IV

It is not true that Old Japan is rapidly disappearing. It cannot

disappear within at least another hundred years; perhaps it will never

entirely disappear. Many curious and beautiful things have vanished;

but Old Japan survives in art, in faith, in customs and habits, in

the hearts and the homes of the people: it may be found everywhere

by those who know how to look for it,--and nowhere more easily than

in this great city of ship-building, watch-making, beer-brewing, and

cotton-spinning. I confess that I went to Ōsaka chiefly to see the

temples, especially the famous Tennōji.

Tennōji, or, more correctly, Shitennōji, the Temple of the Four Deva

Kings,[1] is one of the oldest Buddhist temples in Japan. It was

founded early in the seventh century by Umayado-no-Oji, now called

Shōtoku Taishi, son of the Emperor Yōmei, and prince regent under the

Empress Suiko (572-621 A. D.). He has been well called the Constantine

of Japanese Buddhism; for he decided the future of Buddhism in the

Empire, first by a great battle in the reign of his father, Yomei

Tennō, and afterwards by legal enactments and by the patronage of

Buddhist learning. The previous Emperor, Bitatsu Tennō, had permitted

the preaching of Buddhism by Korean priests, and had built two temples.

But under the reign of Yomei, one Mononobé no Moriya, a powerful

noble, and a bitter opponent of the foreign religion, rebelled against

such tolerance, burned the temples, banished the priests, and offered

battle to the imperial forces. These, tradition says, were being driven

back when the Emperor's son--then only sixteen years old--vowed if

victorious to build a temple to the Four Deva Kings. Instantly at his

side in the fight there towered a colossal figure from before whose

face the powers of Moriya broke and fled away. The rout of the enemies

of Buddhism was complete and terrible; and the young prince, thereafter

called Shōtoku Taishi, kept his vow. The temple of Tennōji was built,

and the wealth of the rebel Moriya applied to its maintenance. In that

part of it called the Kondō, or Hall of Gold, Shōtoku Taishi enshrined

the first Buddhist image ever brought to Japan,--a figure of Nyo-i-rin

Kwannon, or Kwannon of the Circle of Wishes,--and the statue is still

shown to the public on certain festival days. The tremendous apparition

in the battle is said to have been one of the Four Kings,--Bishamon

(Vaisravana), worshiped to this day as a giver of victory.

The sensation received on passing out of the bright, narrow,

busy streets of shops into the mouldering courts of Tennōji is

indescribable. Even for a Japanese I imagine it must be like a

sensation of the supernatural,--a return in memory to the life of

twelve hundred years ago, to the time of the earliest Buddhist mission

work in Japan. Symbols of the faith, that elsewhere had become for

me conventionally familiar, here seemed but half familiar, exotic,

prototypal; and things never before seen gave me the startling

notion of a time and place out of existing life. As a matter of fact,

very little remains of the original structure of the temple; parts

have been burned, parts renovated. But the impression is still very

peculiar, because the rebuilders and the renovators always followed

the original plans, made by some great Korean or Chinese architect.

