With its roots deep down in the mud, with its leaves often frankly ridiculous in the large uncouthness of their attitudes, with its beauty in no way ethereal, the lotus is yet the symbol of Death, not of Nirvana, but of Death, of the completing of one brief period in this long cycle which we call Life. So in Matsué they planted the moat of the castle with the flower of the lotus for the life of Old Japan, of castle and _daimyō_ and _samurai_, is ended. It is Death but a new Beginning. * * * * * Beyond the gateway, a grass-grown flight of granite steps leads to the castle, and we climb. All the castles in all Japan are the same, bigger or smaller, with details of decoration or style that differentiate them, they are yet in the broad outlines of their architecture one and the same. A Japanese house is Japanese, but the castle comes from China, at least originally, and its pagoda character is very evident. The castle at Matsué had its ground floor of stone, rough-hewn blocks of granite which fitted closely to each other without mortar. The stone storey, as all the succeeding ones of wood above it, tapered gradually inwards so that the topmost wooden storey would have fitted into the one below it, and that into the next, and all into the square stone box of the ground floor, as neatly as the nest of baskets sold in the streets of the town below. Inside, the rough-hewn stone walls were left as bare as the outside, and a long steep ladder of a staircase, which began abruptly in the middle of one floor to end with equal abruptness in the middle of the floor above, led from storey to storey. The stone storey was divided into two, the rest were of wood, and all now were absolutely bare and unadorned; the mere outer shell of a building which had once lived and sheltered lives. Only in the top floor, where on all four sides sliding panels of glass had replaced the rice-paper _shōji_, was there any sign of life. This room had been turned into a sort of Military Museum with relics of the China war, swords and guns, and a whole long series of wonderful coloured prints, with the Chinese always fleeing, their long, long pigtails floating in the breeze, the Japanese always pursuing with impossible profiles and highly polished boots; and gravely studying the pictures was a group of schoolboys. Their comments were mostly bloodthirsty; the best way of sticking the pink Chinaman on the left, or of beheading the yellow one on the right; but they did not seem moved with any animosity or any sense of triumph, they merely discussed the sword-cuts scientifically, seriously, as though it were a grave business of life and they wished to arrive at a right conclusion. * * * * *