CHAPTER I

TOKYO BAY

From the time we left San Francisco's fine harbour behind us, few had been the daylight hours when the heavens were not mirrored in the ocean. The sun sank each evening in a cloudless sky ahead of us, only to reappear next morning in a cloudless sky astern, and each successive day had been but a repetition of the lovely day preceding it. It was a record voyage for weather. No one on board could remember the like. The end of it came at last, however, as it does to all good things; but to the final hour of the voyage the kindly fate that had befriended us never deserted us, and the last evening was even more beautiful than all the others had been, for the moon was full, the night as lovely as a night at sea can be, and the very air seemed laden with the spirit of the land of our dreams that would soon be a dream no more.
    I was up next morning long ere the first streaks of dawn had dimmed the brilliancy of the moonlight. We were due to anchor at Yokohama soon after daybreak, and, as I came on deck, soft, balmy breezes, borne of our rapid progress, whispered gently in my ears, and bore on their wings the scent of land. I went up into the bow, and saw that as the sharp prow parted the glassy waters which mirrored the starry heavens, thin feathers of spray leaped high along the vessel's trim and tapering sides, and burned with a ghostly light which spread around the ship, so that she seemed to be moving in a sea of fire. Seldom have I seen the ocean so phosphorescent in any part of the world.
    We were steaming just off the entrance to Tokyo Bay, and now and then a junk, or some smaller fishing-boat, loomed suddenly out of the night, drifted like a phantom across the silvery path of the moonlight, and passed as suddenly again into the dusky shadows. As the day began to break, these craft increased in number and distinctness until a vast fleet of many hundreds of them could be seen, homeward-bound from the work of the night. The great sails of the junks hung listlessly in a hundred tiny festoons that threw soft shadows on the white, and the smaller boats, the sampans—with the half-nude figures of the fishermen swinging to and fro against the background of the moonlit water, as they worked the long sweeps, called yulos—formed a novel and delightful picture that filled me with anticipation of what was yet to come.
    Whilst my attention was absorbed with the fishing-boats the morning rapidly grew, and now the delicate outline of that loveliest of all mountains of the earth—that wondrous inspiration of Japanese art, Fuji-san—was softly painted on the western skies.
    The grey of dawn was shot with pink, and blue, and amber, and high in the iridescent azure, far above the night-mists clinging to the land, the virgin cone of Fuji hung from the vault of heaven.
    Then among the blushes of the east there was a flash, and the great red disc of day came slowly creeping above the hills of Boshu, tinging the skies with a ruddy glow, and staining all pink and rosy the snows on Fuji's crest. Over the holy mountain the moon was setting, and innumerable junks, with idle sails, lay becalmed on the mother-o'-pearl waters of the Bay.
    Many times since then have I seen the peerless Fuji. Under every condition of sunshine, storm, and snow; and at every hour from dawn till sunset, in spring, summer, autumn, and winter have I gazed at it from a score of places within twenty miles of its base, but never did the great sacred mountain appear lovelier than during that first hour I spent in Japanese waters.
    So this was Japan! My fondest dreams had created no such scenes as these by which to form my first impressions, and from that day it has always seemed to me that if the fitness of things could be more strikingly exemplified than in the adoption by the Japanese of the red disc of the rising sun as the emblem of their empire, it would be in their having the outline of Fuji on their flag instead.
    Twice since this, my first visit, I have entered Tokyo Bay in drizzling rain, and had I not known what there was behind the mists, I should have had but a doleful idea of my dreamland. Japan is a wet country in the spring-time, and Fuji so jealous of her charms that she sometimes sulks for weeks together in impenetrable banks of clouds. Those, therefore, who arrive when the sun is shining, and Fuji is in complaisant mood, may deem themselves favoured of the gods—at least the Japanese gods—and should be thankful for the honour.

CHAPTER II

THE TEMPLES OF KYOTO

In no other part of Japan have Nature and Art combined to scatter their favours with such a lavish hand, within a small area, as in the old capital, Kyoto, and its neighbouring hills and valleys. After years of travel in many lands, I look back upon Kyoto as one of the most beautiful and fascinating cities I have seen.
    Many are the happy weeks I have spent in roaming amongst its grey old temples; exploring the surrounding woods; rambling over the hills that half encircle the old city; searching its innumerable pottery-and curio-shops; shooting the rapids of the lovely Katsura river; visiting the homes of famous artist-craftsmen; viewing seas of cherry-blossoms or gorgeously coloured maple-trees, and in a hundred other ways storing up memories that have left this enchanting old city dearer than any other to my heart.
    Many a time, too, I have seen old-time religious and feudal processions pass along its quaint old-fashioned streets, taking one back in spirit to the days, not half a century gone, when Japan had as yet made no endeavour to fall in line with even the least of the Powers of the world.
    My first impressions of Kyoto, however, were not reassuring, for the station is in an uninteresting part of the town, and the houses seemed devoid of interest as I passed them on the way to the Miyako Hotel. 

GREETINGS IN THE TEMPLE GROUNDS

But as my kurumaya *1  drew me further along, the feeling of disappointment gave way to interest, and then to pleasure, as he entered a street in which every house seemed to be a curio-shop, and where the crowd was so thick that he could scarcely make his way. A great matsuri was being held—the festival of a near-by temple. Hundreds of stalls lined the thoroughfare for the sale of every kind of article, and dozens of vendors had not set up stalls at all, but merely laid their wares upon the ground.
    The street blazed with the light of innumerable paper lanterns and oil lamps; and by their coloured glare I could see silks, pottery, bronzes, brasses, beautiful boxes, and a thousand other dainty things and curios peeping out from a perfect forest of dwarf trees. There were tiny maples, and pines, and wistarias, and peach and plum-trees, and many others; but the bulk of these Lilliputian arboreal wonders were cherry-trees, whose branches, pink with blossoms, drooped over the pots, in which the trunks from which they sprang were gnarled and grizzled as veterans of the orchard, and, though scarcely a foot in height, were often more than twoscore years of age. Among this pretty scene of lanterns and flowers the gay kimono of many a geisha was a dash of colour in the crowd, and the whole street was full of holiday-makers, seemingly without a trouble in the world.
    It is characteristic of the gentleness of the nation that all these dainty, delicate things could be displayed by the owners in the open street, and even on the ground, amongst a throng of people and passing vehicles. One shudders to think what might be the result if such confidence should ever be reposed in one's fellow-creatures in England.
    I learnt later, too, that my kurumaya, spotting me as a new visitor, had specially gone a little out of his way, and sought that crowded street for the sole purpose of giving a new-comer the pleasure of a pretty spectacle. Think of a London cabman showing such nice regard for the enjoyment of his fare! Innumerable little kindnesses and acts of thoughtfulness like this, during my three years of travel in Japan, come back to mind; and especially have the many courteous acts of Mr. Hamaguchi, the clever manager of the Miyako Hotel, helped to deepen my affection for the old capital. Many of my most delightful experiences were due to his suggestion, and on more than one occasion I made excursions as his guest.
    The Miyako, the most rambling hotel in Kyoto, is situated high on the slopes of Higashiyama, "the Eastern Mountain," and a lovely panorama lies before it. Far below are the tiled roofs of the city. It is the Awata district, one of the most famous centres of the world for high-class pottery and enamel. To the south, standing out in brilliant red amidst the grey house-tops, are the main gate and wing turrets of Tai-kyoku-den—most modern of Japanese temples. Directly in front there is a thickly-wooded hill, with the beautiful buildings of the ancient Kurodani monastery peeping between the pines; and northwards, Nanzenji temple struggles to show itself from the dense foliage surrounding it.
    All round the valley there are forest-clad hills, and as the sun sets over Arashiyama, "the Storm Mountain,"—the beauty of which has been sung by poets for ages—the deep note of a mighty bell breaks on the air. It is the voice of the Chio-in temple giant proclaiming to all that the sun has run its course, and that the day is done. Softly for a moment the vibrations tremble, and then come swelling out in volume through the trees. Quivering waves of sound go surging over the town, and the hills catch up the booming note and throw it to each other, until valley and mountain are all throbbing and echoing with the sound. It seems to come from everywhere. It is in the air above and in the earth beneath, and a full minute or more lapses ere the undulations tremble away to silence, seeming to bear a message to all corners of the land from the ponderous lip of bronze.
    This bell is one of the largest in the world, and hangs in a belfry in the grounds of the Chio-in temple, a grand old monastery of the Jodo Buddhists on Higashiyama. The broad and spacious approaches of the temple are gravelled avenues, with pine and cherry-trees spreading their branches wide overhead; and a vast terrace lies in front, from which a flight of stone steps leads to the great two-storied entrance gate—one of the finest in Japan. It is a typical piece of the purest old Buddhist architecture, over eighty feet in height, with beams, ceilings, cornices, and cross-beams all deeply carved with dragons and mythical creatures, and decorated with arabesques in colours. Again, long flights of steps lead higher up the wooded hillsides to the plateau where the temple buildings stand.
    As the top is reached great flowing lines appear—the splendid curves of heavily-tiled roofs, sweeping upwards far above the massive pillars that support them, and the surrounding tree-tops. Great halls and little halls and pavilions are scattered everywhere. At the threshold of the main building streams of pure water flow over the scalloped edge of a Brobdignagian lotus-bloom of bronze into a granite trough, at which the worshippers cleanse all impurities from their lips and fingers before entering the sanctuary. Inside the massive doorway a priest sits all day long, from dawn till dark, and from dark till dawn, mechanically tapping a drum; and every few hours the automaton is relieved and another takes his place. These drum-tappers are very old, with heads as innocent of hair as the parchment of the drum they beat.
    A forest of pillars, polished like bronze, lose their tops among the massive rafters, and the chancel is all aglow with gold and rich embroidery. During the hours of Mass a hundred Buddhist priests, clad in gorgeous flowing robes of silk and rich brocades of every colour and shade, file in and settle on the padded mats before their lacquered sutra-boxes. Gong-beats punctuate their chants, and incense fills the air as the smoke curls upwards from the altar censers, and the whole scene is of bewildering beauty—a kaleidoscope of colour.
    Chio-in's fine old buildings are rich in works of art. Iémitsu, most peace-loving of the Shoguns, built the priests' apartments; and the sliding screens that form the walls arc embellished with masterpieces from the brushes of many famous artists of the Kano school. Among the best examples are the fusuma, or sliding doors, of a little room of eight mats, decorated by Naonobu with plum and bamboo branches. In the next room Nobumasa painted some sparrows so lifelike that they took wing, leaving only a faint impression behind; and a pair of doors, painted with pine-trees by Tan-yu, were such faithful reflections of nature that resin exuded from their trunks.
    A curious feature of Chio-in is the floors of its verandahs and corridors. They are made of keyaki wood, the boards being loosely nailed down, so that, as one walks over them, they move slightly, and in rubbing against each other emit a gentle creaking noise. The sound is very pleasing, and so soft and musical as to suggest the twittering of birds. These floors are called by this most poetical of people uguisu-bari or "nightingale floors," and they certainly add most wonderfully to the fascination of the temple.

