There was not in all this shopful of precious stones anything to wear. A few crystal hairpins, a few “foreign” studs, but no jewellery as we understand it. The Japanese never wear jewellery; neither rings, nor bracelets, nor chains, nor pins, nor brooches, nor tiaras--nothing. One wonders how much crime and heart-burning has the nation missed. Precious stones they have, but they buy and keep them for their shape or for their colour, as a picture or a bronze, not to adorn themselves. All the rest of the world, in all times, barbarous and civilised, have fought and stolen, slain and ruined themselves just to heap upon their fingers or their heads strings of gleaming stones. In this island-empire alone men and women have looked at precious stones, have handled and admired, but never worn them. One wonders was it purely the artistic instinct of the race which kept them from it, or the stern morality of the _samurai_, preaching denial and self-control. And again one wonders if too much jewellery be barbaric, where in the scale of civilisation does a nation come that wears none at all? Surely art can produce worthier things than jewellery, and are not morals better without it? * * * * * Our inn was full of guests, quite full, and all the rooms have paper panels. There are no keys, no locks, no bolts, the whole inn, were it so minded, could go in and out of every room; and yet we all sleep in peace and quite secure. It is true that an innkeeper here must bear an unblemished character or his house is shut, and that the guests often come with a letter from their last innkeeper, but not always, and yet we all sleep with half an inch of rice-paper between us, and walls of sliding panels. Could a hotelful of civilised Europeans be so trusted? If not to steal, then not to pry as well? But here nobody looks. Although we have become great personages indeed, nobody looks. And in the big towns as in the country villages, in railway hotels as in this remote corner of the Land of the Gods, we have slept in absolute security in rooms that are always open. Only once in all our wanderings did someone push the _shōji_. It was an _Ijin San_ who thought it was “a lark.” * * * * *