. Mysterious Japan; . en kimono sleeves;still another rises at the border of a pond so smallthat in a land less toylike it would hardly be a pond.;yet here it is adorned with grotesquely lovely rocksand overhanging leaves and blooms, and in themiddle of it, like as not, will be an island hardlylarger than a cartwheel, and on that island a stonelantern with a mushroom top, and reaching to itfrom the shore a delicate arched bridge of woodbeneath which drowsy carp and goldfish cruise,with trailing fins and rolling ruminative eyes. Just as one better understands Hokusai and Hi-roshige for having s
. Mysterious Japan; . en kimono sleeves;still another rises at the border of a pond so smallthat in a land less toylike it would hardly be a pond.;yet here it is adorned with grotesquely lovely rocksand overhanging leaves and blooms, and in themiddle of it, like as not, will be an island hardlylarger than a cartwheel, and on that island a stonelantern with a mushroom top, and reaching to itfrom the shore a delicate arched bridge of woodbeneath which drowsy carp and goldfish cruise,with trailing fins and rolling ruminative eyes. Just as one better understands Hokusai and Hi-roshige for having seen the coastal hills, one under-stands them better for having seen these magiclittle houses with their settings resembling so charm-ingly those miniature landscapes made with moss,gravel, small rocks, and dwarf trees, arranged inchina basins by a Japanese gardener, who is some-times so kind as to let us see his productions in awindow on Fifth Avenue. Often one feels thatJapan herself is hardly more than such a garden. Vitli his drum and his monkey he is Japans nearest equiva-lent for our old-style organ-grinder MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 23 on a larger scale. Over and over again one encoun-ters in the larger, the finish and fantastic beauty ofthe smaller garden. And when one does encounterit, one is happy to forget the politics and problemsof Japan, and to think of the whole country as acuriously perfect table decoration for the parlour ofthe world. And the children! Children everywhere! Childrenof the children Kipling wrote of thirty years ago,when he called Japan . . the land of Little Children, where the Babies are the Kings. Of course we had heard about the who writes about Japan, or comes homeand talks about Japan, tells you about them. Yetsomehow you must witness the phenomenon beforeyou grasp the fact of their astonishing the statistics, showing that the populationof Japan increases at the rate of from 400,000 to700,000 every year, dont begin to m
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookpublishergarde, bookyear1922