THE GREAT BELL AT CHIO-IN TEMPLE

    A pavilion in the courtyard contains the great bell. It was cast in 1633, is ten feet eight inches high, with a diameter of nine feet, and weighs seventy-four tons. For exactly a century this monster sound-maker was peerless among the bells of the world, till in 1733 the "Czar Korokol," the "Great Bell of Moscow," was cast. This latter, however, is said never to have been hung, and stands in the Kremlin grounds useless, with a large piece broken from its side—a disaster which occurred in a fire a few years after it was made, and not, as is generally supposed, during the burning of Moscow by Napoleon. The Chio-in bell can now only claim second place among Japanese bells, as in 1903 a bell was cast at the Tennoji temple at Osaka which weighs over two hundred tons; it is twenty-four feet high and sixteen feet in diameter.
    Others of the great bells of the world are that at the Daibutsu Temple in Kyoto, which is fourteen feet high and weighs sixty-three tons; and the bell at Nara, a dozen miles away, is thirteen feet and six inches high and weighs thirty-seven tons. The "Great Bell of Mingoon," Burma, is conical-shaped, twelve feet high, and sixteen feet in diameter at the lip. It is said to weigh eighty tons, but the impression I gained was that this was an exaggeration. The next in order are the Ta-chung-tsu bell at Peking, which hangs in a temple outside the Tartar Wall, and another of equal size which is suspended in the Bell Tower in the centre of the Tartar City. These bells are two out of five—each eighteen feet high and ten feet in diameter—which were cast about the year 1420, by order of the Emperor Yung Loh. They are said to weigh one hundred and twenty thousand pounds each (about fifty-three tons). Two of the remaining bells are in other temples near Peking, while the fifth is at the Imperial Palace. Another monster which holds a foremost place among the bells of the world hangs in a pavilion in the centre of the city of Seoul, the capital of Korea. These oriental bells are never sounded by a tongue, but by means of a suspended tree-trunk, which is swung and brought sharply into contact with the lip.
    The sounding of Chio-in's great basso is accompanied by much picturesque ceremony. The chains that hold the heavy log are unlocked, and a gang of some dozen coolies take hold of the hand-ropes hanging from the suspended beam, and commence a chant in unison as they set it a-swinging. When a certain line is reached they strain upon the ropes, and bring the bole against the chrysanthemum crest on the bell with all the strength that they can muster. A muffled roar springs from the monster as the burred edge of this battering ram opens its lips, but the roar quickly turns to soft, musical reverberations that go singing over the city, and slowly purr away to silence. The beam is checked ere it can strike again from the rebound, and the chant continues for some minutes before another note is sent booming and echoing into the hills and dales.
    Higashiyama is the site of many other beautiful temples. Its slopes are densely wooded with pine and maple-trees, and in spring-time the green of the forests is everywhere the ground-work for an embroidery of cherry-blossoms. From these lovely woods at least a dozen temples peep. Chio-in is the grandest, and Kiyomizu-dera the most picturesque.
    To Kiyomizu one must pass along Gojo-zaka, a narrow street that is a perfect bazaar of toy and pottery shops, and shops whose whole fronts are curtained with long strings of dangling saké-bottles, made from gourds; and there are curio and woodwork shops, and shops where only knives and blades are sold. One may purchase here a cherry walking-stick, with a blade concealed in it that will cut through half a dozen copper coins without dulling its edge, and the old shopman, the very prototype of Hokusai's sketches, will apply the test before he accepts the small sum he courteously demands. Gojo-zaka is the centre of the porcelain-maker's art. At Seifu's, Nishida's, Kanzan's, or a dozen other shops, one may see exquisite specimens of the beautiful blue-and-white porcelain of Kyoto, known as Kiyomizu ware, offered at prices so wholly inadequate for the art with which they are embellished, that few visitors passing along this street ever reach the temple till long after the hour they have arranged.
    Through this fascinating bazaar the stream of humanity to the popular old temple ceases only through the still night-hours, and the ancient capital offers few better opportunities for leisurely studying human nature than on this interesting street.
    The hillside is very steep, so steep indeed that many of the buildings of the sanctuary—so ancient that its origin is lost in legend—do not rest on the ground, but are supported on a scaffolding of massive beams and piles. Amongst its halls and colonnades, turreted pavilions and pagodas, one can find fresh beauty at every visit; and each balcony discloses new and lovelier vistas of the "City of Artists" below.
    The temple is one of the "Thirty-Three Places" (Saikoku San-ju-san-Sho) sacred to Kwannon, Goddess of Mercy, in the provinces near Kyoto. These are all carefully numbered, and Kiyomizu is the sixteenth on the list. The shrine of the goddess is opened but once in thirty-three years, so the chances are somewhat against the casual visitor having the privilege of seeing the deity. Her "Twenty-Eight Followers," personifying the twenty-eight constellations known to the ancient astronomers of the East, stand on either side of the shrine; and at each end of the daïs are two of the four "Heavenly Kings," or Shi-Tenno, who guard the world against attacks of evil. They are Tamon, Komoku, Jikoku, and Zocho, and they defend respectively the North, South, East, and West.
    One of the lesser sights of Kiyomizu, but a truly pathetic one, is a shrine to Jizo—the guardian god of little Japanese children. It is a mere shed containing some hundred stone images decked with babies' bibs—relics of their little dead which mothers bring as offerings. Women are always to be seen before this shrine praying earnestly for the souls of their little ones. It is a sad, depressing spot, and I always turned away from it heavy-hearted at the spectacle of those poor bereaved mothers and their silent grief.
    Outside of the hondo, or main temple, there is a dilapidated old idol sitting on a stool. He is a queer old fellow, with features defaced and almost obliterated with much rubbing. His name is Binzuru, and his history is quite interesting, for he is a deity with a "past." He was originally one of the Ju-roku-Rakan, or "Sixteen Disciples of Buddha," and had the power to relieve all the ills of the flesh. The mantle of his holy state, however, did not, it seems, subdue his human nature; for one day he gave his nearest companion a dig in the ribs and remarked on the beauty of a woman passing by. For this imprudence the susceptible old saint was expelled from the fraternity, and thus it is that his image is always seen outside the sanctum, whilst his brother disciples are placed inside it. He is, however, exceedingly popular with the lower classes, who believe that by rubbing any portion of his image they will obtain relief from ailments afflicting the corresponding portion of their own persons. Hence his face and limbs are polished smooth, and almost worn away in places by centuries of this gentle friction.

NOOMLIGHT AT KIYOMIZU-DERA

    Many an evening did I go to the old temple at sunset to admire the beauty of the view. The flaming vermilion pillars and sweeping eaves of the main gate frame a lovely picture at that hour. A long flight of granite steps leads to the street of dangling saké-hottles, which in turn leads straight to the old Yasaka pagoda, standing like some grey old guardian spirit watching over the town below. Here and there, among the houses of the city, the great curved roof of some Buddhist temple looms gigantic in the evening haze; and westwards over the "Storm Mountain" the sun sinks in a blaze of yellow glory, which turns the pillars and turrets of venerable Kiyomizu into some wondrous fairy fable.
    But Kiyomizu by moonlight is lovelier still. Once I prevailed upon a Japanese friend and his little daughter to accompany me to the temple when the moon was full. The Japanese do not like such places at night, for among this highly imaginative and superstitious people belief in the supernatural is universal; and temples and other such gloomy places are haunted by the ghosts of those who have lived in them. A great silence, therefore, hung over the deserted buildings.
    At the threshold of the second gate, where a scowling dragon sends a stream of silver water gushing from his brazen throat, my friend made furtive attempts to prevail upon me to stop and admire the beauty of the moon instead of going farther; and little O Kimi San, finding her father's hand insufficient protection, came between us, taking mine as well. I pressed on, however, resolved to see it all. As we entered the dark portal, the creaking floors awoke a myriad echoes among the walls and ceilings, and O Kimi San, walking on tiptoe with trepidation, her little Japanese brain busy with all the ghost and fairy-tales she knew, peered into the gloomy shadows, seeing "spooks" in every corner and lurking goblins by every post. Old Binzuru's leprous head looked fearful in the moonlight, and O Kimi, her face hidden in her father's kimono, clung to us both for safety.
    In the shadowy corridors we all involuntarily glanced back more than once, thinking some one followed behind; no one was there, however, the supposed follower being naught but our own footfalls reflected by the whispering walls. At the Oku-no-in a voice rang out in challenge. It was one of the resident priests, who, finding we were only harmless sightseers paying a nocturnal visit to the temple, courteously oflfered to conduct us, much to O Kimi's relief.
    As we stood on one of the verandahs, far above the trees, watching the twinkling lights of the "City of Artists," the moon was braiding the clouds with silver, and shedding soft radiance and fitful shades on the balustrades and heavily-thatched gabled roofs about us. Not a sound broke "the soft silence of the listening night'' save the gentle murmur of a little cascade below us, and the chirruping of the crickets, until a nightingale burst into song in a tree-top at our feet. A flood of melody poured from the little throat, a perfect rhapsody of runs and trills, and when it ceased another answered from a tree near by. Thus in turn they sang, filling the old temple and the woods with glorious music; and little O Kimi San, enraptured with this fresh experience, clapped her hands in delight, crying, "They sing to each other! How beautiful! Oh, how glad I am we came!"
    It was a pretty climax to our ramble, and as rare as delightful, for the uguisu are not often heard in these parts, I believe, though I have heard them nightly in summer at Ikao and Karuizawa.
    Higashiyama's lower slopes are labyrinths of pine avenues, paved with broad stone flags, and all a-whispering with the streamlets that course in deep culverts on either side. The grounds of temples and monasteries abut each other everywhere, and one discovers some fresh carved gate or old stairway among their shady groves at every turning. Near the Yasaka pagoda there is one of the finest bamboo groves in Japan, where thousands of tall, slender shoots bow to each other with every breeze, and mingle their feathery tips full fifty feet overhead. I studied it well before attempting to photograph it. In a high wind it cannot be successfully done, nor in bright sunlight can its full beauty be shown. One day, however, the sun, being very weak, gave just the light I wanted. I hurried to the avenue, and was fortunate enough to induce some geisha to pose for me in their rikishas. In order that I should not be interrupted I told one of my kurumaya to stop at each end of the grove and prevent anybody from passing. Having some difficulty in arranging the picture, a good deal of time passed, and just as I secured it, two dapper policemen came up and demanded to know why I was obstructing the road, and with them came some scores of people that the zealous kurumaya had been keeping back. My explanations were of no avail, though they were courteously received. My name and address, and the names of all the kurumaya and of the girls, were with much ado taken down, and I was notified that fines would be imposed upon all of us. The picture, however, did not prove so very expensive as it sounded, for when the bill for the aggregate fines was presented to me the same evening I found it amounted to no more than six shillings.
    At Higashiyama's base there is another temple, called San-ju-san-gen-do, the "Hall of Thirty-Three Spaces "—the spaces being those into which it is divided by a single row of thirty-two pillars. The place is as different from Kiyomizu as it well could be. More like a great barn than a religious edifice, it is yet unique and very interesting, and although not resembling it architecturally, nor possessing any of its beauty, it yet reminded me of the "Thousand Buddha Temple" at Peking. The two temples have one feature in common: that at Peking boasts one thousand images of Buddha; San-ju-san-gen-do possesses one thousand and one effigies of Kwannon, Goddess of Mercy. These effigies are covered with smaller ones on their foreheads, halos, and hands, until it is said the grand total of 33,333 is reached—a statement which I accepted without attempting to verify its correctness.
    They are a tawdry, motley company, these tiers of gilded goddesses, whose serried ranks, a hundred yards long and a full battalion strong, fill the vast building from end to end. The images, many of which are of great age, are continually being restored. In a workshop behind the vast stage an old wood-carver sits, his life occupation being the carving and mending of hands and arms, which are constantly dropping off, like branches, from the forest of divine trunks—for Kwannon is a many-limbed deity, and few of the images have less than a dozen arms. Rats scuttled over the floors and hid in the host of idols as we made our way round them; and at the back of the building we were stopped by an old priest, who sat at the receipt of custom and demanded a contribution from every visitor.
    One day, as I suddenly turned a corner in this temple, I saw a tourist, who supposed no one was looking, deliberately break a hand off one of the gilded figures and put it in his pocket.

A BAMBOO AVENUE AT KYOTO

It is strange to what acts of vandalism the mania for collecting useless relics leads some people. Once in Kyoto I was invited by two travellers, whom I had just met, to come to their room, where they were busy packing, prior to leaving for home. I noticed some beautiful specimens of hikité—inlaid ornamental bronze plates used as finger-grips on sliding doors—lying on the floor. I picked them up and admired them, asking where they had bought them, as a glance showed me they were very good ones. To my amazement they told me they had ripped them from the doors of a Japanese hotel at which they stayed, and were now discarding them because they could "not be bothered with them any longer."
    When such acts as these are committed in a land where one is often on one's honour with regard to some dainty work of art in the simple furnishing or decoration of one's room, can it be wondered at that foreigners are sometimes viewed with suspicion t It will take many years to undo the evil left by that act in that hotel-keeper's mind. And these young fellows were the sons of wealthy New Yorkers, and appeared to have unlimited money to spend!
    In summer Higashiyama's woods ring with the shrill chirping of a myriad cicadas, called seimi; and small boys, with long bamboo poles tipped with birdlime, swarm from the town to hunt the festive insect. Many a time, as my kurumaya ran past these seimi-hunters, I have had to dash their bamboo points away from my face, and have so often seen others narrowly escape injury from these dangerous playthings, that it is not surprising to learn that much of the blindness seen in Japan is due to the careless handling of sticks by Japanese children.
    The captured seimi are sold for a trifling sum to an entomological dealer, who imprisons them in tiny bamboo cages, often most beautiful specimens of dainty and delicate workmanship, and his wayside stall is all a-twitter with the varied cries of a score of different insects. Their names are as numerous as their species, but the children class all cicadas under the generic name of seimi. From some of the little cages the intermittent lights of a dozen fireflies flash; in others as many glow-worms shed a feeble glimmer, and the insect-dealer's stall is always the centre of a group of admiring children.
    The sounds emitted by many of the cicadas are very pleasing and sweet, whilst others have a shrill metallic note that hammers one's brain to distraction. The vibrating song of the seimi is the signal that marks the arrival of summer. From end to end of Japan their cries grow crescendo as the season advances, until in September the drowsy hum of the woods becomes a fortissimo of one continuous scream. In places they gather in prodigious numbers with one accord; their song then becomes a veritable pandemonium, and the air quivers with their incessant din from morning till night. From August on this woodland music becomes a gradual diminuendo, which ceases altogether in November.
    I love the song of the seimi, and always listened for its first lone call as in England I used to look for the first swallow or listened for the cuckoo; only the sweet chirp of the Japanese insect gave me infinitely greater pleasure. I love the Japanese summer, too, and the seimi's voice, proclaiming that summer was at hand, always filled me with gladness. More than once, as I have listened to the sweet little singer in the autumn, it has fallen lifeless from the tree. To the very last the muscular power, which enabled it to produce by friction its joyous song, had escaped the dread disease that fed upon its vitals, and it died as it had lived, a merry-maker and joy-giver, happy and giving happiness to the end. The woods have thus their tragedies to those who love them; and few could escape a pang of sorrow at the death of so dutiful a little creature, fulfilling to the final moment of its life the service entrusted to it by its Creator.
    And every autumn there came a day when I found an indefinable something missing in my woodland rambles. Suddenly I would come upon the tiny body of what was once a joyous seimi, lying in my path. Then I knew what it was that the woodland lacked. It was the gladsome song of summer: the chorus of the seimi, which, whilst the woods slowly turned from green to gold, and brown, and scarlet, had become gradually hushed, until now every voice of that chorus was stilled in death.
    Higashiyama is the home of other, and less pleasant, members of the insect-world. Mosquitoes, which breed in vast swarms in the rice-fields, seek the shelter of these woods, and make life a burden to those who have to pass the summer in them. After dark no place is secure from this pest, and even the mosquito-curtains over one's bed must be carefully searched each night to see that no crafty, enterprising intruder is lurking for its victim in their folds.
    Almost every Japanese temple of any note, that is not framed by Nature's graces, has a garden which their innate love of the beautiful, and surpassing skill, enables the priests to make a veritable paradise of beauty. They are past-masters not only in the art of keeping up a garden, but of allowing it to age with dignity, and yet increase in loveliness without replacing one single feature.
    Such a garden is that at Kinkakuji, combining both natural and artificial beauty in a manner so skilful that there is little but what appears to be the unhampered handiwork of nature. It is the lovely grounds, however, that foreign visitors go to see rather than the old buildings themselves—though these contain many-famous works of art by such old masters as Korin, Eishin, Kano Tanyu, and many others. Most of the Kyoto temples shelter a veritable feast of art on their walls, but there is no other temple in Japan that can show such grounds as Kinkakuji. They have been the inspiration of many a famous garden, though few others can equal their tranquil beauty.
    The temple was built by the Shogun Yoshimitsu—who resigned the throne to his son Yoshimochi in 1397—as a country villa to which he could retire from the cares of the world. He founded the adjacent monastery, became a monk, and ended his days there.
    Kinkakuji means "Golden Pavilion," from the fact that formerly the upper story of the building was entirely covered with gold. Traces of it still remain, from which one may, if gifted with imagination, conjure up a vision of its former grandeur. It still makes a beautiful picture as it stands overlooking the lake, and is a favourite motive for artists, and for craftsmen working in every kind of material.
    As one approaches the old pavilion a shoal of carp appear at the water's edge, begging for some of the popped corn which the watchman sells. Whilst I was feeding them my attention was distracted by a youthful acolyte, whose shaven head was polished to the lustre of a billiard-ball, and who was acting as cicerone to a party of Japanese country visitors. They followed in single file, as the boy, in monotonous, high-pitched tones, described the paintings on the doors and walls, and then, leading them out into the garden, commented on each spot and stone of note, never once lifting his eyes from the ground the while.

