Often in the streets at night, especially on the nights of sacred
festivals (matsuri), one's attention will be attracted to some small
booth by the spectacle of an admiring and perfectly silent crowd
pressing before it. As soon as one can get a chance to look one finds
there is nothing to look at but a few vases containing sprays of
flowers, or perhaps some light gracious branches freshly cut from a
blossoming tree. It is simply a little flower-show, or, more correctly,
a free exhibition of master skill in the arrangement of flowers. For
the Japanese do not brutally chop off flower-heads to work them up into
meaningless masses of colour, as we barbarians do: they love nature
too well for that; they know how much the natural charm of the flower
depends upon its setting and mounting, its relation to leaf and stem,
and they select a single graceful branch or spray just as nature made
it. At first you will not, as a Western stranger, comprehend such an
exhibition at all: you are yet a savage in such matters compared with
the commonest coolies about you. But even while you are still wondering
at popular interest in this simple little show, the charm of it will
begin to grow upon you, will become a revelation to you; and, despite
your Occidental idea of self-superiority, you will feel humbled by the
discovery that all flower displays you have ever seen abroad were only
monstrosities in comparison with the natural beauty of those few simple
sprays. You will also observe how much the white or pale blue screen
behind the flowers enhances the effect by lamp or lantern light. For
the screen has been arranged with the special purpose of showing the
exquisiteness of plant shadows; and the sharp silhouettes of sprays and
blossoms cast thereon are beautiful beyond the imagining of any Western
decorative artist.