Any attempt to write of the antique aspect, the queer melancholy

beauty of the place, would be hopeless. To know what Tennōji is, one

must see the weirdness of its decay,--the beautiful neutral tones of

old timbers, the fading spectral greys and yellows of wall-surfaces,

the eccentricities of disjointing, the extraordinary carvings under

eaves,--carvings of waves and clouds and dragons and demons, once

splendid with lacquer and gold, now time-whitened to the tint of smoke,

and looking as if about to curl away like smoke and vanish. The most

remarkable of these carvings belong to a fantastic five-storied pagoda,

now ruinous: nearly all the brazen wind-bells suspended to the angles

of its tiers of roofs have fallen. Pagoda and temple proper occupy a

quadrangular court surrounded by an open cloister. Beyond are other

courts, a Buddhist school, and an immense pond peopled by tortoises and

crossed by a massive stone bridge. There are statues and stone lamps

and lions and an enormous temple-drum;--there are booths for the sale

of toys and oddities;--there are resting-places where tea is served,

and cake-stands where you can buy cakes for the tortoises or for a pet

deer, which approaches the visitor, bowing its sleek head to beg. There

is a two-storied gateway guarded by huge images of the Ni-Ō,--Ni-Ō

with arms and legs muscled like the limbs of kings in the Assyrian

sculptures, and bodies speckled all over with little balls of white

paper spat upon them by the faithful. There is another gateway whose

chambers are empty;--perhaps they once contained images of the Four

Deva Kings. There are ever so many curious things; but I shall only

venture to describe two or three of my queerest experiences.

First of all, I found the confirmation of a certain suspicion that had

come to me as I entered the temple precincts,--the suspicion that the

forms of worship were peculiar as the buildings. I can give no reason

for this feeling; I can only say that, immediately after passing the

outer gate, I had a premonition of being about to see the extraordinary

in religion as well as in architecture. And I presently saw it in the

bell-tower,--a two-story Chinese-looking structure, where there is

a bell called the Indō-no-Kane, or Guiding-Bell, because its sounds

guide the ghosts of children through the dark. The lower chamber of

the bell-tower is fitted up as a chapel. At the first glance I noticed

only that a Buddhist service was going on; I saw tapers burning, the

golden glimmer of a shrine, incense smoking, a priest at prayer,

women and children kneeling. But as I stopped for a moment before the

entrance to observe the image in the shrine, I suddenly became aware

of the unfamiliar, the astonishing. On shelves and stands at either

side of the shrine, and above it and below it and beyond it, were

ranged hundreds of children's ihai, or mortuary tablets, and with

them thousands of toys; little dogs and horses and cows, and warriors

and drums and trumpets, and pasteboard armor and wooden swords, and

dolls and kites and masks and monkeys, and models of boats, and baby

tea-sets and baby-furniture, and whirligigs and comical images of the

Gods of Good Fortune,--toys modern and toys of fashion forgotten,--toys

accumulated through centuries,--toys of whole generations of dead

children. From the ceiling, and close to the entrance, hung down a

great heavy bell-rope, nearly four inches in diameter and of many

colors,--the rope of the Indō-Kané. _And that rope was made of the bibs

of dead children,--_yellow, blue, scarlet, purple bibs, and bibs of

all intermediate shades. The ceiling itself was invisible,--hidden from

view by hundreds of tiny dresses suspended,--dresses of dead children.

Little boys and girls, kneeling or playing on the matting beside the

priest, had brought toys with them, to be deposited in the chapel,

before the tablet of some lost brother or sister. Every moment some

bereaved father or mother would come to the door, pull the bell-rope,

throw some copper money on the matting, and make a prayer. Each time

the bell sounds, some little ghost is believed to hear,--perhaps even

to find its way back for one more look at loved toys and faces. The

plaintive murmur of _Namu Amida Butsu;_ the clanging of the bell; the

deep humming of the priest's voice, reciting the Sutras; the tinkle

of falling coin; the sweet, heavy smell of incense; the passionless

golden beauty of the Buddha in his shrine; the colorific radiance of

the toys; the shadowing of the baby-dresses; the variegated wonder of

that bell-rope of bibs; the happy laughter of the little folk at play

on the floor,--all made for me an experience of weird pathos never to

be forgotten.

*

Not far from the bell-tower is another curious building, which shelters

a sacred spring. In the middle of the floor is an opening, perhaps ten

feet long by eight wide, surrounded by a railing. Looking down over

the railing, you see, in the dimness below, a large stone basin, into

which water is pouring from the mouth of a great stone tortoise, black

with age, and only half visible,--its hinder part reaching back into

the darkness under the floor. This water is called the Spring of the

Tortoise,--Kamé-i-Sui. The basin into which it flows is more than half

full of white paper,--countless slips of white paper, each bearing in

Chinese text the kaimyō, or Buddhist posthumous name of a dead person.

