the man for whose sake she suffered, and so to this day the flower keeps its deep red heart.
Some of the ideas connected with flowers, which are not legends, are often very charming. The Mimosa, for instance, is called Nemu (‘The Sleeper’), as it shuts its leaves at a touch, and slumbers at night and until late in the spring. Maple leaves typify ‘Changing Love.’ A heartless beauty of the Yoshiwara (I do not believe that any other type of woman would do it, for cruelty and inconstancy are not traits of ordinary women in Japan) will sometimes send her lover a branch of the red leaves to signify that her affections have changed also. Prettier is the notion that a Maple leaf, five-fingered, delicately veined, resembles a baby’s hand, and that a girl who blushes has ‘scattered red leaves on her face.’
But there are legends, too, of the Maple, and Imperial ones at that. The Emperor Takakora-No-In had many of the trees which he loved planted at Kita-No-Jin, which he called Momiji Yama—that is, ‘Mount Maple Tree.’ Like many of us others, he loved to see the carpet of scarlet, bronze, and crimson leaves on the ground, and, perhaps, to shuffle through them with noisy feet, and so no gardeners were allowed to rake up or sweep away the fair matting that the night winds had laid down. But, alas! some gardener, incorrigibly neat, cleared them away—red leaves for the burning. The Emperor, luckily
