“Where on the one hand is the province of Kai, And on the other the province of Suruga, Right in the midst between them Stands out the high peak of Fuji. The very clouds of Heaven dread to approach it; Even the soaring birds reach not its summit in their flight. Its burning fire is quenched by the snow; The snow that falls is melted by the fire. No words may tell of it, no name know I that fits it, But a wondrous Deity it surely is. * * * * * Of Yamato, the Land of Sunrise, It is the Peace-Giver, it is the God, it is the Treasure. On the peak of Fuji, in the land of Suruga, Never weary I of gazing.” Japanese poet, eighth century. (“Japanese Literature,” by W. G. Aston.) I PROLOGUE From Pole to Pole the waters of the wide Pacific surge, unending and alone. Over the shifting plain the silence of the ocean broods. Here is man nothing; for the endless spaces of the ocean, the self-sufficiency of the unresting sea remain for ever outside of man, coldly non-human. A river or a hill can be loved into companionship, but the sea stays always strange. Without ends or boundaries, the shifting waters sweep from Pole to Pole, solitary, changeless. Only the curve of the earth itself, or the weakness of man’s eyesight draws imaginary boundaries on the horizon. And the waste of the waters lies empty and still. Coldly blue is the sea below, and the sky shutting down is blue too and bare. Two empty infinities which meeting set bounds to each other. And within there is nothing. Only space; blue, bare space. “In the beginning,” says the Scripture, “the waters below were separated from the waters above,” and out of the void came this world of two dimensions, so cold, blue and beautiful. It is immensity--empty. Then did the spirit of God move on the face of the waters, move slowly and pass. Into the empty blue came a white, still splendour. Softly it grew in the dome of the sky, unreal in its beauty. But two pale curves that stayed in the heavens, as the wandering snowflake seems to rest on its fall. Midway between blue and blue it stayed, this soft white splendour, stayed dreaming a pause. For the spirit of God had passed; and the empty, blue vastness was filled with a sense of joy and elation. Earth’s fairest presence had risen high to the heavens. And it lay, two curving lines of exquisite splendour, breathed light on the sky; and white as the wing of a gull in the gleam of the sunshine, all shining with whiteness. And the infinite plane of the waters stretches on to the Poles. And the endless space of the sky wraps the water around. But the empty, blue vastness is gone. It is blue sea. It is sky. They are framing a world, for Lord Fuji has come.