In a matted recess of the building sits a priest who for a small fee

writes the kaimyō. The purchaser--relative or friend of the dead--puts

one end of the written slip into the mouth of a bamboo cup, or rather

bamboo joint, fixed at right angles to the end of a long pole. By aid

of this pole he lowers the paper, with the written side up, to the

mouth of the tortoise, and holds it under the gush of water,--repeating

a Buddhist invocation the while,--till it is washed out into the basin.

When I visited the spring there was a dense crowd; and several kaimyō

were being held under the mouth of the tortoise;--numbers of pious

folk meantime waiting, with papers in their hands, for a chance to use

the poles. The murmuring of _Namu Amida Butsu_ was itself like the

sound of rushing water. I was told that the basin becomes filled with

kaimyō every few days;--then it is emptied, and the papers burned. If

this be true, it is a remarkable proof of the force of Buddhist faith

in this busy commercial city; for many thousands of such slips of

paper would be needed to fill the basin. It is said that the water

bears the names of the dead and the prayers of the living to Shōtoku

Taishi, who uses his powers of intercession with Amida on behalf of the

faithful.

In the chapel called the Taishi-Dō there are statues of Shōtoku Taishi

and his attend-ants. The figure of the prince, seated upon a chair

of honor, is life-size and colored; he is attired in the fashion of

twelve hundred years ago, wearing a picturesque cap, and Chinese or

Korean shoes with points turned up. One may see the same costume in the

designs upon very old porcelains or very old screens. But the face,

in spite of its drooping Chinese moustaches, is a typical Japanese

face,--dignified, kindly, passionless. I turned from the faces of the

statues to the faces of the people about me to see the same types,--to

meet the same quiet, half-curious, inscrutable gaze.

*

In powerful contrast to the ancient structures of Tennōji are the vast

Nishi and Higashi Hongwanji, almost exact counterparts of the Nishi

and Higashi Hongwanji of Tokyo. Nearly every great city of Japan has

a pair of such Hongwanji (Temples of the True Vow)--one belonging to

the Western (Nishi), the other to the Eastern (Higashi) branch of

this great Shin sect, founded in the thirteenth century.[2] Varying

in dimension according to the wealth and religious importance of the

locality, but usually built upon the same general plan, they may be

said to represent the most modern and the most purely Japanese form of

Buddhist architecture,--immense, dignified, magnificent.

But they likewise represent the almost protestant severity of the

rite in regard to symbols, icons, and external forms. Their plain

and ponderous gates are never guarded by the giant Ni-Ō;--there is

no swarming of dragons and demons under their enormous eaves;--no

golden hosts of Buddhas or Bodhisattvas rise, rank on rank, by tiers of

aureoles, through the twilight of their sanctuaries;--no curious or

touching witnesses of grateful faith are ever suspended from their high

ceilings, or hung before their altars, or fastened to the gratings of

their doorways;--they contain no ex-votos, no paper knots recording

prayer, no symbolic image but one,--and that usually small,--the figure

of Amida. Probably the reader knows that the Hongwanji sect represents

a movement in Buddhism not altogether unlike that which Unitarianism

represents in Liberal Christianity. In its rejection of celibacy and of

all ascetic practices; its prohibition of charms, divinations, votive

offerings, and even of all prayer excepting prayer for salvation; its

insistence upon industrious effort as the duty of life; its maintenance

of the sanctity of marriage as a religious bond; its doctrine of one

eternal Buddha as Father and Saviour; its promise of Paradise after

death as the immediate reward of a good life; and, above all, in its

educational zeal,--the religion of the "Sect of the Pure Land" may

be justly said to have much in common with the progressive forms of

Western Christianity, and it has certainly won the respect of the

few men of culture who find their way into the missionary legion.

