He also tells us about that Incense-Paradise of which every believer ought to be reminded by the perfume of earthly incense:—“In the Thirty-Second Vow for the Attainment of the Paradise of Wondrous Incense,” he says, “it is written: ‘_That Paradise is formed of hundreds of thousands of different kinds of incense, and of substances incalculably precious;—the beauty of it incomparably exceeds anything in the heavens or in the sphere of man;—the fragrance of it perfumes all the worlds of the Ten Directions of Space; and all who perceive that odor practise Buddha-deeds._’ In ancient times there were men of superior wisdom and virtue who, by reason of their vow, obtained perception of the odor; but we, who are born with inferior wisdom and virtue in these later days, cannot obtain such perception. Nevertheless it will be well for us, when we smell the incense kindled before the image of Amida, to imagine that its odor is the wonderful fragrance of Paradise, and to repeat the _Nembutsu_ in gratitude for the mercy of the Buddha.” IV But the use of incense in Japan is not confined to religious rites and ceremonies: indeed the costlier kinds of incense are manufactured chiefly for social entertainments. Incense-burning has been an amusement of the aristocracy ever since the thirteenth century. Probably you have heard of the Japanese tea-ceremonies, and their curious Buddhist history; and I suppose that every foreign collector of Japanese _bric-à-brac_ knows something about the luxury to which these ceremonies at one period attained,—a luxury well attested by the quality of the beautiful utensils formerly employed in them. But there were, and still are, incense-ceremonies much more elaborate and costly than the tea-ceremonies,—and also much more interesting. Besides music, embroidery, poetical composition and other branches of the old-fashioned female education, the young lady of pre-Meiji days was expected to acquire three especially polite accomplishments,—the art of arranging flowers, (_ikébana_), the art of ceremonial tea-making (_cha-no-yu_ or _cha-no-e_),[4] and the etiquette of incense-parties (_kō-kwai_ or _kō-é_). Incense-parties were invented before the time of the Ashikaga shōguns, and were most in vogue during the peaceful period of the Tokugawa rule. With the fall of the shōgunate they went out of fashion; but recently they have been to some extent revived. It is not likely, however, that they will again become really fashionable in the old sense,—partly because they represented rare forms of social refinement that never can be revived, and partly because of their costliness.