KINKAKUJI (THE GOLDEN PAVILION)

He had it all by rote, after the manner of his kind, and his thoughts were obviously busy with other matters; but his charges listened respectfully, now and again sibilantly sucking the breath between the teeth when famous names were mentioned. Presently one of the visitors, of a more enquiring turn of mind than the rest, craved further information, and interrupted with a question; after vainly trying to answer it there was much rubbing and scratching of his bald pate before the cicerone could regain the run of his discourse.
    The lake, which in summer is almost covered with a flowering plant, is surrounded by shady walks beneath pines and maple-trees, and little islets and ornamental stones break up its surface. In autumn the groves are ablaze with colour; and in winter, when the pines and temple roofs bear, as they sometimes do, a thin coating of snow, the old garden is more beautiful than ever.
    In the monastery court there is a wonderful example of the tree-trainer's art which has taken a couple of centuries to produce. It is a full-grown pine representing a junk under sail. Hull, mast, sails, and all are there, the branches being restrained by careful trimming and training on bamboo frames, until the result attained constitutes the most famous arboricultural effort in Japan.
    Kinkakuji stands outside the city at its northwestern corner. Opposite it, at the north-eastern, is Ginkakuji, whither Yoshimasa, eighth of the Ashikaga Shoguns, retired in 1479 upon his abdication of the Shogunate. Japanese society owes much to Yoshimasa, for during his meditations in this lovely secluded spot, he, with Soami, the artist who designed the garden, and the Buddhist abbots Shuko and Shinno, his favourites, "practised the tea-ceremonies, which their patronage elevated almost to the rank of a fine art." *2
    The road to Ginkakuji lies through a farming district of terraced fields, which are planted out to rice as soon as the barley crop is harvested. The roofs of half a score of grand old temples towered amidst magnificent cryptomeria groves and bamboo coppices as we sped through this bounteous farmland; and when at length we pulled up at Ginkakuji's gate, a Lilliputian priest, with shaven head and polished crown—the counterpart of the little cicerone at Kinkakuji—acted as our guide.
    He conducted us by winding paths round a pretty lake, over the "Bridge of the Pillar of the Immortals" that spans a stream called the "Moon-Washing Fountain"; chanted out the story of the "Stone of Ecstatic Contemplation"—a tiny island in the lake; and showed us over the "Silver Pavilion"—which, it seems, never was covered with silver at all, as its name "Ginkakuji" implies it was, for the ex-Shogun died before he was able to accomplish his wishes with regard to it. It has little interest beyond its picturesque appearance and an aged image of Kwannon in the upper story.
    The little bonze then took us into the garden again, and finally brought us to two great conical heaps of sand. These are named the "Silver-Sand Platform,'' and the "Mound Facing the Moon." On the former Yoshimasa, this devoted disciple of the beautiful, "used to sit and hold aesthetic revels." On the smaller "he used to sit and moon-gaze."
    In one of the apartments of the building near by there is a statue of Yoshimasa in priestly robes, marvellously lifelike. If it be a true portrait of the ex-Shogun it must depict him in his fighting days, for it resembles rather a fierce warrior in disguise than a fastidious, moon-gazing priest.

THE PINE-TREE JUNK AT KINKAKUJI

It would be interesting to know what kind of aesthetic revelry the monarch indulged in. If, however, the elaborate system of etiquette, called cha no yu, which he perfected in his retirement here, be like his sand-heap revels, then it is easy to see how he could have indulged in them, to his heart's content, without disturbing the surface of his "platform," for anything more dignified and stately than this ceremonial it would be impossible to imagine. To Yoshimasa and his code of etiquette, so rigidly followed to this day by the Japanese upper classes, must be largely credited that superb grace of manner and absence of self-consciousness that enables the Japanese lady to be the very embodiment of ease and composure in all her actions. The inflexible code of cha no yu, prescribing minutely her every movement in the intricate tea-ceremony, supplies rules that govern her deportment in every possible situation in which she is ever likely to be placed. To any one versed in the art, lack of self-possession under any circumstances would be impossible, and none but the most ultra-refined of races could ever have evolved it. Though I have many times seen its formalities performed, to attempt to describe them with any degree of justice is beyond me. Some, even, who have taken lessons in the art have tried, and failed. They have merely described its forms, but left them devoid of all the poetry, and beauty, and culture which they mirror. One must see a Japanese lady perform the tea-ceremonial to know what it means—a foreigner can only burlesque it either in its performance or description. *3    Japanese Buddhism is divided into six principal sects. In order of their numerical strength they are: Zen; Shin, or Monto, or Hongwanji; Shingon; Jodo; Nichiren; Tendai. The Shin sect, whilst not the most numerous, raise the most imposing edifices from the standpoint of linear proportion. Their temples are always well in the heart of the city. Higashi Hongwanji, or Eastern Hongwanji, in the southern part of Kyoto, is not only the largest, but one of the newest and grandest temples in Japan.
    One can find old temples, and grand temples, and magnificent temples, and temples to which almost any appreciative adjective might apply, in many Japanese cities; but it is not everywhere, nor indeed anywhere else than in Kyoto, that one can see what a Buddhist temple of truly majestic proportions looks like when almost new. Such, however, is Higashi Hongwanji, for it was only completed as recently as 1895, after eight years of building—the original edifice having been destroyed by fire during the revolutionary struggles in 1864.
    At each of the two gates in the massive fifteen-foot wall which surrounds the courtyards, there is a pair of superb bronze lanterns, deeply carved; and in the enclosure an immense lotus-flower of bronze serves as a fountain, from which pure water flows for the use of worshippers before entering to their devotions. The lotus being the sacred emblem of the Buddhists, fountains in imitation of its blossom are to be found in many of their temples.
    Higashi Hongwanji's buildings, for simple beauty and grandeur, are perhaps more impressive than any others in Kyoto. The Daishi-do, or Founder's Hall, rears its colossal roof in sweeping curves one hundred and twenty-six feet above the ground; and ninety-six enormous boles cut from keyaki trees—the wood of which is so hard as to set time at defiance—support it.
    The manner in which these great pillars, and the immense pine beams above them, were hoisted into place, is interesting as showing something of the sound foundation on which Japanese Buddhism rests; and that a great temple like this could rise, more magnificent than ever, out of the ashes of its predecessor, does not seem to indicate that the ground—into which a horde of American missionaries are endeavouring to force the seeds of Christianity—is very soft, as some would have us believe, but can produce little evidence to prove.
    When the call for contributions went forth, those who had money to give, gave it; and those who had none, but yet were strong of muscle or skilful with their hands, gave their labour to the rearing of the great edifice. And the women, in thousands, not to be behindhand with the men in bestowing what they could, sheared off their raven locks to be woven into twenty-nine immense hawsers with which the ponderous pillars and beams were hoisted into place. These cables of human hair—the largest of which is sixteen inches in circumference, and nearly a hundred yards in length—are preserved as relics in the temple, as a pathetic message to the centuries yet to come of the sacrifices that the women of Meiji could make for the creed in which they lived and died.
    Higashi Hongwanji, however, contains no old art treasures, as they were all destroyed when the previous buildings were burnt. Its interest lies in its magnificent and well-balanced proportions, and the proof it affords that the Buddhist architect of to-day is as skilful as any of his predecessors. Not the least interesting of its sights is the pavilion in the courtyard, which shelters a huge bronze bell.
    The Shin Buddhists have another temple, smaller, but infinitely more interesting to the artist and lover of old-time things. This is Nishi Hongwanji—the Western Hongwanji. Its apartments are a veritable palace of the richest and finest of Japanese art. Never have I trod shoeless over cold polished floors and chilly mats more willingly and reverently than through this pageantry of treasure. The main buildings, splendid as they are with coffered ceilings, arabesqued cornices, golden walls, carved cedar doors and ramma, and gilt and painted shrines, are yet eclipsed in interest by the sumptuous feast of art in the state apartments of the Abbot's palace.
    Here are masterpieces of the Kano, and other schools, on sliding screens, and doors, and walls. There are wild geese and monkeys by Ryoku; palm-trees and horses by Hidenobu; a heron and a willow-tree, and a sleeping cat and peonies by Ryotaku; Chinese screens by Kano Koi; waves by Kokei; tigers by Eitoku; deer and maple-trees by Yoshimura Ranshu; bamboos, with sparrows on a gold ground, by Maruyama Ozui; chrysanthemums by Kaihoku Yusetsu; wistarias by Naozané; and a whole gallery of works, by other artists, which would take some days to examine thoroughly.
    Hidari Jingoro, most famous of all Japanese wood-carvers, is well represented, as he is in most temples of any note. Indeed, the short span of this left-handed artist's days (1594-1634) must have been worthy of a more strenuous era, estimated by the numerous works he left. One of his carvings on the Higurashi-no-Mon, or ''Sunrise-till-Dark Gate," so called because a whole day and night might be spent in examining it, represents "Kyo-yo, a hero of early Chinese legend, who, having rejected the Emperor Yao's proposal to resign the throne to him, is washing his ear at a waterfall to get rid of the pollution caused by the ventilation of so preposterous an idea;

