ridden to appeal to me as it should have done, is the great Pine tree at Karasaki, on the shores of Lake Biwa. It is hardly strange, however, that it should be considered sacred; for, reversing the old Greek adage, if the gods did not love this tree why has it lived so long? Again, such size, is it not miraculous? Murray says that the trunk is thirty-five feet in circumference, that it is ninety feet high, and that the length of its branches, from north to south, is two hundred and eighty-eight feet. To me it was a monstrous shambling Caliban, a caricature of the grandeur I expected. Crutches of bamboo and stone pillars supported its tottering old limbs, a silly little roof covered its bald spot up above, and the holes and cavities in its trunk had been stopped with plaster to prevent the spread of decay. We bought post-cards, and hated the place. The lofty spirit of Old Japan dwells not in that decrepit old hulk, which survives without dignity, lives without that beauty or joy or usefulness, which, if man or creature have not prolonged, life is but a mockery and a disgrace.
The Bamboo (Také), in addition to its almost limitless practical uses, has many pretty legends connected with it, and its place in decoration, in sentiment, and in poetic significance is an honourable one. Although it is a grass, and “in the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth,” yet long life, in Chinese (and, hence, in Japanese)
