A Fantasy of Far Japan; Or, Summer Dream Dialogues. Kencho Suematsu
in the suburbs, who make this kind of business their regular occupation, and therefore the occasion is more properly considered as the gardeners' evening. Sweets, toys, and small light objects for domestic use are sold, and there are different kinds of entertainments as well. The nature of your evening fêtes seems very different. In fact, I have not seen any plants or flowers sold there.'
—'The difference seems remarkable; but what do you do with those plants and flowers?'
—'There is a difference between our common people and yours. You see the bulk of those who frequent the fête in Tokio are ordinary townspeople. They buy the plants or flowers for a small sum of money; when first offered for sale a high price is asked, but it is quite an understood thing to bargain and at last to buy at a very low price. The more advanced the evening, the cheaper one can get them. The bargaining at these fêtes is so lively that it has become proverbial, and people often say, this or that is not like buying night-fête plants. It is, however, a mistake if one were to suppose bargaining is a common thing at every shop in Japan, as in Italy or Egypt. Well, these people, however moderate their means, purchase one or other of the plants or flowers and take them home, and plant them either in their small gardens or in pots and vessels, and place them in their rooms. Some plants or flowers are already planted in a tasteful manner in pots or vessels of different shapes, so that they may be used as they are. The people are very happy with these objects. In summer and autumn all sorts of singing insects[1] are sold in pretty little cages. In the Orient, unlike in the Occident, the term insect itself is very poetic, and conveys more of the significance of the singing than of the object itself.'
—'I have always heard that your people in general are very artistic,' said she. 'I should like to follow their sentiments in regard to nature. For instance, when we look at the moon we sometimes become very sentimental.'
—'You mean in such cases as the night-scene where sweet Jessica and her lover Lorenzo sang "In such a night, in such a night as this."'
—'Exactly.'
—'Well, in that respect,' I answered, 'we are perhaps more developed than other peoples. Even the etymology of our language proves it. We have such terms as Hanami, that is a flower-seeing; Tsukimi, that is moon-seeing; and Yukimi, that is, snow-seeing. You have phrases such as "to see the flowers," "to see the moon," and "to see the snow," but these are hardly an equivalent. Our phrases imply a deeper feeling, both poetical and artistic; may even imply an act of seeing those objects in the company of congenial friends. The snow is, as I indicated, one of these sights. Apropos of snow, I went to Richmond once in company with a few compatriots, to see the snow-scene in the park there, whence one commands a beautiful view of the river Thames. Many years afterwards I was asked if we had snow in my country (you know this kind of question is asked of us very often). I answered "Yes." Thereupon a lady, who happened to remember that I had gone to Richmond to see the snow there years ago, abruptly remarked, "Oh! I thought you had no snow in your country." When I replied, "What makes you think so," she said, "Because you went to Richmond on purpose to see the snow." I had then to explain that our excursion to Richmond was not because we did not know what snow was, but because we liked to see the sight. We do not get tired of seeing such scenes any more than you Europeans get tired of going to the opera, to see, or rather to hear the same opera over and over again, as for instance Faust.'
—'But at the opera we can satisfy our sense of sight as well as that of hearing,' said a young lady, 'but what of the snow! It has no colour, being white—it has no sound: besides, the season must be cold and the very sight of it must be chilling.'
—'You are partly right, I admit, but is not white the very ideal of purity? Are you not very fond of it? Do not you ladies like wearing pure white dresses? Are you not wearing one at this very moment? We Japanese are very fond of white. The ideal colour of Shintoism is white. According to that creed, even for mourning, white is preferred to black. It suggests a notion of cleanliness, which is the essence of the creed. Besides, you cannot surely say opera boxes are ideally comfortable. They are not cold, it is true, but certainly they are generally stifling. One sees there scenery, but what is it compared with the grandeur of nature. Then again, you cannot exactly say snow has no sound. We, in our poetry, speak of the music of falling snow, or the music of dropping rain. Those sounds are considered especially musical in the depth of night: we even poetise the sounds of falling hailstones. There is a well-known poem on a hailstorm composed some seven centuries ago. It is a short poem, as ours usually are, but to us it gives a deep impression, and animates a martial spirit. It is difficult to translate, but it runs somewhat like this:
"Oh see in this wilderness of vast Nasu
How the hailstones dash on the frozen ground!
And ring on the gauntlets of hunters bold
As they draw their arrows from leathern fold!"
—'Many hundred years after this poem was composed, when our country was enjoying a perfect peace, a well-known statesman, reflecting on that poem, gave his own bent of thought, as follows:
"Not knowing the age when hailstones rang
On the gauntlets of warriors' hands;
Warmly enveloped I lay me down,
Listening all night to their dropping sound."
—'Apropos of hailstones, what a strange occurrence it was the other day, when hailstones ravaged the vicinity of Paris, and that too in the height of summer. I met a compatriot and his wife, now staying near St. Germain, at a small gathering on the evening of the same day, and they described the size of the stones and the damage done to the glass of the different houses. At first no one present believed them, but my friends did their best to explain that some of the stones they picked up and put on a tray were still large when they had left their home several hours afterwards. What they said was perfectly true, for I read in the papers next morning that in some places the hailstones were like eggs and weighed on an average from twenty to forty grammes; some even two hundred grammes. But ah! how silly I am to tell you all this, as you must all be well aware of it.'
—'Never mind,' said those present, 'but please proceed with your discourse.'
—'Well, there is a particular night of the year which is considered the best for the moon-scene; the 15th of August by the Lunar Calendar. The people generally get up a small social gathering to celebrate that evening. It was on one of those occasions that Hanawa, the celebrated blind scholar of Japan, gently sang as he sighed:
"If it were a flower, I might touch it."
'The line does not sound very sympathetic when translated into a foreign language, but in the original Japanese it is full of poetry, and the meaning is understood that he could not even console himself by the sense of touch. The remark was overheard by his wife, who pathetically joined him by singing:
"This Moon! 'tis the night that makes blind men's wives weep."
—'Very fine and pathetic; but you said just now "celebrated blind scholar,"' remarked a lady. 'What do you mean by that? Do you mean to say he was a blind poet like Homer?'
—'No, he was not exactly a poet, but a great scholar. In England there was a celebrated blind scholar, Fawcett, and Hanawa was our Fawcett. He was a Professor under the Shogunate Government, and one of the best and largest collections of rare old Japanese books made by him was his crowning achievement, and we are all much indebted to him.'
—'I suppose there are as many blind, deaf, and dumb in your country as in any other?' asked another; 'and what do they do, or rather, what do you do with them?'
—'There are some deaf, dumb, and blind schools at present, and those, among them, who are fortunate, are educated there as in Europe. There was no such school in former days, but much care was taken of the blind, even more than at present.'
—'In what way?' asked she.
—'In former days the blind had several privileges. In the first place, there was a special order consisting of several degrees, which was bestowed on meritorious blind people; next, there was a law which protected blind men when lending money, so that they had great facility in getting