Judged by its wealth, its respectability, and its antagonism to the

grosser forms of Buddhist superstition, it might be supposed the least

emotional of all forms of Buddhism. But in some respects it is probably

the most emotional. No other Buddhist sect can make such appeals to

the faith and love of the common people as those which brought into

being the amazing Eastern Hongwanji temple of Kyoto. Yet while able

to reach the simplest minds by special methods of doctrinal teaching,

the Hongwanji cult can make equally strong appeal to the intellectual

classes by reason of its scholarship. Not a few of its priests are

graduates of the leading universities of the West; and some have won

European reputations in various departments of Buddhist learning.

Whether the older Buddhist sects are likely to dwindle away before the

constantly increasing power of the Shinshū is at least an interesting

question. Certainly the latter has everything in its favor,--imperial

recognition, wealth, culture, and solidity of organization. On the

other hand, one is tempted to doubt the efficacy of such advantages

in a warfare against habits of thought and feeling older by many

centuries than Shinshū. Perhaps the Occident furnishes a precedent on

which to base predictions. Remembering how strong Roman Catholicism

remains to-day, how little it has changed since the days of Luther, how

impotent our progressive creeds to satisfy the old spiritual hunger

for some visible object of worship,--something to touch, or put close

to the heart,--it becomes difficult to believe that the iconolatry

of the more ancient Buddhist sects will not continue for hundreds of

years to keep a large place in popular affection. Again, it is worthy

of remark that one curious obstacle to the expansion of the Shinshū

is to be found in a very deeply rooted race feeling on the subject of

self-sacrifice. Although much corruption undoubtedly exists in the

older sects,--although numbers of their priests do not even pretend

to observe the vows regarding diet and celibacy,[3]--the ancient

ideals are by no means dead; and the majority of Japanese Buddhists

still disapprove of the relatively pleasurable lives of the Shinshū

priesthood. In some of the remoter provinces, where Shinshū is viewed

with especial disfavor, one may often hear children singing a naughty

song (_Shinshū bozu e mon da!),_ which might thus be freely rendered:--.

Shinshū priest to be,

--What a nice thing!

Wife has, child has,

Good fish eats.

It reminded me of those popular criticisms of Buddhist conduct uttered

in the time of the Buddha himself, and so often recorded in the Vinaya

texts,--almost like a refrain:--

"_Then the people were annoyed; and they murmured and complained,

saying: 'These act like men who are still enjoying the pleasures of

this world!' And they told the thing to the Blessed One._"

Besides Tennōji, Osaka has many famous temples, both Buddhist and

Shinto, with very ancient histories. Of such is Kōzu-no-yashiro, where

the people pray to the spirit of Nintoku,--most beloved in memory

of all Japanese emperors. He had a palace on the same hill where his

shrine now stands; and this site--whence a fine view of the city can be

obtained--is the scene of a pleasing legend preserved in the Kojiki:--

"Thereupon the Heavenly Sovereign, ascending a lofty

mountain and looking on the land all round, spoke,

saying:--'In the whole land there rises no smoke; the

land is all poverty-stricken. So I remit all the people's

taxes and forced labor from now till three years hence.'

Thereupon the great palace became dilapidated, and the

rain leaked in everywhere; but no repairs were made. The

rain that leaked in was caught in troughs, and the inmates

removed to places where there was no leakage. When later

the Heavenly Sovereign looked upon the land, the smoke was

abundant in the land. So, finding the people rich, he now

exacted taxes and forced labor. Therefore the peasantry

prospered, and did not suffer from the forced labor. So, in

praise of that august reign, it was called the Reign of the

Emperor-Sage."[4]

That was fifteen hundred years ago. Now, could the good Emperor see,

from his shrine of Kōzu,--as thousands must believe he does,--the smoke

of modern Osaka, he might well think, "My people are becoming too rich."