A BUDDHIST ABBOT

the owner of the cow opposite is supposed to have quarrelled with him for thus defiling the stream at which he was watering his beast." *4
    From room to room, each more beautiful than the one we had left, the old bonze led us, over singing "nightingale floors" and through many painted doors, stopping to comment at every few steps on some famous work of art or point of interest.
    At length we were conducted to the garden. This was one of the favourite pleasure-grounds of Hidéyoshi, most poetical of Japanese warriors. When he was not busy with schemes for the conquest of Korea or the invasion of China, here he used to come and restore his jaded body with rest, and feast his aesthetic soul on the beauty of O Tsuki San, the Lady Moon.
    The pretty winding lake was crossed with stone and rustic bridges. Ducks sported in the water and old stone lanterns peeped from herbaceous thickets or maple bowers, and were reflected on the surface. Palms, and banana-trees with elephantine leaves, gave the garden a tropical look, and but for the temple vistas through the foliage, one might imagine oneself in Ceylon. There was a Buddha in a shady nook, and great red carp gleamed in the water at its foot. They followed our movements round the pond until the old priest—standing on the bridge, hewn from a single stone, that spanned an arm of the pool—threw them handfuls of boiled wheat, which they fought for greedily.
    In the temple courtyard there is a fine icho-tree, whose leaves, should a conflagration threaten danger, would immediately become fountains of gushing water, and thus preserve the sacred edifice from harm.
    Although there are no praying-wheels in any of the Kyoto temples, I have seen several in other parts of Japan, the finest being a pair at the great temple of Zenkoji at Nagano.
    Every one has heard of the praying-wheel, the instrument—I might say the time-saving instrument—of devotion so popular with the Thibetan Buddhists. And every one knows that it is a little box of prayers which is whirled round by a handle held in the hand, the pious whirler laying up for himself as great a store of merit each time he whirls as if he recited the whole of the prayers with which the box is filled.
    I could never look at a prayer-wheel without being reminded of that devout individual who, wearied with the repetition of a long list of prayers every evening, hit upon the brilliant idea of writing them out and hanging them at the head of his bed. Then each night he piously went on his knees, and, indicating the list with his finger, fervently breathed, "Them's my sentiments, O Lord. Amen." Thus did he save time and salve his conscience.
    In order to understand the significance of the prayer-wheel it must be borne in mind that Sakya Muni, the founder of Buddhism, who was a Hindu, when he sat for six years in meditation under the Bo-Tree at Buddha Gaya, conceived and afterwards established a philosophy which ultimately crystallized into the Buddhist religion, founded on the belief, current in India at his birth (the date of which is uncertain; it was either in the fourth or fifth century B.C.), as it is to-day, that death does not alter the continuity of life but merely alters its form. Death and rebirth follow each other in constant succession. According as a man has sowed in this life so shall he reap in the next, and so on until the final break-up of the universe, or the attainment of Nirvana, which latter, being the reward of a perfect life, is the hope of all good Buddhists.
    The conquest of all earthly desire is the greatest step towards the cessation of rebirths, and it is to assist such pious wishes that the help of the prayer-wheel is enlisted.
    Although the small whirling prayer-box of the Lama is well known, I do not think it is so widely known that there are other forms of this devotional contrivance ; and I am quite certain there are many people who, while knowing Japan otherwise well, are unaware that it is used in that country. About this instrument, as used in Japan, how can I possibly do better than quote the words of Professor B. H. Chamberlain? In Things Japanese he says of the praying-wheel: "This instrument of devotion, so popular in Thibetan Buddhism, is comparatively rare in Japan, and is used in a slightly different manner, no prayers being written on it. Its raison d'être, so far as the Japanese are concerned, must be sought in the doctrine of ingwa, according to which everything in this life is the outcome of actions performed in a previous state of existence. For example, a man goes blind; this results from some crime committed by him in his last avatar. He repents in this life, and his next life will be a happier one; or he does not repent, and he will then go from bad to worse in successive rebirths; in other words, the doctrine is that of evolution applied to ethics. This perpetual succession of cause and effect resembles the turning of a wheel. So the believer turns the praying-wheel, which thus becomes a symbol of human fate, with an entreaty to the compassionate god Jizo to let the misfortune roll by, the pious desire be accomplished, the evil disposition amended as swiftly as possible. Only the Tendai and Shingon sects of Buddhists use the praying-wheel—gosho guruma as they call it—whence its comparative rarity in Japan."The picture shows the priest in the act of revolving the wheel.
    As Chio-in, Kiyomizu, and the Hongwanji are the principal Buddhist temples in Kyoto, so Inari-no-Yashiro and Kitano-Tenjin are the most important Shinto shrines.
    That Inari, about two miles from the heart of the city on the Fushimi road, should be particularly popular with the farming classes is not surprising, seeing that its patron deity is the Rice Goddess. There are probably more temples raised in honour of Inari throughout Japan than to any other member of either the Shinto or Buddhist pantheons. They number many thousands, if one includes the wayside shrines to be seen in every rural district. Inari's temples are distinguished by red torii, sometimes in great numbers, and by stone images of a pair of foxes, as popular superstition credits the fox with being the incarnate form in which the deity comes to earth. The fox is held in great dread in Japan, as he has the power of entering the body of a human being and there comforting himself much as the devils of the New Testament did before their exorcism caused the destruction of the Gadarene swine.
    Dr. Baelz of the Imperial University of Japan is quoted by Professor Chamberlain as follows:" Having entered a human being, sometimes through the breast, more often through the space between the finger nails and the flesh, the fox lives a life of its own, apart from the proper self of the person who is harbouring him. The person possessed hears and understands everything that the fox inside says or thinks, and the two often engage in a loud and violent dispute, the fox speaking in a voice altogether different from that which is natural to the individual. 

A BUDDHIST PRIEST AND PRAYING-WHEEL

The only difference between the cases of possession mentioned in the Bible and those observed in Japan is that here it is almost exclusively women that are attacked—mostly women of the lower classes."
    The first of Inari's many buildings stands at the end of a stone-flagged avenue of pine-trees entered through a great vermilion torii. Under the heavily-thatched eaves hangs a large polished mirror of bronze. This device—which was borrowed from Buddhism and is repeated in the other buildings—seems to say to all who enter "Know Thyself," and therein it embodies the whole teachings of the Shinto creed. Shinto has no dogma nor moral code; it offers no sage admonitions for the avoidance of worldly pitfalls, nor holds out, to those who instinctively elude them, any hope of future reward. Its whole counsels are summed up in the exhortation to its adherents to follow their natural impulses and obey the Mikado's laws.
    Shinto, or the "Way of the Gods," is based on the assumption that, in Japan, man is born with an instinct that teaches him to distinguish between right and wrong, and therefore there is no need whatever for any code such as might be necessary for the guidance of less-favoured mortals. The mirror is its emblem, mutely exhorting its votaries to look into their hearts and see that they are as clean as a properly-regulated instinct should keep them.
    There are no art works at Inari, or in any other Shinto temple; simplicity is as much the key-note of its buildings as its creed, and the magnificent elaboration, gorgeous embellishment, and intricate ritual of the imported Indian religion finds little echo in the indigenous faith. *5
    The inevitable carved foxes are, of course, to be found. There are several pairs of them, covered with wire to keep the birds from defiling them. There are some fine ishi-doro (stone lanterns), too, and a number of brass and bronze ones hang in the various pavilions.
    Broad stone courtyards and many flights of steps lead to a dozen smaller shrines, and all day long the temple precincts resound with the clapping of hands and jingling of bells, as the worshippers bring their palms sharply together to invoke attention, and rap the call-ropes against the hollow bronze gongs to make assurance doubly sure that the deities are heedful, before making their supplications.
    The verandah of the main building is guarded by a pair of carved and painted koma-inu and ama-inu. These very ferocious-looking creatures, with nicely-groomed and curled manes and tails, are an idea imported from Korea and China. They are credited with the power to ward off the attacks of evil spirits, and are to be found in many Japanese temples.
    At the Lama temple in Peking there is a very fine pair, superbly carved in bronze, and an immense granite pair guards the entrance to the Palace in Seoul, Korea.
    In China they represent the Heavenly Dogs that devour the sun at the time of eclipse; the ball often carved in the mouth of one of the pair shows the orb of day undergoing this experience. In Japan they do not appear to mean anything in particular, having simply been taken over from their neighbours by the Japanese, together with the religion, as picturesque and appropriate features. One of the pair always has its mouth open and the other's lips are tightly closed. Opinions differ as to which is the male and which the female, but a Japanese friend offered the explanation that the female is always shown with the mouth open, "as it is quite impossible for a woman to keep her mouth shut."
    Inari's courtyards are the haunt of fortune-tellers and diviners, mendicant cripples, toy-sellers, and an old woman, who for the sum of three sen (three farthings) will liberate a small bird from a cage, thereby bringing to the donor of this amount some merit for the kindly act. For the sum of threepence one might free the whole of her stock in trade, and when I did so, giving the old beldame double payment, she chuckled with delight and was quite overwhelming with her benedictions.
    The Japanese uranaisha, or fortune-teller, fills a very serious and material place in the estimation of the lower classes of the people. They resort to him in every conceivable form of trouble. For a small sum he barters advice to the love-lorn maiden or the unhappy wife; instructs mothers as to the probable outcome of the ailments afflicting their children; warns his patrons against, or gives his assent to, proposed journeys; counsels them in business undertakings; looks into the future for them, or lays bare the past; delineates character in their palms and faces; advises them in matrimonial affairs; indicates where lost articles can be found, and in a hundred ways comforts and assists them in distress.
With a small pile of books, and a joint of bamboo filled with his divining rods, he is to be found at more than one temple in most cities of any size. How much reliance may be placed on his advice and prognostications is a matter for the individual to decide. The following cases, however, have come within my own experience, and I offer them as of possible interest, knowing them to be actual facts.
    A friend, an Englishman many years resident in Japan, contemplating embarking in business of a seafaring nature necessitating a long and risky voyage in a sailing ship, was admonished to consult a Japanese uranaisha before accepting the command of the vessel offered him. He did so, and was advised that the venture would be a sound success. Acting on this advice he signed the agreement at once and embarked on the voyage, which proved eminently successful. Again he started off, after securing the fortune-teller's assurance that fortune would follow him. Again he returned, happy over a prosperous voyage. A third time he consulted the uranaisha with like results. A fourth time he went to him; but on this occasion the old man, after shuffling his rods and searching his books, anxiously urged him to abandon the venture, as the luck had turned against him, and nothing but direst misfortune would overtake him if he persisted in the enterprise. So firm had his belief in the fortune-teller's powers become, that he immediately sent in his resignation. In due course the vessel, under another master, set forth again. That was many years ago, and to this day no soul has ever heard of her. Superstition finds no place in this friend's composition, but his faith in the powers of the uranaisha is unshakable. In relating this incident he said, "I have told it to you for what it is worth. You can laugh at it or not, as you like; but for my part I am absolutely certain that these fellows are not humbugs, but have studied the science of divination so deeply that it is possible for them actually to look into the future." He has always been true to his conviction, and has never embarked in any business venture since without first laying the whole matter before the same fortuneteller, and he strongly advised me to consult the old fellow too.
    In November 1905 I left Japan for India, not knowing when I should return, but telling a faithful servant I should probably be back in the following June.

A FORTUNE-TELLER AT INARI TEMPLE

 I returned in May, arriving in Tokyo at 6 o'clock one day. The same evening I took the 7 o'clock train to Yokohama to engage my servant's services again. On arriving at his house he evinced little surprise at seeing me a month earlier than I had told him to expect me, and, on my asking the explanation, said that he had several times lately been to consult a uranaisha. Without telling the uranaisha where I was, or anything whatever about me, he simply asked him if he could tell him "where my master is." On two occasions the seer could tell him no more than that his master was many thousand ri away. On the third occasion he had received the information that his master was on the sea, returning to Japan. On the fourth occasion—that very evening at half-past five—he had gone again, and the diviner had told him that I was not ten ri away, and that he would see me again that night. At the moment he secured this information I was actually within ten ri, and I called, as the diviner said I would. These episodes may be accounted for by coincidence, of course. I have simply stated the facts and no more.
    There are several uranaisha at Inari. The photograph shows one of them, in consultation with a woman of the peasant class, selecting his divining rods preparatory to instructing her in the matter concerning which she has come specially to Kyoto to see him, whilst her mother and brother stand by, anxiously awaiting the verdict of the oracle. The pair of ishi-doro to which he has fastened his sign-banner are typical of the severity of the style of the stone lanterns at this temple.
    The circuit of Inari's grounds is a good three miles' walk, and one may spend hours wandering amongst its many shrines and long avenues of wooden torii, which in places are erected so close together as to form one long continuous arch—each torii almost touching its neighbour. There are many thousands of them in the temple grounds—perhaps tens of thousands, if one includes the miniatures that are stacked about the principal shrines—varying in size from six inches in height to fifteen feet. They are painted vermilion, with black at the base, and form a brilliant contrast to the deep green of the trees.
    The photograph was taken in the tallest of these avenues, and shoves the old woman with her bird cage and another fortune-teller.
    The torii, characteristic of every Shinto temple, is not as nationally distinctive as some protest. Its whole meaning is a matter of contention. Most authorities claim for it Japanese origin as a perch for sacred fowls (tori) which time has modified to a mere "symbolic ornament." Kipling claims it is Hindu, and at Alwar, in Rajputana, India, one Hindu temple that I visited has almost its exact counterpart. The beautiful pai-lo of China is the same idea in a more embellished form. Be its origin what it may, the torii is a very striking and effective structure, and its dignified lines are much beloved by native artists. The numerous torii at Inari are the gifts of devotees whose supplications have met with favourable response.
    There are a score or more other temples in Kyoto in which one might ramble for days and always be discovering some beautiful or curious feature, hitherto unnoticed. At Kitano Tenjin there are bronze bulls, which shine with a beautiful patina brought out by centuries of friction at the hands of those who rub them, as they rub Binzuru's image at Kiyomizu, to gain relief from their ailments; and there is a fine old oratory round which to run a hundred laps is a penance that purifies the heart as effectually as it strengthens the body.

