All the long dadoes are carved elaborately and of exquisite workmanship, and the fretted ceilings are charming in design and colouring. They are as a rule of dark beams, framing gilt grounds; the carving and bronze casts are finely executed. We finished our wanderings in a delightful little garden, which is Japanese indeed in the highest degree. There is a tiny pond, no larger than a good-sized basin, surrounded by a rockery imitating Fuji; and across an almost imaginary stream a few inches wide is thrown a wooden bridge. Everything is minute: even the little rustic summer-house is no larger than that of a doll. It is a Lilliputian world of its own. Even the trees are dwarfs; but the Japanese imagination makes everything large. If any one is interested in the Japanese mind and its imaginative qualities, the best fields of study are some of these famous gardens laid out by the great aesthetes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; men of undoubted refinement and culture, some being statesmen retired from the excitement of political life, and many Mikados seeking rest in solitude, after the glitter and pomp of the Court. Their gardens simply consisted of a few square yards of ground, surrounded by a plain bamboo hedge, a log house built of a few planks, and consisting of two rooms, with gravel scattered before the doorways, and a few tiny bushes growing round. Small and simple, I dare say primitive to European eyes, but to a Japanese mind these shrubs represent a virgin forest, the log house is a palace, the gravel court unlimited sea, and the stepping-stones so many islands. With their love of artistic refinement and elaborate civilization, they look through the shades of broken prisms, and scent perfumes of different compositions, and build up a whole imaginary world of dainty colours and exquisite odours. But who, coming from the West, would ever understand any of these details of an historical past and ancient customs and strange manifestations of national culture? And who, returning from one of these gardens, so full of reminiscences of old Japan, to the modern streets, would understand how the new towns are being built up of brick and steel, and how the whole nation is changed by hard work and boundless energy? And above all, who can at this moment explain or understand all the progress of modern Japan and fully realize all its future importance? [Illustration: A TYPICAL NIPPON BUILDING Small and simple, I dare say primitive to European eyes, but to a Japanese mind the log house represents a palace" To face page 312] XIII JAPAN AND CHINA ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY I JAPAN