Outside of the city there is a still more famous Shintō temple,

Sumiyoshi, dedicated to certain sea-gods who aided the Empress Jingō

to conquer Korea. At Sumiyoshi there are pretty child-priestesses,

and beautiful grounds, and an enormous pond spanned by a bridge so

humped that, to cross it without taking off your shoes, you must cling

to the parapet. At Sakai there is the Buddhist temple of Myōkokuji,

in the garden of which are some very old palm-trees;--one of them,

removed by Nobunaga in the sixteenth century, is said to have cried

out and lamented until it was taken back to the temple. You see the

ground under these palms covered with what looks like a thick, shiny,

disordered mass of fur,--half reddish and half silvery grey. It is not

fur. It is a heaping of millions of needles thrown there by pilgrims

"to feed the palms," because these trees are said to love iron and to

be strengthened by absorbing its rust.

Speaking of trees, I may mention the Naniwaya "Kasa-matsu," or

Hat-Pine,--not so much because it is an extraordinary tree as because

it supports a large family who keep a little tea-house on the road

to Sakai. The branches of the tree have been trained out-wards and

downwards over a framework of poles, so that the whole presents the

appearance of an enormous green hat of the shape worn by peasants and

called Kasa. The pine is scarcely six feet high, but covers perhaps

twenty square yards;--its trunk, of course, not being visible at all

from outside the framework supporting the branches. Many people visit

the house to look at the pine and drink a cup of tea; and nearly every

visitor buys some memento of it,--perhaps a woodcut of the tree, or

a printed copy of verses written by some poet in praise of it, or a

girl's hairpin, the top of which is a perfect little green model ox

the tree,--framework of poles and all,--with one tiny stork perched on

it, The owners of the Naniwaya, as their tea-house is called, are not

only able to make a good living, but to educate their children, by the

exhibition of this tree, and the sale of such mementos.

*

I do not intend to tax my reader's patience by descriptions of the

other famous temples of Ōsaka,--several of which are enormously old,

and have most curious legends attached to them. But I may venture a

few words about the cemetery of the Temple of One Soul,--or better,

perhaps, the Temple of a Single Mind: Isshinji. The monuments there are

the most extraordinary I ever saw. Near the main gate is the tomb of

a wrestler,--Asahigorō Hachirō. His name is chiseled upon a big disk

of stone, probably weighing a ton; and this disk is supported on the

back of a stone image of a wrestler,--a grotesque figure, with gilded

eyes starting from their sockets, and features apparently distorted

by effort. It is a very queer thing,--half-comical, half-furious of

aspect. Close by is the tomb of one Hirayama Hanibei,--a monument

shaped like a _hyōtan,--_that is to say, like a wine-gourd such as

travelers use for carrying saké. The most usual form of _hyōtan_

resembles that of an hour-glass, except that the lower part is

somewhat larger than the upper; and the vessel can only stand upright

when full or partly full,--so that in a Japanese song the wine-lover is

made to say to his gourd, "_With you I fall._" Apparently the mighty

to drink wine have a district all to themselves in this cemetery; for

there are several other monuments of like form in the same row,--also

one shaped like a very large saké-bottle (_isshōdokkuri_),[5] on which

is inscribed a verse not taken from the sutras. But the oddest monument

of all is a great stone badger, sitting upright, and seeming to strike

its belly with its fore-paws. On the belly is cut a name, Inouyé

Dennosuké, together with the verse:--

Tsuki yo yoshi

Nembutsu tonaite

Hara tsudzumi.

Which means about as follows:--"On fine moonlight-nights, repeating

the Nembutsu, I play the belly-drum." The flower-vases are in the form

of saké-bottles. Artificial rock-work supports the monument; and here

and there, among the rocks, are smaller figures of badgers, dressed

like Buddhist priests (tanuki-bozu). My readers probably know that

the Japanese tanuki[6] is credited with the power of assuming human

shape, and of making musical sounds like the booming of a hand-drum

by tapping upon its belly. It is said often to disguise itself as

a Buddhist priest for mischievous purposes, and to be very fond of

saké. Of course, such images in a cemetery represent nothing more than

eccentricities, and are judged to be in bad taste. One is reminded

of certain jocose paintings and inscriptions upon Greek and Roman

tombs, expressing in regard to death--or rather in regard to life--a

sentiment, or an affectation of sentiment, repellent to modern feeling.