AN AVENUE OF TORII AT INARI

Sometimes a dozen zealots may be seen vying with each other in the task.
    Myoshinji, whose massive buildings lie deep in groves of magnificent pine-trees, has many works of art, and a revolving bookcase, to turn which lays up as great a store of merit as if one read the whole of the scriptures it contains. Daitokuji boasts of a larger number of valuable kakemono than any other temple in Japan, and has an entire set of sliding doors, dividing room from room, painted by the famous Kano Ten-yu. Uzamasa is famous for its statuary. Kodaiji was beloved by Hideyoshi, who used to sit on a certain spot in its galleries and revel in the beauty of the moon, as he also did at Nishi Hongwanji. Eikwando is embosomed in glorious groves of maple-trees, and Shimo-Gamo has groves that are more beautiful and grander still. Here on the 15th May, at the annual festival, horse-races, in which the priests take part, are held on the broad reaches of turf among its splendid cryptomeria-trees; and a grand procession of warriors, with armour and accoutrements of feudal davs, leaves the Imperial Palace to visit the old temple, just as it did of old when the Mikado came in person.
    So holy is this procession that no one in the crowd may have his head above another's; and not all the War Office and other official permits I possessed could gain for me the privilege of an elevated position to photograph it. At the very last moment ere the procession arrived I was unceremoniously ousted from the vantage point I had taken up with the permission of the police, who, by thus changing their minds when it was too late for me to prospect for another place, robbed me of a fine chance to secure an interesting picture.
    The stately old buildings of the Kurodani monastery, whose ponderous keyaki-wood doors are strapped and bossed with bronze, contain a blaze of golden glory in embroidered silken banners, and its state apartments are as rich in art as its situation is in natural beauty.
    At such places as Kurodani, Chio-in, and Eikwando, one goes not only to see the temples themselves, but also to feast the senses in the matchless harmony and grace with which the hand of time has clothed their surroundings. None but the most artistic people in the world could have designed or conceived such grand, reposeful settings; and the passing of the centuries has but added the soft charm that only time can give. There is an atmosphere of simple dignity about these temples that touches the very soul. One cannot approach them except with reverence. One cannot enter them without being purified in mind; for thoughts are elevated to loftier planes, and no believer in the faith these grand old structures adorn, nor any other believer either, could ever seek their precincts without deriving some benefit from the act. All their beauty, and the careful and imperceptible merging of the art of man with the handiwork of nature, is planned to calm the spirit and bring rest and joy to the troubled heart. Anger is dispelled, grief softened, and anguish tempered to him who roams their lovely grounds with reverent mind, and a feeling of blessed contentment and rest enters into his soul.
    This is truly the zenith of the art of raising a sanctuary—to invest it with the atmosphere of peace.
    An old gentleman, whom I met at Kurodani, as much enchanted with this lovely land as I, said to me: "But you cannot feel such joy as these beautiful places bring to me, for you are much too young a man. You have youth and strength, and are busy storing up a fund of memories for the days when youth is past and strength departed. Not till then will you really appreciate the full charm of what you are now seeing. I am old, and the peace and restfulness of this land is to me but the foreshadowing of the peace I soon must find for ever. I am glad that I came to this gentle country, and would ask no better fate than to end my days among such beautiful surroundings."

    1) Rikisha-runner.
    2) Murray's Handbook
    3) For a most interesting and exhaustive essay on the meaning and history of cha no yu from its earliest days see B. H. Chamberlain's Things Japanese..
    4) Murray's Handbook.
    5) The mortuary shrines to the Tokugawa Shoguns at Nikko owe their splendour to Buddhism, though many Shinto features were introduced when the latter was established as the State religion at the commencement of "the Enlightened Era."

CHAPTER III

THE ARTIST-CRAFTSMEN OF KYOTO

In the old-time houses that line Kyoto's old-time streets ancient arts are perpetuated and kept ever young. Arts, too, that are not yet middle-aged, and others that are as yet but in their cradles, find in Kyoto the inspiration to give them their fairest and noblest expression. Bronzes, embroideries, porcelain, damascene, cloisonné, iron-wares, silks, and a number of other products for which Japan is noted, come mainly from Kyoto; and visiting the places where these are made is as interesting as "doing" the regulation sights.
    Nothing short of a book could do justice to the hours I have spent with Kyoto artist-craftsmen. About Kurōda alone many pages could be filled, but here I can only relate some simple incidents and facts.
    Kurōda is a bronze-inlayer whose only compeer is Jōmi. He is a very tall, stern-looking, clean-shaven man, and speaks English fluently with a deep rich voice. Few who have not been to Kyoto know anything about the artistic marvels created under his roof. His masterpieces are never seen in any shop, for, like a few others of his contemporaries, he scorns all dealings with the trade. His output is small, but he finds a market for it all with visiting connoisseurs.
    At either Kurōda's or Jōmi's one may see triumphs of the bronze-worker's art superior to anything ever produced by Nagatsuné, Jinpo, Toshiyoshi, or any of the old-time masters, for though many native crafts are being degraded by appealing to the most vulgar of foreign tastes, that of bronze-working, one of the most beautiful, more than holds its own with the work of previous centuries.

THE BRONZE SCULPTOR

   I owe much to Kurōda for what he taught me. Though I had spent a lot of time in the shops of other metal-workers, I had been groping in the dark until I met him. On my third visit to his place he said: "You seem really anxious to learn about my work, so I am going to teach you. Very few foreigners understand anything about bronze, though most of them think they do. To show my finest work to many foreigners is a thankless task, as they cannot see why one piece should be worth four or five times as much as another that looks almost exactly like it. Even an educated Japanese does not know anything about the fine-arts of Japan unless he is a collector."
    With that he went to a near-by shelf, and, after much careful deliberation, selected a box from a number of similar-looking ones of various sizes, and, opening it, produced a bag of brocaded silk, from which he drew out a bronze plaque.
    "Now what do you think of that?" he asked, handing it to me.
    I carefully examined it. The bronze was of a beautiful rich golden-brown colour, with an exquisite patina, or polish, and was inlaid in relief with silver and gold, and with shakudo and other alloys of bronze.
    The design represented the famous Bay of Enoura, from Shizu-ura by the Izu peninsula. Silver-tipped waves were lapping the shore, and out on the ocean two golden junks were running before the wind, with silver sails bellying to the breeze. By the beach there was a grove of old pines, in various alloys, and in the distance Fuji-san's snowy crest, of silver, floated in the sky above clouds of shihutchi (a grey alloy of silver and bronze). The price was £8.
    I had certainly never seen anything more beautiful, either in design or workmanship, in any shop I had previously visited, and said so.
    "Do you know what I think of it?" Kurōda replied, and continued without waiting for an answer: "What you are looking at is nothing but mere rubbish. No Japanese collector would bestow a second glance on it. Now I will show you what a Japanese, who knows, would call good work."
    With that he opened another box, and brought forth another plaque of like size, about seven inches in diameter, and handed it to me. The design was the same, yet not the same. The composition of the picture was different, though the view was still Enoura Bay, with Fuji and the junks and pine-trees. But it was not the difference in the composition that struck me so much as the surpassing beauty of the workmanship. To examine these pieces, side by side, was in itself an education. One piece was beautiful, the other was incomparably beautiful. There was as much difference between them as there is between a cut-glass bowl made by hand and another pressed in a mould. This difference was not apparent at the first glance, and only by careful scrutiny could I see the immense amount of skill and labour lavished upon the one and lacking in the other. The price of the second plaque was £30 nearly four times the price of the first one shown me. Though the thicker gold and silver used, and the better quality of the bronze, increased the value, yet the extra cost was mainly due to the workmanship expended on it.
    Kurōda told me that the best pieces of his work were bought by English and French visitors. Small vases and plaques are the favourite pieces, but if one desires something combining beauty with practical utility one may buy a cigarette or card-case of shibuichi, inlaid in relief with some such simple design as a peasant carrying a load of firewood, or a pair of fighting-cocks; but one must pay £10 for it if one wants the finest work. This case, however, will be "a joy for ever" to its owner, as he will always have the satisfaction of knowing that it is a sample of the best art of its kind.         At Jōmi's one can see inlaid work no less perfect than Kurōda's; and Jōmi is also the king of workers in beaten copper.
    Jōmi gave me one day as instructive a lesson in beaten-copper work as Kurōda gave me in bronze. He showed me two quite plain, but very tastefully designed vases, globular shaped, with long thin necks. The bodies were about four inches in diameter, and the necks perhaps six inches long and half an inch thick. They were to all intents and purposes a pair, exactly alike, yet one was five times the price of the other. The reason was that, though both were beaten out of a flat sheet of copper, one of them had the base brazed on, whilst the other was made in one piece. One need not be an expert to realise that a copper vase, with a large round body, a base, and a long and very thin neck, beaten out of one single sheet of metal, must be about the acme of skill of the metal-beater's craft, and therefore worth much more than an apparently similar article in which the greatest difficulty was avoided by having a large open base through which to work.
    One of Kyoto's most famous crafts is that of damascening. There are two makers whose products are equally good. Both bear the same name, Komei, though I was told they were not related.
    I have a cigarette case made by S. Komei. On the front of it there is an eagle sitting on a pine-tree, his feathers bristling with anger at the intrusion of two small birds that have approached. They did not know that their enemy was hidden in the tree, but, having just detected him, their mouths are open, crying with fear. The eagle and the tree are beautifully worked in gold of various shades, the branches are heavily laden with silver snow, and a few silver flakes are falling. Every feather and pine-needle is picked out and hammered into the steel, and the bark of the tree is wonderfully natural in its grain. At the back of the case there is a fiery dragon, writhing with rage. He is inlaid with gold of half a dozen different colours, and every scale is inlaid separately, clean cut and free of its neighbours. Inside the case there is a golden outline of Fuji with the snow-cap overlaid with silver.
    I never tire of looking at this beautiful specimen of Japanese art, but I fully appreciated it only after I had visited the most renowned damascene works in Spain—the great sword factory at Toledo. One day when I was going through the inlaying rooms I took out my case, and laid it on the table of the head workman. The man picked it up with an ejaculation of surprise, glanced at it, and then without a word went off with it to another room.
    In five minutes he came back with half a dozen other men—the heads of various departments. For half an hour these experts subjected the case to the closest scrutiny with magnifying glasses, and with sighs admitted they had never seen anything like it—that no one in Spain could execute anything approaching it, either for beauty of design or perfection of finish. Ever since that day this exquisite piece of metal-work has been even more precious in my sight than before, for my own estimate of its merits has been confirmed by the foremost experts of Europe.

THE IVORY CARVERS

    The workshops of either O. or S. Komci are among the sights of Kyoto. Any one who omits to visit them when in the old city will regret it all his life. After inspection of the works of these Japanese masters the productions of most European metalworkers seem but crude experiments, and can readily be assigned to the level where such art belongs.
    In that veritable mine of information, Japan and its Art, by M. B. Huish—which unfortunately is now out of print, but a copy of which, to my infinite joy, I secured for a sovereign at a second-hand bookshop in Holborn, after years of search—I found these words: "A principal trait in Japanese metal-work, and one which our manufacturers should imitate, is its extreme simplicity. The brilliant metals, gold and silver, are used most sparingly, only for enrichment, and to heighten the general effect; the precious metals are only employed where their presence will serve some definite end in relation to the design as a whole. What would one of their great masters think of some of our supreme efforts in this line—a silver stag, for instance, a yard high, given as one of her Majesty's prizes, at Ascot, which could never be even endurable until it tarnishes?"
    A few most interesting hours may be spent in Mr. Hayashi's workrooms, where marvellously beautiful boxes are richly lacquered in gold. The process is too long and intricate to be described here. Chamberlain's Things Japanese gives an excellent account of the manner in which this most Japanese of all arts is produced, and Mr. Hayashi courteously describes the process to every visitor who is interested.
    Almost the only Japanese art not represented in Kyoto at its best, is ivory-carving. For ivories one must go to Tokyo—to Toyama's, Maruki's, or Kanéda's. The two former deal in the highly polished carvings, known all over the world so well, and to be found in the cabinets of every English collector. But Kaneda has brought the art of ivory-carving to a higher degree of beauty. One can find no polished pieces in his house. He abhors the high finish and colouring by which his contemporaries gain much of their eifect, and finishes all his work with a matt surface, pure white. Of the beauty of this it is sufficient to say that he has taken the highest awards wherever he has exhibited. Buffalo, Paris, St. Louis—the most recent of the great exhibitions—all gave him the gold medal, and the international expositions held at Osaka and Tokyo followed suit.
    Kanéda is not the only artist now making matt-finished ivories, however. Many other sculptors have imitated his work—perhaps the best of all commendations of its merit—but he is facile princeps of all the ivory-workers of Japan.
    He is equally skilful in bronze, and his chief delight is in carving elephants. Like many others of the foremost living Japanese artists, he is now an old man, and does little himself beyond supervising the artists who work under his instruction. No one can equal the work done by him and his pupils in carving ivory elephants; but Nogawa of Kyoto runs him very close in bronze. Like Kanéda's, Nogawa's elephants seem positively to live. One of Kanéda's artists—Kōmei Ishikawa, the most skilful ivory-worker in Japan—will take a three-foot tusk and carve it into a single file of elephants, so lifelike that they almost seem to move along the thin strip left as a base; and Nogawa's head artist will take a rough bronze casting of a pachyderm and fashion it with a tiny hammer and chisels till it, also, seems to pulse with the very breath of life.
    At Delhi, in India, I have seen ivory elephants, superbly carved, carrying a field-gun with its carriage and all the trappings. Every link of every chain was carved, and every piece could be removed and set up separately. But with it all, and notwithstanding that the Hindu has elephants every day before his eyes, there was not the life that the innate art of the Japanese enables him to instil into his image of an animal he never sees.
    This wondrous ability of the Japanese in portraying animals is not confined to carvings. One may see at Nishimura's or lida's, the great silk-merchants of Kyoto, such truly marvellous embroideries of lions and tigers that only the closest and most minute inspection proves them to be the work of the needle and not of the brush. The effect is gained only at the expense of millions of stitches. One particular piece at Nishimura's fascinated me so much that I went many times to see it. It was a tiger bounding out of a bamboo thicket. The creature appeared to spring from the picture as I watched it. Its jaws were open, and the fierce gleam in its eyes was so startlingly realistic that one could almost hear the roar to which the brute was giving mouth. The picture was about four feet by three, and the price was £100.
    This wonderful example of the work of the needle was made by one Yozo Nagara, a man twenty-seven years of age, who is regarded as the foremost exponent of the art of needlework in Japan. In order to increase the realism of the effect such pieces are not finished flat, but, by stitching over and over again, and gradually bringing the picture out in high relief by padding it in places with much stitching underneath, such solidity is given to the subject that it often seems to be the work of the sculptor and painter combined. Only the closest scrutiny betrays the embroiderer's hand.
    I had the opportunity of seeing Nagara at work at his home, embroidering the head of a lion. I believe I am making no exaggeration when I say that the foundation stitches were, in places, covered fully one hundred times before the desired effect of depth and richness was imparted to the mane. It will easily be seen, therefore, that this panel, when complete, would have some millions of stitches in it, and that the price—£50—was not out of the way, seeing that in no other land could it be made at all.
    The Kyoto embroiderers are practically all men. Very few women are employed, except for the coarser work.
    The Chinese embroiderers are an easy second to the Japanese; but, whilst exquisite taste always governs the selection of their colours, they have not the skill to hold the mirror up to nature as have the Japanese. The Chinese, too, do miracles with ivory. In Canton I have seen a native take a cube cut from a tusk, and so manipulate it with various tiny tools that when it left his hands the solid mass had become a series of twenty hollow ivory balls, diminishing in size from a diameter of four inches to half an inch, each beautifully carved and revolving freely within the next larger one. The balls had not been cut open; each smaller ball was carved inside its larger neighbour through the ornamental perforations with which each ball was decorated. Surely this is the most surpassing skill; but it is the skill of the dexterous craftsman, not that of the artist. Komei Ishikawa could probably not execute such a piece of work for any sum of money, but he can do what no Chinese sculptor can even approximately accomplish—make a piece of ivory throb with life and animation—a far more worthy effort than the Chinaman's concentric balls.

