Houses? Yes. Here the very sanctuary is a house. They have relegated the bones, sealed in a cylinder of bronze, to the high mountainside; but in this room, seated on the unalterable name, the soul of the dead continues a spectral habitation in obscure and secret splendor. Reversing the procedure which employs wood and stone and makes them of value without adding any strange element to their own properties, artifice has existed here only to annihilate its material. These enclosures, the sides of these boxes, these floors and ceilings, are no longer made of beams and planks but of certain opaque images conjured forth. Color decorates and adorns the wood, lacquer drowns it under impenetrable waters, paint covers it with enchantments, sculpture deeply undermines and transfigures it. An end of timber--the least spike appearing on the magic surface--is covered with arabesques and interlacing lines; but, as on screens we see trees in flower and mountains steeped in a radiant glow, these palaces emerge entirely golden. On the roofs, on the façades, which strike the full light of day, only the ridges are burnished with scattered brightness; but the sides are brightened in vast surfaces through the shadow; and inside also, the six walls of the box are painted with the splendors of hidden treasure, flaming brilliance revealed by numerous mirrors. Thus the magnificent shogun does not inhabit a house of mere wood, but his dwelling in the center of the forest is in the light of setting suns; and ambrosial incense abides beneath these sweeping boughs. Through the immense spaces of this region, deeply slumbering like a god amid its sea of trees, an occasional dazzling cascade plashes between the leaves, mingling with their ceaseless whisper. THE PEDESTRIAN In June, with a gnarled stick in my hand (like the god Bishamon), I am that mysterious passer-by who crosses the path of groups of simple, ruddy peasants; and, at six in the evening, while the storm-cloud in the sky endlessly continues its monstrous assault on the mountain, I am that lonely man one sees upon this abandoned road.