ted in a large
fishing boat running before the wind. A sturdy woman was at the helm
and her naked young family was sprawling about the craft.

Someone spoke of villagers of the mainland "failing to realise that
they now possessed the privilege of self-government." I was reminded
of the pleasant way of the headman of a village assembly in the
Loochoos, Japan's oldest outlying possession. He assembles or used to
assemble his colleagues in his courtyard and appear there with a draft
of proposed legislation. They bowed and departed and the Bill had
become an Act.

Although we were already within the territorial waters of Hiroshima
prefecture, we determined not to make the mainland at once but to stay
the night at the famous island which is called both Miyajima (shrine
island) and Itsukushima (taboo island), and is considered to be one of
the three most noteworthy sights in Japan. Photographs and drawings of
the shrine with its red colonnades on piles by the shore and its big
red _torii_ standing in the sea are as familiar as representations of
Fuji. It used to be the custom to prevent as far as possible births
and deaths occurring on the island. Even now, funerals, dogs and
kuruma are prohibited. The iron lanterns of the shrine and galleries
and a hundred more in the pine tree-studded approaches are undoubtedly
"a most magnificent spectacle at full tide on a moonless night"; but
what of the subservience to the profitable foreign tourist seen in
this shrine notice?--

_Zori_ (straw sandals), _geta_ (wooden pattens) and all footgear
_except shoes and boots_ are forbidden.

One is attracted by the idea of listening to music and watching dances
which came from afar in the seventh or eighth centuries, but the
business-like tariff,

Ordinary music, 12 sen to 5 yen,
Special music and dance, 10 yen and upwards,
Lighting all lanterns, 9 yen,

is calculated to take one out of the atmosphere of Hearn's dreams. The
deities of the shrine get along as best they can with the raucous
sirens of the tourist steamers, the din of the motor boats and the
boom of the big guns which are hidden at the back of the island and
make of Miyajima and its vicinity "a strategic zone" in which
photography, sketching or the too assiduous use of a notebook is
forbidden. Alas, I had myself arrived in a steamer which blew its
siren loudly, and in the morning I crossed from the holy isle to the
mainland in a motor launch.

The name of Yamaguchi