shaded by black lacquer frames with paper panels, like the candle-stands at the Nagaoka home. Our gas heaters were already in bronze braziers so ingeniously set up that they looked like charcoal burners. Mother would have accepted everything new with the smiling philosophy of a lifetime, but I did not want her to “accept” things; I wanted everything to look homelike so she could fit in happily without effort.
The empty shrine I had been using for books and the children’s hats. Even Taki had not objected to “high objects,” as she called them, being placed there; for Japanese people are taught to respect books as “intellectual results,” and hats as pertaining to the revered “crown of the body.” But, nevertheless, she was unreservedly pleased when I removed the things and began to prepare the carved wooden alcove for the small belongings that Mother would bring with her from the large shrine at home.
“Where shall we put the shrine that Honourable Grandmother will bring?” asked Hanano, thinking of the elaborate gilded and lacquered cabinet in Uncle Otani’s home.
“It’s as easy for Honourable Grandmother to wrap up all the really necessary things for her shrine as it would be for a Christian to carry a Bible and a prayer book,” I answered; “and we will have this little alcove all fresh and clean for them. Honourable Grandmother loves the things that have been sacred to her through all the sorrows and joys of her life.”
“Do Honourable Grandmother’s God and our God know each other up in heaven?” asked Chiyo.
I was leaning in the alcove to brush a bit of dust off the carving, and Hanano replied.
“Of course they do, Chiyo,” she said. “Jesus had just as hard a time as the August Buddha did to teach people that God wants them to be good and kind and splendid.
