Jinrikisha Days in Japan
Yama, a tiny temple on the edge of a precipitous hill-top, approached by men’s stairs, an air-line flight of broad steps, and women’s stairs, curving by broken flights of easier slope. A leper, with scaly, white skin and hideous ulcers, extends his miserable hand for alms, and picturesque, white-clad pilgrims, with staff and bell, go up and down those breathless flights. The tateba, with their rows of lanterns, where the nesans offer tea of salted cherry blossoms, that unfold again into perfect flowers in the bottom of the cup, overhang the precipice wall, and look down upon the Shiba quarter as upon a relief map.
A breathless rush of two miles or more straight across the city, past flying shops, beside the tooting tram-way and over bridges, and Sanjiro runs into Uyéno Park, with its wide avenues, enormous trees, and half-hidden temple roofs. The ground slopes away steeply at the left, and at the foot of the hill lies a lotus lake of many acres that is a pool of blossoms in midsummer. A temple and a tiny tea-house are on an island in the centre, and around the lake the race-course is overarched with cherry-trees. Great torii mark the paths and stairs leading from the shore to the temples above.
At Uyéno are more tombs and more sanctuaries, avenues of lanterns, bells, and drinking-fountains, and a black, bullet-marked gate-way, where the Yeddo troops made their last stand before the Restoration. Near this gate way is the sturdy young tree planted by General Grant. Far back in the park stand the mortuary temples, splendid monuments of Tokugawa riches and power, though the most splendid, here as at Shiba, have been destroyed by fire.
When the Tokio Fine Arts Club holds one of its loan exhibitions in its Uyéno Park house, Sanjiro is inexorable, deposits his fare at the door-way, shows the way to the ticket-office, and insists upon his seeing the best
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