and other 
 belongings, are still preserved, 
 lyeyasu founded Yedo, now 
 Tokyo, making it his capital. 
 He died at Shizuoka, and was 
 first buried at Kuno-san (Be- 
 tween Earth and Heaven, p. 
 36), and afterwards at Nikko. 
 
 Izanagi and Izanami. The Cre- 
 ator and the Creatress of 
 Japan. It was during the 
 purification of Izanagi after 
 his descent into Hades in 
 search of Izanami, a legend 
 which has many points of 
 resemblance with that of 
 Orpheus, that Amaterasu, the 
 Sun-Goddess, was born. 
 
 Jinricksha or Jinriksha. From 
 the Chinese, lit. man-power- 
 vehicle ; shortened by Euro- 
 peans into 'ricksha, by the 
 
 Japanese to jinriki, but usually 
 called in Japan by the na- 
 tive word kuruma. A small 
 two-wheeled carriage like a 
 miniature hansom or an old- 
 fashioned perambulator, drawn 
 by a man. 
 
 Kagura. Sacred shinto dance, 
 whose origin is supposed to be 
 traced back to the time when 
 Amaterasu, angry at the insult 
 offered her by her brother 
 Susa-no-wo, retired to a cavern, 
 thus plunging the world into 
 darkness. She was at last 
 induced to look out by the 
 sound of music and dancing, 
 and finally enticed right out by 
 the sight of her own face in a 
 mirror. The dance performed 
 in front of her cavern is sup- 
 posed to be the Kagura. 
 (Note the " g " here, as all 
 medial " g's " in Japanese 
 have the sound of " ng " as in 
 English " sing." So Nang-o- 
 ya, not Na-go-ya. Some dia- 
 lects, as that of Satsuma, 
 say a hard " g.") 
 
 Kakemono, lit, the hanging- 
 up-thing. A picture painted 
 on either silk or paper, in 
 either monochrome or colour. 
 It is mounted on brocade, and 
 has a roller each end. Roughly 
 and quite untechnically, kake- 
 mono can be divided into two 
 classes : those which seek to 
 give only an impression, and 
 those which are a kind of 
 miniature painting.
 
 296 
 
 GLOSSARY 
 
 Kana. Katakana and Hirakana, 
 popularly supposed to have 
 been invented, the first 772 
 A.D., the second 835 A.D. In 
 reality they were not in- 
 ventions, but simplifications 
 of certain common Chinese 
 ideographs. The kana repre- 
 sent sounds, as does our 
 alphabet, but they stand for 
 syllables, not letters. They 
 both consist of forty-seven 
 sounds, which by the addition 
 of dots and other symbols 
 can be considerably increased. 
 
 Kannon, written K(w)annon, 
 Sanskrit Avalokites-vara, the 
 Goddess of Mercy, who con- 
 templates the world and listens 
 to the prayers of the unhappy. 
 In the opinion of a small 
 minority Kannon belongs to 
 the male sex. 
 
 Kimono. The long-sleeved robe 
 of Japan, which has no fasten- 
 ing. It is merely folded across 
 on the right-hand side (only 
 grave-clothes are crossed to the 
 left) and kept in place by the 
 folds of the obi. Practically 
 the same shaped kimono is 
 worn by men and women, the 
 difference consisting princi- 
 pally in pattern and colour. 
 The number of kimono worn 
 depends entirely on the tem- 
 perature. 
 
 Kir in. A fabulous monster an- 
 swering to our griffin. He 
 degenerates sometimes into a 
 sort of three-cornered dog, 
 and is said not to trample on 
 
 live insects nor to eat live 
 grass. 
 
 Kitsune. Fox. It is the fox 
 and the badger in Japan who 
 are credited with supernatural 
 powers. Foxes are able to 
 change themselves into beauti- 
 ful young women to the un- 
 doing of confiding man. The 
 powers of the badger may be 
 comic. 
 
 Kojiki, or " Record of Ancient 
 Matters." The oldest literary 
 work of Japan, dating from 
 the year 712 A.D. It is a 
 chronicle partly mythological, 
 partly historical, of the doings 
 of gods, emperors and men. 
 
 Kuruma. See Jinricksha. The 
 Japanese term for jinricksha. 
 
 Kurumaya. The man who draws 
 the kuruma. 
 
 Manju. A flat round cake of 
 rice paste filled with a brown 
 bean-jam. 
 
 Meiji. Age of Enlightenment or 
 Progress. The name of the 
 years from 1868 onwards. 
 The privilege of appointing 
 year-names is regarded in the 
 Far East as one of the rights 
 of independent sovereignty, 
 much as coining money with 
 us. In Japan the length of 
 the year-name period has 
 been up to now purely arbi- 
 trary, not coinciding with the 
 reign of an emperor as in 
 China. 
 
 Miyajima. One of the San-kei 
 or " Three Chief Sights " of
 
 GLOSSARY 
 
 297 
 
 Japan. An exceedingly beau- 
 tiful island in the Inland Sea. 
 It contains a temple built on 
 piles, which at high tide seems 
 to float on the water. Ac- 
 cording to tradition, the first 
 temple was erected about 
 600 A.D. 
 
