of Fuji in Lake Hakone. Kage-Fuji, or "shadow Fuji," denotes a beautiful phenomenon, the gigantic shadow cast by the cone at sunrise on the sea of clouds and mist below. Hidari Fuji, "lefthanded Fuji," is the name given to the mountain at the village of Nango, for the reason that that is the only place on the Tokaido where, owing to a sharp twist in the road, Fuji appears on the left hand of the traveller bound from Tōkyō to Kyōto, instead of on his right. From 12,000 to 18,000 persons ascend Fuji yearly, the majority being pilgrims.
The foregoing items are merely jotted down haphazard, as specimens of the lore connected with Japan's most famous volcano. To do justice to it geologically, botanically, histori cally, archgeologically, would require a monograph at least as long as this volume.
Books recommended. Murray's Handbook for Japan, 7th edit., p. 164 et seq.—For beautiful collotypes of Fuji, see The Volcanoes of Japan, Part I. Fujisan, by Ogawa, Milne, and Burton.
Fun. Serious ideas do for export. A nation's fun is for home consumption only: it would evaporate before it could be convey ed across the border. For this reason, we must abandon the endeavour to give the foreign reader any full and particular account of the Japanese mind on its comic side. Perhaps the best plan would be to say what Japanese fun isn't. It certainly does not in the very faintest degree resemble French esprit, that child born of pure intellect and social refinement, and reared in the salon where conversation rises to the level of a fine art, where every word is a rapier, every touch light as air. Shall we compare it with the grim mixture which we Northerners call humour, the grotesque suffused with the pathetic? It may seem a little nearer akin to that. But no, it lacks alike the hidden tear and the self-criticism of humour: it has no irony, no side-lights. It is more like what we may picture to ourselves in the noisy revelling of the old Roman saturnalia, the broad jest, the outrageous pun, the practical joke, the loud guffaw,
"Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles,"