[Footnote 1: They defend the four quarters of the world. In Japanese

their names are Jikoku, Komoku, Zocho, Bishamon (or Tamon);--in

Sanscrit, Dhritarashtra, Virupaksha, Virudhaka, and Vaisravana,--the

Kuvera of, Brahmanism.]

[Footnote 2: The division of the sect during the seventeenth century

into two branches had a political, not a religious cause; and the

sections remain religiously united. Their abbots are of Imperial

descent, whence their title of Monzeki, or Imperial Offspring.

Travelers may observe that the walls inclosing the temple grounds of

this sect bear the same decorative mouldings as those of the walls of

the Imperial residences.]

[Footnote 3: This has been especially the case since the abrogation of

the civil laws forbidding priests to marry. The wives of the priests

of other sects than the Shinshū are called by a humorous and not very

respectful appellation.]

[Footnote 4: See Professor Chamberlain's translation of the Kojiki,

section CXXI.]

[Footnote 5: That is, a bottle containing one sho,--about a quart and a

half.]

[Footnote 6: Although _tanuki_ is commonly translated by "badger," the

creature so called is not a real badger, but a kind of fruit-fox. It is

also termed the "raccoon-faced dog." The true badger is, however, also

found in Japan.]

V

I said in a former essay that a Japanese city is little more than a

wilderness of wooden sheds, and Ōsaka is no exception. But interiorly

a very large number of the frail wooden dwellings of any Japanese city

are works of art; and perhaps no city possesses more charming homes

than Ōsaka. Kyoto is, indeed, much richer in gardens,--there being

comparatively little space for gardens in Ōsaka; but I am speaking of

the houses only. Exteriorly a Japanese street may appear little better

than a row of wooden barns or stables, but the interior of any dwelling

in it may be a wonder of beauty. Usually the outside of a Japanese

house is not at all beautiful, though it may have a certain pleasing

oddity of form; and in many cases the walls of the rear or sides are

covered with charred boards, of which the blackened and hardened

surfaces are said to resist heat and damp better than any coating of

paint or stucco could do. Except, perhaps, the outside of a coal-shed,

nothing dingier-looking could be imagined. But the other side of the

black walls may be an aesthetic delight. The comparative cheapness of

the residence does not much affect this possibility;--for the Japanese

excel all nations in obtaining the maximum of beauty with the minimum

of cost; while the most industrially advanced of Western peoples--the

practical Americans--have yet only succeeded in obtaining the minimum

of beauty with the maximum of cost! Much about Japanese interiors can

be learned from Morse's "Japanese Homes;" but even that admirable

book gives only the black-and-white notion of the subject; and more

than half of the charm of such interiors is the almost inexplicable

caress of color. To illustrate Mr. Morse's work so as to interpret the

colorific charm would be a dearer and a more difficult feat than the

production of Racinet's "Costumes Historique." Even thus the subdued

luminosity, the tone of perfect repose, the revelations of delicacy

and daintiness waiting the eye in every nook of chambers seemingly

contrived to catch and keep the feeling of perpetual summer, would

remain unguessed. Five years ago I wrote that a little acquaintance

with the Japanese art of flower arrangement had made it impossible for

me to endure the sight of that vulgarity, or rather brutality, which in

the West we call a "bouquet." To-day I must add that familiarity with

Japanese interiors has equally disgusted me with Occidental interiors,

no matter how spacious or comfortable or richly furnished. Returning

now to Western life, I should feel like Thomas-the-Rhymer revisiting a

world of ugliness and sorrow after seven years of fairyland.

