Next morning Moshi announced that his venerable parents resided ini Saga and that he would like to surprise them with a call; whereupon I gave him leave for the day, and started out to view the town by myself. It seemed adrowse in the sun, and did not put off that aspect while I stayed. Tie first thing to catch my eyes was a pair of very small children, brother and sister, trotting off to school under the shade of a very big paper umbrella. They stopped at once to make me such a pretty curtsey that I could have hugged them on the spot. Just outside - the inn, a mighty stone torii, flanked by a pair of massive squat stone lanterns, stood across the street. These were the -beginning of an avenue leading to the ancestral shrines of the: Nabeshimas, whose line in the old iron days lorded it over stag frovines front their strong castle j of Saga, That stronghold is now level with the ground; and its lotus-clad moats enclose a gingerbread prefecture of many windows. The shrines are locally known by the. name. of Hi-mo-miya.. I felt it my duty as a tourist to. pay them a visit; albeit, to. one fresh from China, temples are little alluring. Grand gnarled camphor trees,: standing - on either side of a moat, girdle-the place with stateliness. Their mighty-limbs had. just put on the tender yellow-green leafage of spring, The Nabestiima rest (like most Tapanese crests a gem of design), is soulptured conspicuously upon-lanterns, cisterns, and the ridges of the great curved roofs. Two things impress one here, as in all. the shrines of Shintso: the utter emptiness and that tint of dead grey which overlies everything, grey stone, grey tiles, grey sun-bleached woodwork; the ashen grey that makes all buildings in Japan look as old as Time.
As though to point the contrast between, old and new, there stands just across the way a smart official edifice, a police-station or something of the sort, in the bastard "European" style which denotes a Government construction as unmistakably as the gilded chrysanthemum over the Tu. nothing is modern Japan so unhappy' as in these architectural experi ments, so glaringly at war with all their surroundings. Fashioned after pompous and tasteless models, the miniature copies have something pretentiously prim that sets you laughing in spite of yourself.
Elsewhere I came upon a Buddhist temple, with pagoda in the grounds. The Japanese pagoda, unlike the Chinese, is square in plan; but that is not the striking difference.' In China the pagoda is always a huge and solid affair, insufferbly ugly until it is in ruins, In Japan it takes the local complexion, becoming dainty and toy-like. The concave temple roofs have also undergone perceptible change in crossing the Yellow Sea; the curve is very much flattened, and the upward curling sweep of the eave-corners cut short, to the great refreshment of the eye.
The roof, more than anything else, characterises a Japanese dwelling.
Most. them, indeed, are built-so low that at a little distance the roof is all you see. the heart of towns it is always tiled, and presents a massive neatness that is far from unpleasing, despite the monotony. But the thatched roof is what one never Wearies of looking at, so capriciously graceful, so fastidiously trim, so strange, yet'so cosy and home-like. In every district it has " different style, and you always think the last the prettiest.
Strolling about the streets, I would sometime catch, through wide-open casements, a glimpse of what seemed a fairylike garden in the rear. Closer looks invariably brought disappointment. These "gardens" are all alike; damp, dismal little spots, with a little path of irregular stepping-stones strewn over earth, bare of grest or flowers, 9 few evergreen trees dwarfed, clipped, and tortured out of shape, perhaps a grey stone lantern, or a piece of grotesque rockwork, or a little pool-of stagnant' water with a few sickly goldfish swimming in it. They are at once Chinese in their unlikeness of nature, and Japanese in their pettiness.
How fast the edge of novelty wears off! I was already beginning to feel at home in this singular country. Things were losing their quaintness. The houses and rooms no longer appeared 80 _preposterously. small. 'I began to think it quite natural to sit on the floor, and take my meals (without a cloth) at a table three inches high. I was learning to avoid the sacrilege - of defiling the snowy mats with crumbs,: or shreds' of paper. I was growing accustomed to beds which are a foot too short for Occidental limbs; and from which at first I used to wake up. with a pain through the middle of the chest. And the instinct of privacy, once so tyrannous, what.was becoming of it? To live in public would soon, 'I felt, be so much a matter of course as' everything else. For here privacy does not exist. How can it where three walls of every room are movable at a finger's: touch? Nobody ever knocks. or. makes sound of any kind before entering; just slides a panel and shows himself.
there is one' place where we ofthe West. reckon privacy an elementary need it is.the bath-room;-and-I will confess I could. not', leave. off finding it odd for a Servant maid. to unconcernedly while dried myself that she might take charge of the towel aid show me back to my room: - Such unconscious simplicity was very startling contrast indeed to the sickening prudishness of the Chinese.
(Zo be continued.)
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.