THE EMBROIDERER

    Thus it is, in any of the arts that Japan has learnt from China—and China is to Japan what ancient Greece was to all the rest of Europe—that their inherent genius and love of anything beautiful in nature have enabled the Japanese to counterfeit that beauty, by a hundred different means, to a degree of perfection the Chinese have never reached. The pupil has far outclassed the master.
    Paradoxical as it may sound, the Japanese embroiderers are the finest free artists, and at the same time the most slavish imitators. For centuries rigid seclusion from the rest of the world kept the art of the Japanese free from the contamination of foreign ideas. They founded their schools on Chinese lines, but built up and improved upon these until they had created an individual art of their own, which, whilst the Chinese origin is often apparent, is yet distinct in character and unique. In Europe a work of art executed in one country frequently might easily have been done as well in several others. Not so, however, the work of the modern Japanese artist, who has broken the fetters of convention which kept the art of his country hide-bound for so long. His work shows character that cannot be counterfeited by a foreigner. Even Whistler's attempts are but mere parodies of Hiroshige's bold and masterly strokes.
    The Japanese embroiderer, who is true to his own traditions, can show needlework more beautiful in design and execution than any the world has seen, and the art is happily one that has not retrograded.
    Unfortunately, however, the commercial maelstrom which has gathered Japan into its whirling vortex has produced a set of knights of the needle who cannot originate, but whose skill enables them to copy with absolute truth and fidelity anything that is set before them, be it in monochrome or colour. I saw at Nishimura's facsimiles of Landseer's works in monochrome so faithful to the copy that it was beyond my power to detect, except by close inspection, which was the original engraving and which its silken presentment. I saw, too, Landseer's "Dignity and Impudence" in colours so true to the painting beside it, that, from a distance of but a few feet, one would declare them both works by the same brush. It is, to say the least, depressing that such commendable talent should be prostituted to such unworthy uses.
    The potters and pottery-painters of Kyoto are no less interesting than the embroiderers and metal-workers.
    Awata is the centre from which the highly decorated ware, called "Satsuma" in American and European shops, is shipped in immense quantities all over the world. It is a cream-coloured faience, covered with a minutely-crackled glaze, an imitation of the famous pottery produced at Kagoshima in the province of Satsuma.
    This Awata ware is decorated in many different styles, and for exportation in quantity nothing more hideous is produced in all Japan. At a dozen large establishments the whole floors of rooms are littered with vases and urns. Here men and women and boys and girls, working side by side, quickly brush in the ground-work and trace designs, each finishing many pieces daily, and having no scruples in using the aerograph in the process—so debased have modern methods become in the race for wealth by catering for the most atrocious foreign taste.
    At Yasuda's or Kinkosan's one may see the whole process of pottery-making from the mixing of the clay to the packing of the finished product. The courteous proprietor of each of these establishments deputes an assistant to take visitors round and answer any questions. In turn one sees the grinding-wheels; the mixing-vats, where the clay is slaked and cleansed, and made ready for the potters; the throwing-wheels, kilns, and painting-rooms.

THE POTTER AT HIS WHEEL

    One old potter at Kinkosan's always interested me more than any other. In spring, summer, autumn, and winter I have seen him at his wheel, his raiment growing scantier as the weather became warmer, until August found him with nothing on but a loin-cloth and a few medical plasters to cover his old rheumatic bones. Many an hour I have spent watching him slicing off a lump of clay and slapping it on to his throwing-wheel, which, with a few deft turns of his hand, he set spinning rapidly on its axis. Then, as if he were some necromancer casting a magic spell upon it,

The shapeless lifeless clay rose up to meet the master's hand,

and I almost expected the old fellow to mutter some incantation as, with fingers and spatula, he quickly made it swell out and hollowed it, and narrowed it again for the neck, and swelled it again for the lip, until, almost before my fascinated gaze could take it in, hey! presto! the thing was done; then, taking a piece of wire, he cut it loose from the wheel and placed it on the floor beside him—a graceful vase, matching its fellows in all proportions to the fraction of an inch.
    Near by the potters' sheds are the drying-rooms, where the pieces are left for several days to dry out without artificial aid. Then there are the dipping-rooms, where the glaze is applied after the first, and before the second firing. The kilns are always interesting. Some of them are open, either receiving or being relieved of their fragile store, whilst others are being carefully watched by practised old Palissys who continually poke fresh sticks of fuel through tiny loopholes into the sealed-up fires.
    At Yasuda's and Kinkosan's, besides the daubers—who apply to this beautiful pottery the disfigurement which the markets of Europe and America demand, but which no Japanese can bear to look upon—there are artists who adorn a limited number of pieces with paintings of exquisite beauty. At Kinkosan's these artists work in little houses in the gardens, where weeks, and sometimes months, are spent in the minute embellishment of a single vase. Lovely landscapes, and scenes from legend and history, appear in ovals and vignettes on a background of deep and lustrous blue, and gold is only used to give "enrichment."
    The work by the best Kyoto pottery artists, when examined under a high-power glass, shows every detail perfect, every twig of every tree, and every feather of every chanticleer painted true to nature.
    No one can see Kinkosan's show-rooms without wondering at the exceeding richness and beauty of the decorated blue ware which has justly earned for him the foremost place among the potters of Kyoto. Whilst he caters for uncultivated foreign taste, it is also his aim to keep up the standard of Japanese miniature painting. It came as a rude shock to me, therefore, when one day, three years after my last visit to his workshops, I saw in a Japanese shop, in Oxford Street, some of Kinkosan's latest productions, which for bad taste and faulty painting were certainly the worst efforts I have ever seen turned out by any Japanese. The beautiful blue background was there, but the gold enrichment had become a gaudy plastering, and instead of charming Japanese scenes in the vignettes there were European landscapes, with swans or geese (one could not tell which they were intended for), and trees of which it was impossible to guess the species. It is sad indeed to think that Japan must, perforce, sink to such debasing of her art, instead of educating her patrons to the standard of her own.

PAINTING POTTERY FOR EXPORT

That this rapidly increasing commercial instinct of the people, as exemplified at Kinkosan's, has not yet completely killed the old Japanese spirit of the days when a man worked for little beyond the sheer love of art, the following incident will show.
    A few years ago one of these old Kyoto pottery-painters, who works alone in his own home, one day visited a foreign merchant in Kobe. Entering the merchant's office, and receiving permission to show his wares, he brought forth from his bundle some ten or a dozen small boxes, from each of which he extracted a dainty piece of minutely-painted pottery. These he tenderly and modestly arranged upon the floor, and, kneeling beside them, submitted each in turn for examination. When all had been appraised and a price quoted for each separate piece, the prospective buyer, indicating them with his foot, remarked, "How much reduction will you make if I buy the whole lot?" The old man sprang up with anger blazing in his eyes, saying, "Not all the money you have would buy them now," and, quickly packing them up, he bowed and left the house without another word.
    This incident was related to me by a friend of the baffled buyer. There is no greater affront one can offer in a Japanese house than to use one's foot to denote an object; and when this old painter, born and bred in an atmosphere of strict etiquette—as even pottery-painters are in Japan—saw the work, over which he had bestowed so many weeks of jealous care, thus, as he thought, abused, he preferred to lose the sale rather than that the little pieces he loved should pass into the hands of any one who regarded them so lightly.
    The art of making cloisonné enamel, whilst not modern, has yet been brought by a few of its present-day exponents in Kyoto to a state of perfection never hitherto attained by any one in this or any other land. In a short paragraph in Things Japanese Professor B. H. Chamberlain says: "The art first became known in Japan some three hundred years ago, but it has only been brought to perfection within the last quarter of a century. Mr. Namikawa, the great cloisonné maker of Kyoto, will show visitors specimens that look almost antediluvian in roughness and simplicity, but date back no farther than 1873."
    It was not, however, to Namikawa's that I first went. In other towns I had seen the process, and I had also visited several other makers in Kyoto before the above paragraph came before my eyes. When I read it I immediately arranged to visit the famous artist, and when my call was over I was glad I had seen the other places first, as I was thus better able to appreciate, from what I saw that day, the excellence of the workmanship which has placed the Namikawa product in a class which few of his contemporaries ever reach. It is not only his ware, however, that one goes to see, but also the unique and beautiful environment that this famous artist has created for himself. His surroundings and personality are so picturesque that the visits I made to his home will always remain amongst the most delightful of my memories of Kyoto.
    As I was whirled rapidly along in a rikisha, passing through street after street of two-storied houses with tiled roofs, each the exact counterpart of its neighbours, there was little outward show to indicate the treasures of art which might be concealed behind those wooden walls and paper windows. Indeed, the only visible clues to what investigation would reveal were often but simple boards on which were painted words in English such as "Kōmai," "Kurōda,'' "Jōmi," etc. To the initiated, howxver, these words mean much, for they are, as already shown, names to conjure with in the world of art—the patronymics of some of the greatest artist-craftsmen the century has produced.
    My sturdy little kurumaya, having received his instructions, hesitated before none of these, but trotted rapidly on until he finally turned into a quiet side lane in the Awata district, and with a jerk pulled up and dropped the shafts before a pretty private house. I thought there must be some mistake, but with a good-natured smile that covered his whole face, as he wiped the great beads of perspiration from his forehead and from amongst his short bristly hair, he pointed to a tiny placard, but a few inches long, by the entrance gate, bearing the simple inscription: "Y. Namikawa—Cloisonné."
    The door was immediately opened, and I was greeted with a "Good morning" by a young man who I learnt later was Mr. Tsuneki, Mr. Namikawa's brother-in-law. He conducted me past a pretty glimpse of garden into a room typically Japanese, except that it was furnished with a large cabinet and a graceful Chinese blackwood table.
    It was here I met Mr. Namikawa, a man of quiet speech and courteous manner, whose refined classical features betrayed in every line the gentle, sympathetic nature of the artist. The broad and lofty brow marked intellect and knowledge; his eyes were soft and tender, showing a kindly disposition, and as he talked they sparkled good-humour and the love of fun. His nose, which for a Japanese was large, but thin, showed good breeding and a sensitive nature, and under his well-formed mouth there was a broad but not too prominent chin. It was the face of a gentleman of culture and refinement. He spoke no English, but relied entirely on the services of Mr. Tsuneki, his interpreter, who invited me to partake of the tea which had been prepared immediately upon my entry of the house.
    Now Namikawa, like most of the present-day artists of Japan, has so far departed from the ancient traditions of his land that he makes no pretence of ignorance as to the object of one's visit to his house. There are still to be found in Kyoto, and elsewhere in Japan, a few of the old-time artist-craftsmen who cannot reconcile themselves to modern business methods, and with them the purchase of a small objet d'art may take an entire afternoon. The motive of the visit, although perfectly apparent from the outset, must be broached—or at least would be so by a Japanese, or any foreigner conversant with the customs of the land—in the most delicate manner possible; and only after much admiration and discussion, and careful expression and veiling of opinion, could a price be finally agreed upon at which the coveted possession would change hands.
    There is none of this beating about the bush with Namikawa, however. He knows what you have come for, and he also knows that the average foreign customer is not overburdened with patience, and that the visitor may likely enough have planned to visit half a dozen other—I was about to say "shops," but just checked myself in time—artists' houses the same afternoon.
    Namikawa is at the same time an artist and a man of business; therefore, whilst I sipped the tea, he set about the selection of sundry little boxes from a cabinet near by. When he had chosen about a dozen he placed them upon the table before me, and forthwith proceeded to open one. He produced therefrom a little bundle done up in yellow cheese-cloth. Removing this, there was yet more cheese-cloth, and after that a piece of silk. Unwrapping the silk, he disclosed to view a piece of cloisonné so exquisite in design and colouring that the finest I had hitherto seen seemed but crude in comparison. 