 Mma. The actual pronuncia- 
 tion in the Tokyo district of 
 the word usually Romanised as 
 Uma, horse. 
 
 Mme. The actual pronuncia- 
 tion in the Tokyo district of 
 the word usually Romanised 
 as Ume. 
 
 Musme or Musume. Daughter ; 
 girl ; and so, waiting-girl. 
 
 Namu-myoho-rengekyo. San- 
 skrit, lit. " O ! the Scripture of 
 the Lotus of the Wonderful 
 Law." 
 
 Nesan. lit. elder sister miss. 
 Used as a half-polite, half- 
 familiar address to girls ; and 
 so, waiting-girl. 
 
 Nichiren. B. 1222, d. 1282, at 
 Ikkegami, where some of his 
 bones remain as relics. He 
 entered the priesthood at the 
 early age of twelve, when he 
 adopted the name of Nichiren, 
 or " Lotus of the Sun." He 
 miraculously learned the whole 
 of the loo volumes of the 
 Buddhist canon in one night. 
 He fiercely attacked all the 
 already existing Buddhist 
 sects, a thing unheard of in 
 Japanese ecclesiastical his- 
 tory ; was twice banished, 
 
 and once condemned to death, 
 on which occasion the execu- 
 tioner's sword refused to per- 
 form its function. His crest 
 is the orange blossom. 
 
 O and Go. Polite prefixes usu- 
 ally translated as " honour- 
 able " or " august." 
 
 O Ba San, lit. honourable 
 grandmother Mrs. 
 
 Obi. A long sash usually of 
 wadded brocade, which is 
 folded several times round the 
 waist and tied behind. The 
 obi is the most expensive part 
 of a woman's dress, and ex- 
 ceptional ones of richest bro- 
 cade stiffened with gold thread 
 can cost as much as 50 or 
 more ; such obi are handed 
 down in families as heir- 
 looms. 
 
 hachi, lit. honourable pot. 
 Tub in which cooked rice is 
 kept. 
 
 Persimmon. A fruit the size of 
 an apple which can be round 
 and reddish, or orange and 
 pear-shaped. Called in Jap- 
 anese kaki. 
 
 Ricksha. See Jinricksha. 
 
 Rin. 10 rin make i sen, or one 
 farthing. 
 
 Ronin, lit. wave-man. Samu- 
 rai without a feudal lord. He 
 might be described as a 
 samurai out of work either 
 through fault or misfortune. 
 U
 
 298 
 
 GLOSSARY 
 
 Sake. An intoxicating drink 
 obtained from fermented rice, 
 containing n to 14 per cent, 
 of alcohol. It is generally 
 drunk warm and tastes some- 
 thing like sherry. 
 
 Samisen. A square three- 
 stringed lute with a long 
 handle, played with a plectrum ; 
 the commonest and most popu- 
 lar of the musical instruments 
 of Japan. Its notes are very 
 tinny. In Tokyo usually 
 called shamisen. 
 
 Sampan. A small flat-bottomed 
 boat, rowed by a man standing 
 in the stern. 
 
 Samurai, Derived from the verb 
 samurau, to be on guard. A 
 term used in the early Middle 
 Ages of the soldiers of the 
 Mikado's palace, then applied 
 to the entire warrior class. 
 The samurai were " the gen- 
 try " of Japan, the daimyo 
 corresponding to the peers. 
 In Old Japan all gentlemen 
 were soldiers and all soldiers 
 gentlemen. Since the Restora- 
 tion, when their incomes were 
 commuted for a lump sum, the 
 samurai have had to earn 
 their own livelihood. They 
 are now the officers, profes- 
 sors, schoolmasters, policemen, 
 officials, practically the whole 
 governing class of Japan. 
 
 San. Contraction of sama. A 
 title such as our Mr., but used 
 for both sexes and all ages. 
 
 Semmi. Cicada. Japan grows 
 innumerable semmi of many 
 
 kinds. A favourite amuse- 
 ment of boys is to catch them 
 and keep them in small cages 
 of green net. 
 
 Sen. \d. 100 sen make i yen. 
 
 Shappo. From the French 
 chapeau. The modern name 
 for the modern " foreign " 
 bat. Old Japan knew no 
 hats. 
 
 Shinto, lit. the way of the 
 gods. This, the native religion 
 of Japan, is a combination of 
 ancestor- and nature- worship. 
 Its priesthood is not a caste, 
 nor even a separate profession. 
 Up to the time of the revival 
 of Shintoism, due to the 
 Restoration of power to the 
 Mikado, everybody was born 
 with Shinto and buried with 
 Buddhist rites. The whole 
 Japanese nation is supposed to 
 be descended from the lesser 
 Shinto deities, while the 
 Emperor is the direct de- 
 scendant of Amaterasu. 
 
 Shogun, lit. generalissimo. A 
 title first used in 813 A.D., and 
 continued down to 1868. In 
 the twelfth century the shogun 
 Yoritomo first contrived to 
 become the effective ruler of 
 the land ; thus originating the 
 dual control of Japan, the 
 temporal power belonging to 
 the shogun, the spiritual to 
 the Emperor. Yoritomo was 
 succeeded by various dynasties 
 of shogun until lyeyasu founded 
 the Tokugawa shogunate in 
 1600.
 
