This is a little poem taken from the diary of a woman who died in Tokyo a year or two ago. She lived with her husband, a doorkeeper, on an income of £1 a month, and she was very delicate. She bore him three children, who all died shortly after birth; then the poor mother died herself. Her diary came into the possession of Lafcadio Hearn, who translated it under the title of “A Woman’s Tragedy.” This poem was composed on the death of the third baby and runs: “Tanoshimi mo Samété haka nashi. Haru no yumé.” “All my delight has perished, and hopeless I remain. It was a dream, a dream of spring.” Here is another poem which is more typically Japanese. It was composed by the same woman after the death of her second baby, and runs: “Sami daré ya Shimerigachi naru Sodé no tamoto wo.” “Oh, the month of rain; all things have become damp; the ends of my sleeve are wet.” Which being interpreted is: “Oh! the time of grief. All things now seem sad. The sleeves of my robe are moist with tears.”[1] [1] The long sleeve of a Japanese _kimono_ is always held before the face to hide emotion. It is this very allusiveness, this saying of something simple and commonplace, and hiding behind it a whole meaning of intense emotion, which makes this poem so typically Japanese, for Japanese art is always suggestive, it always needs the observer to bring his share of thought and mind to its interpretation. It is interesting to speculate how much the two most universally recognised characteristics of the Japanese, politeness and cleanliness, owe to their sense of art. If one looks into the psychology of the race, one sees, of course, that this national trait of exquisite politeness was built up, or at least assisted, in many ways. There was that stern training of the _samurai_ which taught eternal, never-ending self-control. There is the whole Buddhistic teaching, which is one long gospel of unselfishness and kindness. But other nations have had training in self-control, we ourselves among the number--think for a moment of the Puritans and our public schools. And other religions preach kindness and unselfishness, our own again, and yet there is no other nation so widely recognised, even by the snappiest of tourists who ever wrote his “memoirs,” as universally polite from the Emperor to the coolie in the streets. It is a hypothesis which I put forward with some hesitation, because the origins of national psychology are not for the amateur, but I do think that a certain stress is to be laid upon this innate and instinctive, but much cultivated sense of art. Has not the politeness something to do with that love of a beautiful outline, that desire for a perfect curve in the relations between man and man as well as between man’s eye and his drawing? Is not, in fact, a rude action a something inartistic in the social whole, a blot of crude colour that jars?