what any well-advised person will cross these seas to seek. Even so fascinating a country as Japan cannot provide everything. The charm here is in the street life of the lower classes, the kindliness of the simple country folk, the delicate art adorning each common object of every-day life, the parks of cherry-blossom that break the monotony of the cities, the trim chrysanthemum gardens, above all the enchanting scenery,—those giant cedars that overshadow moss-grown shrines, those volcanic cones of ineffably graceful logarithmic curve, those torrents to be crossed warily on stepping-stones or on "hanging bridges" stretched like a spider's thread and trembling at every step, and the breezy uplands carpeted with wild flowers and re-echoing with the carolling of nightingales and larks, and the summer hills around which the vapours twirl in grey semi-diaphanous garlands, and the valleys of mingled scarlet maple and deepest green, whose pinnacled rock-walls zigzag the sky with their sharply serrated line. Surely the catalogue of Japan's perfections is sufficiently long and goodly. But when your cultured soul begins to sigh for the delights of the drawing-room and the concert-hall, you had better invest in a ticket home.
Story-tellers. Though the Japanese are a nation of readers, they love also to listen to the tales of the professional story teller, who is quite an artist in his way. The lower sort of story-teller may be seen seated at the street-corner, with a circle of gaping coolies round him. The higher class form guilds who own special houses of entertainment called yose, and may also be engaged by the hour to amuse private parties. Some story-telling is rather in the nature of a penny reading. The man sits with an open book before him and expounds it,—the story of the Forty-seven Rōnins perhaps, or the Chinese novel of the "Three Kingdoms" (Sangoku Shi), or an account of the Satsuma rebellion, or of the old wars of the Taira and Minamoto families in the Middle Ages;—and when he comes to some particularly good point, he emphasises it by a rap with his fan
