. Nine years in Nipon. Sketches of Japanese life and manners. ng a love song, inwhich the heart of a sighing swain is made to leap withtender joy as the dear little tootsicums of his adored onecome pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat! down the alley. I thinkthat poet had genuine imagination. Rarely, very rarely now (1873), you may see a depressedand mournful samurai^ or knight of the two-swords, withbasin - shaped hat, the prominent andrichly-adorned hilt of his keen razor-likeblade sticking out from his silken girdle,with which in better days he had everbeen ready to maintain the honour ofhis lord; and besi
. Nine years in Nipon. Sketches of Japanese life and manners. ng a love song, inwhich the heart of a sighing swain is made to leap withtender joy as the dear little tootsicums of his adored onecome pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat! down the alley. I thinkthat poet had genuine imagination. Rarely, very rarely now (1873), you may see a depressedand mournful samurai^ or knight of the two-swords, withbasin - shaped hat, the prominent andrichly-adorned hilt of his keen razor-likeblade sticking out from his silken girdle,with which in better days he had everbeen ready to maintain the honour ofhis lord; and beside it, cross - wise,another little one almost like a stiletto,with which he was even now ready in amoment to defend his own, in the saddest^ ^ , and, to us westerns, strans^est way. Few A Samurai. ^ o • out of Japan have any idea of the dis-tress that multitudes of those often unwise, but in manyrespects cultured, noble, and high-minded men have hadto endure before they could bring themselves to part witha trusty weapon, which had been notched and bent in. 34 Ni7ie Years in Nipon. many a fray, to some cold curio hunter. Thoseknights of the so recent feudal age of Japan arefast falling into other ways, hiring themselves outas common servants, or going, often rashly, withtheir slender savings into mean trade. What an un-worked mine is here for the future Walter Scott of Japan ;stores of living feudal romances in this prosaic nineteenthcentury of ours ! The costumes of the people in this evidently transi-tional period, are very amusing and suggestive. Themost original combinations of Eastern and Westernideas occur in every few yards of our progress,more notable usually than picturesque or may thus see an intelligent young fellow, perhapsa clerk in a merchants office, with the newest style of felthat from Paris or London, an antique Japanese robe ofsilk, wooden pattens of great height, and a common bath-towel carefully wound around his neck for a comforter;if the gil
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