Again, there is a fable (in a Nō play) of the Angel and the Pine Tree. An Angel (or ‘Fairy,’ as Mr. Chamberlain translates it) came to a Pine forest, and, for some reason not explained, hung her coat of feathers on one of the Pines and left it there while she climbed up a near-by mountain to look at Fujiyama. This show of æsthetic taste and praiseworthy confidence in man was hardly rewarded as it should have been, for she got back just in time to find a fisherman making off with the robe.[1] With great politeness she begged its return, as without her feathery garments she would not be able to fly back to her home in the moon. With an equal show of courtesy the fisherman promised to restore it to her if she would first dance for him. So, draped in her light and beautiful dress of feathers, beneath the great Pines on the sandy beach she pirouetted and floated, and at last, on fairy wings, disappeared into the evening sky.
Yet again, there is the story of the White Rose with a Red Centre. A beautiful princess loved the wrong man, so a Buddha turned her lovely white body into a pure white Rose, but her heart still beat red and warm for love of
- ↑ I can hardly credit this story, however well vouched for. In my many journeyings in Japan I have never yet had anything stolen, and in long rambling or sketching expeditions in the country we have all of us left coats, umbrellas, paints, and Japanese cushions half-way along our route to be called for on our way back, and they have never been disturbed.