A CLOISONNÉ VASE FOR THE EMPEROR

In turn he opened the other boxes, and as from each a fresh gem of art was brought to light I did not need to be told that I was in the presence of a master, for each was verily a masterpiece.
    There were tiny vases of which the groundwork was of yellow, not unlike Crown Derby; and others in their design and colouring at once suggested Royal Worcester, but that they were essentially Japanese. There were little jars and caskets of which the prevailing tints were delicate cornflower and peacock blues. There were groundworks of red and olive green, and there were others of ultramarine and deep purple. One and all, however, were decorated with designs more beautiful than any I had previously seen, and each was mounted on its own tiny stand of carved blackwood, as dainty in its way as the piece itself.
    Nowhere in Japan is it the custom to display the finest work at first. The Japanese knows as well as any one, perhaps better, that to show a fine work of art to the uninitiated is often but a thankless task—as indeed Kurōda had told me; therefore only where genuine interest and appreciation is shown, are the most cherished pieces brought to light. Besides, too, there is nothing the Japanese likes better than to have something still "up his sleeve," and in this he shows a weakness that is, after all, but human and very Western. The visitor's knowledge and the value of his opinions are quickly gauged by these Kyoto artists. There is no deceiving them. No one knows more about the object shown than the man under whose supervision it was made. Pretence of knowledge is of no avail here. The real connoisseur reveals himself in every glance, just as the pretender betrays himself by every word. He who is anxious to learn, however, is gladly welcomed.
    Seeing my admiration, Namikawa produced other and larger pieces; but it was not until one of my further visits, several years later, that I saw the very finest possible examples of his skill—a pair of vases decorated with an old-time feudal procession, an order from the Emperor which had taken his foremost artist over a year to complete. The larger pieces were in no way inferior to the smaller ones, though the making of an absolutely perfect piece of large size is well-nigh an impossibility, as some tiny speck or minute flaw is almost certain to appear; yet careful examination showed that even in the largest there was such perfection as I had never seen before.
    I found that, as I had anticipated, each piece was valued much higher than any examples of the art I had hitherto seen, and if exhibited in any of the high-class shops of London or New York would probably command a price far exceeding its weight in gold. Incidentally it may be said that seldom, if ever, does the product of Namikawa's house appear in any shops. His output is so small that the demand for it from visiting connoisseurs and collectors is sometimes more than equal to the supply. There is no catering for the trade. That is left to those who have followed in the master's footsteps, who seek to imitate his methods and effects. As the pieces stood on the table they ranged in price from five to fifty pounds, a large piece of the latter value being about fifteen inches high, and decorated, on a deep blue ground, with a design of white and purple drooping wistarias.
    In this house, surrounded by so much that was beautiful in nature as well as art, each piece had greater beauty than it could ever have in a collector's cabinet, and it seemed almost sacrilege to remove any of them from the affectionate care of its creator and from the environment which became them so well.
    Whilst I was inspecting each vase, and casket, and urn in turn, Namikawa slid open one of the wood-and-paper shoji to admit more air, for the day was warm. Involuntarily glancing up, the beauty of the scene which met my gaze held me dumb with wonder and amazement.
    Outside was a narrow verandah fronted with sliding windows of glass, and beyond was the essence of all that is aesthetic, restful, and refined in a Japanese garden. There was a little lake with rustic bridges, and miniature islands clad with dwarf pine-trees of that rugged, crawling kind that one sees only in Japan; and out over the water, a few inches from the surface, they stretched their gnarled and tortured limbs towards others of their kind which strove from the opposite shore to meet them.
    The house projected over the lake, and as my host stepped on to the porch the whole surface of the pond became as if a fierce squall had struck it, for from every part of it there came great carp, black, spotted, and gold, leaping and lashing the water to foam as they rushed literally to their master's very feet. He cast a handful of biscuits to them, and thereupon there ensued a frantic struggle and noisy sucking, as their snouts came to the surface gobbling up the tasty tit-bits.
    Handing some of the biscuits to me, he invited me to feed them from my hand. By lying down on the porch I could just reach the water, and I found the great beauties so tame that they readily took pieces from my fingers, and some of them would let me stroke them on the back.
    Under the shelter of a dwarf pine, on a tiny island in front, a little tortoise was gazing steadily at us. I threw a piece of biscuit to it, but it did not move. I tossed some more, but it never stirred.
    "Why doesn't it eat them?" I asked.
    Namikawa, laughing, replied, "It cannot eat. It is bronze."
    The picture was complete. Nothing was missing, and every detail evinced the artist's hand in composing it. Each shrub, each bridge, each stone lantern, and even each stone itself, was so placed as to help the composition of the picture. Had anything been added or omitted I believe the addition or omission would have been noticed. The thing was perfect.
    Here was surely the highest exposition of the landscape gardener's skill, for although the entire enclosure could not have exceeded thirty yards in length, and half as much in width, yet so clever was the arrangement of the water and the trees as to suggest a large area unseen, and even the trees themselves were so arranged and controlled in growth as to make the apparent size of the garden seem much greater than the real.
    Namikawa then invited me to inspect his workshop. Conducting me out into the garden and round the miniature lake, he led me to another building, which was open to the light on two sides, and furnished with running white curtains to soften and diffuse, if necessary, the strong glare of the sun.
    This was the workshop.
    I had not expected to see a large one, for in Japan such are seldom found, and many of the greatest masterpieces have been created in a little humble home, where a lone individual toiled week after week, month after month, and in many cases year after year, on a single piece, until the beloved thing stood at length complete—a master's work of art.
    I had heard of many such cases, and I was not surprised, therefore, to find Namikawa's entire staff in one room.
    Some weeks before, I had seen, in Yokohama, a cloisonné factory where the artisans worked on dirty wooden floors, designing and enamelling beautiful things—they seemed indeed most beautiful till I came to Kyoto.

NAMIKAWA SAN FEEDING HIS CARP

In other rooms figures, naked save for a loin-cloth, scrubbed, and ground, and polished huge urns, in some cases as big as the scrubbing figures themselves. And by the side of kilns, which gleamed dull red, old and practised men stood and watched, the sweat dripping from their half-nude bodies.
    And in Kyoto I had visited the Takatani factory, where an enormous demand for cheap ware from Europe and America is catered for—the work being done at rapid speed by young girls and children, who laid the enamel paste on with spoons, each completing many pieces in a day.
    These were "factories" almost in the sense that we understand the word, where the love of the lone individual of the old days, who wanted little and lived simply, content with the beauty created by his own hands—his craft his life and joy as well as occupation—has degenerated into an imitation of the modern industrialism of the West, in the base desire for wealth which is sounding the death-knell of much that is best in Japanese art.
    But here were no such scenes.
    Instead, I saw a spotless room, twenty feet in length, the floor covered with padded mats, on which, bending over tiny tables, were ten artists, so intent on their occupation that our intrusion caused but an instant's glance. Close by them were two figures, rubbing and polishing.
    This was Namikawa's entire staff.
    In this room could be seen the whole process by which the enamelled ware, called "cloisonné," was produced, except the firing.
    Each artist was at work on some delicate little vase or dainty casket, which was surely, yet almost imperceptibly, assuming beautiful outlines and colouring on its graceful shape. At one table a bronze vase was receiving its decorative design, not from a copy, but fresh from the brain of the artist, who sketched it with a tiny brush and Chinese ink. At another table an artist was cutting small particles of gold wire, flattened into ribbon a sixteenth of an inch in width. After carefully bending and twisting the little particles to the shape of the minute portion of the design they were to cover, he then fastened them in place with a touch of liquid cement. At yet another table the wiring of a design had just been finished—the silver vase which formed the base being beautifully filigreed in relief with gold ribbon. Namikawa's fame rests as much on the lustre and purity of his monochrome backgrounds as on the decoration of his ware; therefore, this gold enrichment covered but a portion of the surface. It was simply a spray or two of cherry-blossoms, among which some tiny birds were playing. That was all ; yet even in this state, as it stood ready for the insertion of the enamels, it was a thing of beauty, for every feather in the diminutive wings and breasts was worked, and every petal, calyx, stamen, and pistil of every blossom was carefully outlined in gold, forming, for the reception of the coloured paste, a network of minute cells, or cloisons, from which the art derives its name.
    At other tables the enamel was being applied. The paste, with which the tiny cells are filled, is composed of mineral powders of various colours, which produce the desired tints, when mixed with a flux that fuses them in the furnace into vitrified enamel.
    In the finest cloisonné the cells are only partially filled at first. The piece is then fired. Then more paste is applied, and it is fired again. Perhaps it may be seven times treated thus before the final application of the paste, and this last coating is the most important. On it very largely depends not only the eiffect of the other coats, but also the appearance of the surface. It determines whether the surface shall be of flawless lustre, or pitted with minute holes.
    After this last filling and firing the vase presents a very rough appearance, for the final fusion has run the enamels together, as the cells were filled higher than the brim. There is little in its appearance at the present stage to indicate the beauty and brilliancy lying below. It is like a rare stone before it emerges from the hands of the lapidary.
    The vase must now be ground with pumice-stone and water for many days, sometimes for weeks, to reduce the uneven face to the same thickness all over. This is all done by hand, and calls for great skill and watchfulness, for were it ground thinner in one place than another the light would not be evenly reflected on the brilliant surface, and all the preceding work would be ruined. No turning-lathes are used for the work, though the device is well known in Japan. Gentle rubbing by hand is the only process employed. This grinding is accomplished so slowly that an hour's work scarcely leaves any perceptible impression. As the surface day by day becomes finer, pumice of softer and smoother quality is chosen, and the final pieces used are soft as silk. The pumice is followed by rubbing with smooth-faced stone and horn, and finally with oxide of iron and rouge, which gives a finish that has the lustre of a lens.
    Namikawa then makes his final inspection of the vase, though every day of its growth it has been under his watchful eye, and if pronounced perfect and worthy of bearing his name, it passes on to the silversmith for its metal rim round the base and lip, and to have the engraved name-plate attached to the bottom. On its return it is wrapped in silk and yellow cheese-cloth, and consigned to the cabinet in his house—not to remain there long, however, for it soon passes into the hands of some travelling connoisseur.
    On all the floor of this room, which was the birthplace of so many peerless examples of this art, now treasured in all parts of the world, one might search in vain for a spot of dirt, so cleanly is the process. One end of the room was shelved for the reception of the bronze and silver vases that are used as foundation for the enamel-work, and for some hundreds of bottles filled with mineral powders of every shade and colour. These were the materials for the enamel. The intimate knowledge of these powders can only be obtained by many years of patient study, for the colours change completely when in a state of fusion. Not only must the artist know exactly the shade of colour he desires, but how to obtain that colour ultimately by using one which is perhaps its diametrical opposite. Only by great skill and knowledge can confusion be avoided. Above the cabinet there was a foreign-looking clock, ticking off the hours and days, and sometimes years, that pass, as the works of art created here slowly assume the appearance which they will ultimately present to the world.
    After inspecting the workshop I was shown the firing-room, and here, too, everything was clean and neat to a fault. There were two small furnaces, and in the centre of the room a brick platform on which a kiln could be rapidly made, from firebricks, for any sized muffle that might be desired. The bricks are arranged round the muffle, leaving a space of several inches to be filled with charcoal.
    Namikawa himself attends to the firing, perhaps the most important part of the whole process, for on it depends the success or failure of all the work preceding it. Any error in the degree of heat would ruin all.