 GLOSSARY 
 
 299 
 
 Shoji. The sliding wall of a 
 house, like an immense lattice 
 window whose leadings are 
 wood and whose panes are 
 rice-paper, Shoji are semi- 
 transparent, and divide the 
 room from the outer world. 
 The walls which divide one 
 room from another are called 
 karakami or fusumi, and are of 
 opaque paper. They slide in 
 grooves and can be entirely 
 removed when required. 
 
 Susa-no-wo, lit. the Impetuous 
 Male Deity, was born from the 
 nose of the creator Izanagi. 
 It was owing to the insult 
 which he offered his sister 
 Amaterasu by breaking a hole 
 in the roof of the hall of heaven 
 where she sat weaving with 
 her celestial maidens, and 
 dropping down into it "a 
 heavenly piebald horse flayed 
 with a backward flaying " that 
 the Sun-Goddess retired to the 
 cavern and left the world in 
 darkness. Susa-no-wo was 
 the ancestor of the rulers of 
 Izumo, who finally gave up 
 their throne to the descendants 
 of the Sun-Goddess, accepting 
 a spiritual for an earthly 
 homage. Susa-no-wo is some- 
 times considered as the God 
 of the Moon, sometimes as the 
 God of the Sea. 
 
 Suzuki Tetsutaro. The family 
 name in Japan always comes 
 first, the " Christian " name 
 after, as Smith John. Suzuki 
 is one of the commonest of 
 
 Japanese surnames of samu- 
 rai rank, Hayashi running it 
 very close. Tetsutaro, lit. 
 own eldest son. 
 
 Tabi. Half-boots fastening up 
 on the inner, not the outer, 
 side, as with us. They are 
 made of cotton, and the sole 
 is a soft sock. There is a 
 separate compartment for the 
 big toe. Tabi are of either 
 dark blue or white cotton ; 
 white is for house and street 
 wear ; dark blue for hard work 
 or walking, and mostly worn 
 by the lower classes. 
 
 Tenshisama. Chinese term mean- 
 ing Son of Heaven, from ten, 
 heaven. Sama is the longer 
 and more courteous form of 
 san. The Emperor is also 
 called Tenno, Heavenly Em- 
 peror, or Shujo, the Supreme 
 Master ; all Chinese terms. 
 The word Mikado is very rarely 
 used by the Japanese except 
 in poetry or on great occasions. 
 
 Tofu. A white bean-curd, look- 
 ing like cream cheese. A 
 favourite food of the coolie. 
 
 Tokonoma. A raised alcove. 
 Probably it was originally that 
 part of a room raised above 
 the level of the earth floor, on 
 which people slept. 
 
 Tokugawa. The family name of 
 lyeyasu and so of the sho- 
 gunate founded by him. The 
 last shogun, who abdicated in 
 1868. is still living.
 
 300 
 
 GLOSSARY 
 
 Tokyo. The modern name for 
 Yedo, meaning the Eastern 
 Capital 
 
 Ton. A gateway without a 
 gate formed of two perpendicu- 
 lar and two horizontal beams, 
 which at first stood in front of 
 every shinto temple. When 
 the Buddhists adopted it they 
 turned up the ends in a glo- 
 rious curve, and used it for 
 affixing tablets. Popular ety- 
 mology derives it from tori, 
 fowl, and i (iru), dwelling, 
 regarding it as a perch for the 
 sacred birds. It probably 
 came from Northern India, 
 where similar gateways called 
 turan are found outside burial- 
 grounds. Cf. Luchuan turi. 
 
 Uchi, lit, inside ; and so, house. 
 
 Uguisu. A small brown bird, 
 the cettria cantans, with a 
 simple but exquisite song. 
 
 Urashima. The Rip Van Winkle 
 of Japanese folk-lore. He 
 married the Sea King's 
 daughter. After a short honey- 
 moon he came back to visit 
 his parents. But the oldest 
 inhabitant of the village could 
 
 only dimly remember the family 
 tombstones in the graveyard. 
 Thinking he was the victim 
 of an illusion, Urashima rashly 
 opened a box the Sea 
 Princess had given him. In- 
 stantly a grey smoke went up 
 to heaven, and Urashima 
 changed from a stalwart youth 
 to an old man, sank down on 
 the seashore and died. He 
 was a thousand years old. 
 
 Yedo. The original name of 
 
 Tokyo, given it by its founder 
 
 lyeyasu. 
 Yashiki. The house or enclosure 
 
 of a noble or honourable 
 
 person. 
 Yen. The Japanese money unit, 
 
 worth 2S. \d. 
 
 Waraji. A straw sandal fasten- 
 ing securely with long twisted 
 strings of straw. The straw 
 turns up slightly round the 
 back of the heel. Waraji are 
 for travelling. 
 
 Zashki. The room ; parlour ; the 
 sitting-room of a house. 
 
 For much of the information contained in these notes 
 indebted to the works of Prof. B. H. Chamberlain. 
 
 I am 
 
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