It is possible, as has been alleged (though I cannot believe it),

that Western artists have little more to learn from the study of

Japanese pictorial art. But I am quite sure that our house-builders

have universes of facts to learn--especially as regards the treatment

and tinting of surfaces--from the study of Japanese interiors. Whether

the countless styles of these interiors can even be classed appears

to me a doubtful question. I do not think that in a hundred thousand

Japanese houses there are two interiors precisely alike (excluding,

of course, the homes of the poorest classes),--for the designer never

repeats himself when he can help it. The lesson he has to teach is the

lesson of perfect taste combined with inexhaustible variety. Taste!

--what a rare thing it is in our Western world!--and how independent of

material,--how intuitive,--how incommunicable to the vulgar! But taste

is a Japanese birthright. It is everywhere present,--though varying

in quality of development according to conditions and the inheritance

depending upon conditions. The average Occidental recognizes only

the commoner forms of it,--chiefly those made familiar by commercial

export. And, as a general rule, what the West most admires in Japanese

conventional taste is thought rather vulgar in Japan. Not that we are

wrong in admiring whatever is beautiful in itself. Even the designs

printed in tints upon a two-cent towel may be really great pictures:

they are sometimes made by excellent artists. But the aristocratic

severity of the best Japanese taste--the exquisite complexity of

its refinements in the determination of proportion, quality, tone,

restraint--has never yet been dreamed of by the West. Nowhere is this

taste so finely exhibited as in private interiors,--particularly in

regard to color. The rules of color in the composition of a set of

rooms are not less exacting: than the rules of color in the matter of

dress,--though permitting considerable variety. The mere tones of a

private house are enough to indicate its owner's degree of culture.

There is no painting, no varnishing, no wall-papering,--only staining

and polishing of particular parts, and a sort of paper border about

fifteen inches broad fixed along the bottom of a wall to protect it

during cleaning and dusting operations. The plastering may be made

with sands of different hues, or with fragments of shell and nacre, or

with quartz-crystal, or with mica; the surface may imitate granite,

or may sparkle like copper pyrites, or may look exactly like a rich

mass of bark; but, whatever the material, the tint given must show the

same faultless taste that rules in the tints of silks for robes and

girdles. ... As yet, all this interior world of beauty--just because it

is an interior world--is closed to the foreign tourist: he can find at

most only suggestions of it in the rooms of such old-fashioned inns or

tea-houses as he may visit in the course of his travels.

*

I wonder how many foreign travelers understand the charm of a Japanese

inn, or even think how much is done to please them, not merely in

the matter of personal attentions, but in making beauty for their

eyes. Multitudes write of their petty vexations,--their personal

acquaintance with fleas, their personal dislikes and discomforts;

but how many write of the charm of that alcove where every day fresh

flowers are placed,--arranged as no European florist could ever learn

to arrange flowers,--and where there is sure to be some object of real

art, whether in bronze, lacquer, or porcelain, together with a picture

suited to the feeling of the time and season? These little aesthetic

gratifications, though never charged for, ought to be kindly remembered

when the gift of "tea-money" is made. I have been in hundreds of

Japanese hotels, and I remember only one in which I could find nothing

curious or pretty,--a ramshackle shelter hastily put up to catch custom

at a newly-opened railway station.

A word about the alcove of my room in Osaka:--The wall was covered

only with a mixture of sand and metallic filings of some sort, but

it looked like a beautiful surface of silver ore. To the pillar was

fastened a bamboo cup containing a pair of exquisite blossoming sprays

of wistaria,--one pink and the other white. The kakemono--made with a

few very bold strokes by a master-brush--pictured two enormous crabs

about to fight after vainly trying to get out of each other's way;--and

the humor of the thing was enhanced by a few Chinese characters

signifying, _Wōko-sékai,_ or, "Everything goes crookedly in this world."