NAMIKAWA'S WORKROOM

On the fusing depends not only the proper setting and colour of the enamel, but also, in a very large degree, the richness of lustre and freedom from air-holes in its surface—one of the principal beauties of the finest cloisonné.
    Namikawa told me that some colours present much greater difficulties than others to fuse successfully, and that large monochrome surfaces require more skill than small cloisons. He showed me one beautiful piece, of which the design was a maple-tree in autumn tints on a yellow ground. The grading of the colour and the veining on the leaves were exquisite, and had taken many days of care to prepare for the final firing and polishing. Apparently it would be well worthy of a place in his cabinet; but as the pumice ground the surface down, and the details became clearer day by day, unsightly marks began to appear, showing that it had been unable to stand the fiery ordeal, and had emerged from the kiln, not beautified, but marred and ruined beyond all hope. Thus it is that the finest specimens of cloisonné are so dear. The purchaser of the ultimate perfect piece must needs pay also for those ruined in the endeavour to produce it.
    Namikawa—this artist of such gentle appearance and manner—betook himself about thirty years ago to the manufacture of cloisonné, it having always been his ambition to become himself a master in the art of making the ware he loved. Only when the productions of his earlier days are shown can one see how great is the gulf he has bridged during that period.
    Each member of the staiF has absorbed the master's ideas from his earliest acquaintance with the art; and although Namikawa now does little work himself except designing and firing, he closely supervises each piece during its entire execution, and, if there be any cause for displeasure, sharply rebukes the transgressor for his want of care. During one of my subsequent visits to his workshop he detected a minute detail on a vase, in the hands ot one of the artists, that did not please him. His face became hard and stern, and his manner that of one who knows exactly what he wants and whose will must be obeyed, as he sharply rebuked the man for his lack of care.
    His artists do not work by set hours, but only when the mental inspiration and desire for work is upon them. As this, however, is practically all day and every day, I have seldom, during my dozen or so visits, found a vacant place at the tables in the workroom.
    Namikawa divides with no one the honour of being the foremost cloisonné artist of Japan, and as the Japanese work is far superior to the Chinese—and no other cloisonné need be mentioned in the same category—the possessor of a piece bearing his name may rest happy in the knowledge that that mark stamps it as the best obtainable.
    He has a namesake in Tokyo—a cloisonné-maker no less famous than himself, but no relation. The Tokyo Namikawa it is who makes the decorations bestowed by Imperial favour, of which the Order of the Rising Sun is one of the most perfect specimens of enamel-work in the world, and—I have it on the authority of a well-known Piccadilly jeweller—quite impossible to duplicate in England.
    The Tokyo Namikawa, however, withdraws the wiring from his pieces, thus producing an exquisite impressionist effect, for the enamels run together slightly in the fusing. Beautiful as the results obtained are, it is, however, doubtful if this work can be considered as really cloisonné, for the wiring is resorted to merely as a means toward an end—to gain a certain effect. Such results have more the appearance of ceramic work, and should be regarded as an entirely separate art, as indeed the inventor justly claims for them.
    When I had taken my leave of the amiable gentleman I met that day, I thought, as I passed again that little unobtrusive shingle at the gate, with its simple inscription, "Y. Namikawa, Cloisonné,'' how truly typical it was of the unaffected modesty of real genius. And I thought, too, of the warm love of nature there must be to direct the fashioning of such faithful reflections of her graces as I had seen revealed in the art of the man and of his pupils.

CHAPTER IV

UJI AND THE FIREFLIES

The country round about Uji is the most famous tea-growing district in Japan; every hill-side near the little town is covered with this, the most highly esteemed of Japanese shrubs.
    Tea, as everybody knows, is the national beverage of Japan, though of late years beer is running it pretty close for first place in popular favour. Price is against the latter, however, and as long as tea can be produced of any grade and quality to suit any purse and palate there is little danger of its supremacy being seriously assailed, even though breweries are fast becoming as conspicuous features in certain cities as are tea plantations in certain rural districts. The popular palate, however, must be ruled by the popular purse; and the Japanese purse, though large in dimensions, is slender in resources.
    Japanese beer costs sixpence a bottle, whereas, even at the railway stations, tea may be bought for three sen (three farthings) a pot—including the pot and a cup as well. This, it must be admitted, is not an exorbitant sum. Where the potter's profit for "thumping his wet clay" comes in at this price it is difficult to see. As for the infusion which such a pot contains—ah well! I would not be guilty of betraying our friends the Japanese. Sufficient let it be to say that tea may be purchased in Japan for fifteen shillings per pound;

TEA ON THE HILLS AND RICE ON THE PLAINS

a like quantity may also be bought for the sum of fifteen farthings; and it is not the most expensive variety that is vended on the trains.
    At the end of April, and during the early part of May, when the "first picking" of the leaves takes place, the country-side of Uji presents a most extraordinary appearance, entire hill-sides being completely covered in with grass matting to preserve the delicate young shoots from injury by the heat of the sun. The tenderest leaves of the new shoots produce the choicest tea. Only the wealthy classes, however, can afford it, as it commands a high price: as much as thirty shillings per pound is no uncommon figure realised for the very limited quantity of this quality. After this delicate growth is gathered, the bushes are picked over many times for gradually cheapening grades, until the final picking yields little else but coarse, hard leaves and tough stems. The shrubs are then permitted to rest for a month, when the "second picking" takes place. Sometimes there is a "third picking," but neither of these crops produces the superfine quality given by the first picking of the first crop.
    The tea-bushes are grown in rows; if on a slope the hill-side is terraced. The shrubs are not allowed to attain a greater height than three or four feet, though some of them, it is said, are double centenarians. Vigorous pruning, as well as the stripping of the leaves, keeps the bushes dwarfed.
    In the illustration the terraced hill-sides are covered with tea-bushes, whilst the valley below, divided up into small fields from which the barley crop has just been harvested, is flooded with water for the reception of the rice shoots.
    The barley is cut in May; the fields are then dug up to a depth of eighteen inches, and flooded with water from an intricate irrigation system which turns them into soft mud. The mud is then strewn with manure and lime, and worked over and over again until it is of the consistency of slime, when it is carefully levelled, and flooded with running water to a depth of two or three inches. The best rice is grown where the water well covers the ground, and this necessitates much skill in arranging the irrigation channels so that a limited quantity of water may do duty for a large area. To facilitate this the fields are networked with earth dams, splitting them up into small divisions, from which the water, regulated so as to cover the surface thoroughly, trickles to the next lower division, and so on, until a whole hill-side may be covered with slowly moving sheets of water.
    The manuring of the ground—and manuring is a necessity, for no sooner is one crop out than another goes in, and this has been going on for centuries—is what enables Japanese cities to dispense entirely with a sewerage system. The sewage of the city is nightly, and even daily, carted from the towns to the surrounding rural districts. The carts are drawn by human labour, and leave an aroma in their wake—to which the native olfactory nerves seem to be proof, but which to the sensitive European robs travelling in the country districts of Japan of much of its pleasure.
    The rice is sown broadcast in small beds in April. In June the young shoots are transplanted to the mud fields in rows, about a foot apart each way, some four or five shoots being pricked into each hole. This is very rapidly done, and at this season the rice-fields are busy with men and women working nearly knee-deep in the mud. In some districts strings are used as guides to keep the rows even; in others these are dispensed with, and it is quite remarkable how uniformly the rows are planted by labourers working without this guide. Whichever way you look across a Japanese rice-field the lines are straight.
    When the summer comes with its grateful heat the sprouts spread out and the whole field becomes vivid green; as the shoots grow higher the separating divisions of the fields are lost to view, and a rice-grown valley seen from a short distance appears as smooth and even as if covered with velvet turf. The measure of heat given out by the summer sun regulates the harvest season. In an average year the crop is reaped in October; but after a cool and rainy summer it may be November before it is cut. In the famine year 1906—when the whole summer was almost one continuous downpour of chilly rain—I saw hundreds of acres of rice uncut at the end of November; there had not been sufficient sun to bring the grain to the "dough," let alone ripen it, and the whole crop in many districts was not worth the cutting, and of more value to be turned under again as fertiliser for the ensuing barley-crop.
    Such years bring terrible distress, for the rice-crop is the staple wealth of the country. Japanese rice is the finest the earth produces, as well it should be, seeing the extraordinary attention that it gets. I have even seen poor peasants carefully going over the crop with a lantern in the dead of night, and with a horsehair switch brushing away the insects. But rice is seldom eaten by the poorer classes. Barley and millet are their staffs of life. The rice they produce themselves is far too valuable for their own consumption, and is sent to their richer neighbour, China, who esteems it as a luxury.
    In late autumn the roads through every rice district in Japan are hedged with sheaves of rice, and before every farmhouse the women-folk are busy with their flails. No modern threshing machinery is known here, and even if it were it would be of little avail, for each individual's crops are small and his labour of little worth. The time is far distant yet when it will be cheaper for the Japanese farmer to invest his savings in costly machines rather than to thresh his crops by the hands of the family he rears. Flails of the most primitive type are used, and heading is done by pulling the stalks, in handfuls, through large iron combs, which tear off the ears, leaving the straw to be applied to a hundred domestic purposes, or sold for use in various arts. Barley is not sown in Japan as we sow it, broadcast or in drills, but in carefully-tended, deeply-worked, hilled-up rows—as we grow potatoes. A Japanese barley-crop is a very beautiful and symmetrical crop to see, and furnishes abundant proof of the enormous amount of work the peasantry are prepared to give for but slight return.
    Uji, however, is famous for a prettier sight than any of its farming scenes.
    In the June evenings special trains run from Kyoto and Osaka crowded with visitors to see the fireflies.
    Lafcadio Hearn, in Kottō, has given, with his usual charm, an account of a great conflict that is fought each year in June by the fireflies on the Uji river—the Hotaru Kassen, or "Firefly Battle."
    He says: "A legend avers that these fireflies are the ghosts of the old Minamoto and Taira warriors; that, even in their insect shapes, they remember the awful clan struggle of the twelfth century, and that once every year they fight a great battle on the Uji river. Therefore on that night all caged fireflies should be set free, in order that they may be able to take part in the contest."
    The battle, however, takes place many times during the month of June, and one night I went to see it with some Japanese friends. We engaged a boat, and as we were rowed to a likely spot for the conflict t take place there were thousands of fireflies blinking umong the trees and over the river. These, my friends sured me, were gathering for the fray, which woul surely occur as the darkness grew deeper.

PEASANT WOMEN HEADING BARLEY

    Many boats besides ours were out on the rivrer, and the twang of samisens rang over the water, giving just the Japanese flavour to the night to make it perfect, until a youth in a boat near by, doubtless inspired by the sweet night-air, the scent of the pines, and the glimmer of the fireflies, burst forth into song—or what was doubtless intended for a song. It was one of those wailing Japanese ballads, half soprano, half falsetto, and certain passages of it, had they been intended for a music-hall imitation of a tom-cat on the tiles, would have been a marvellously clever performance; but as a song the effbrt seemed to me deserving of less emphatic commendation. I was assured, however, by my friends that the singer's voice was an unusually good one. How different are the standpoints of East and West in such matters! One has to suffer such hardships occasionally in Japan; happily, there are many compensations for what must be endured from the native vocal propensities.
    It so happened that we had chosen a most favourable night for our visit. There was no moon, and even the sky was cloudy, making it very dark; there was not a breath of wind, and the glen was hot and sultry.
    As the time passed the fireflies rapidly increased in numbers, reminding me most vividly of a remarkable entomological phenomenon which I had seen a few years before in Java. Trains do not run after dark in the Dutch Colony. One must therefore break the journey from Batavia to Sourabaya at a place called Maos, where all trains lie up for the night. As we descended from the hills to the swamps on which the town is situated, night began to fall, and with the advent of darkness the fireflies commenced to appear. At first they came in twos and threes, then in dozens, then scores, and finally by hundreds, thousands, and untold millions. The sight was of bewildering beauty. The whole night seemed to be filled with showers of sparks—as I have seen them fly upwards when the roof of a burning building fell into the' flames—and the rice-fields were illuminated by the glare for a mile on either side of the train. At times tens of thousands of the tiny creatures, with one accord, would flash their lights in unison. One moment all would be black as pitch, the next a veritable blaze of fire would burst out. This would be continued for some seconds. Then, as if at the word of command, all would go as they pleased, only to line up into unison again a little later. What instinct is it that guides them? I have remarked precisely the same unity among myriads of frogs croaking in a marsh. At a moment's notice all the thousands of throats would cease their song as if at some preconcerted signal; then every voice of the chorus would burst out again almost at the same instant.
    This spirit of unity was amongst the Uji fireflies, too. Vast battalions of them had gathered by eleven o'clock and the battle was at its height. The intermittent flashes were managed with the same accord as I had seen in Java. The insects congregated by thousands, and blazed forth in concert. Then they gathered together in vast opposing forces and hurled themselves against each other.
    Hearn likens it to "a luminous cloud, or a great ball of sparks," and says "the cloud soon scatters, or the ball drops upon the surface of the current, and the fallen fireflies drift glittering away; but another swarm quickly collects in the same locality."
    It was a wondrous spectacle as the fiery insect waves surged together, and after each clash the river sparkled with the lights of the fallen wounded. The dead and dying were left for the fish, which must have had a sumptuous meal that night, and reinforcements rushed in from all sides to fill the gaps in the ranks.
    For an hour the battle waged, until, with common accord, the decimated armies dispersed, scattering to all the points of the compass. This was the signal for the assembled spectators, who had not returned by train, to scatter to their lodgings.

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