and prized by
the Japanese for their odors, as well as for their colors, as the
plum, the chrysanthemum, the lotus, and the rose. The fragrance of
flowers is a frequent theme in Japanese poetry. Japanese ladies, like
those of every land, are fond of delicate scents. Cologne and kindred
wares find wide sale in Japan, and I am told that expensive musk is
not infrequently packed away with the clothing of the wealthy.

But in contrast to this appreciation is a remarkable indifference to
certain foul odors. It is amazing what horrid smells the cultivated
Japanese will endure in his home. What we conceal in the rear and out
of the way, he very commonly places in the front yard; though this is,
of course, more true of the country than of large towns or cities. It
would seem as if a high aesthetic development should long ago have
banished such sights and smells. As a matter of fact, however, the
aesthetics of the subject does not seem to have entered the national
mind, any more than have the hygienics of the same subject.

In explanation of these facts, may it not be that the Japanese method
of agriculture has been a potent hindrance to the aesthetic development
of the sense of smell? In primitive times, when wealth was small, the
only easy method which the people had of preserving the fertilizing
properties of that which is removed from our cities by the
sewer-system was such as we still find in use in Japan to-day. Perhaps
the necessities of the case have toughened the mental, if not the
physical, sense of the people. Perhaps the unaesthetic character of the
sights and smells has been submerged in the great value of fertilizing
materials. Then, too, with the Occidental, the thought is common that
such odors are indications of seriously unhealthful conditions. We are
accordingly offended not simply by the odor itself, but also by the
associations of sickness and death which it suggests. Not so the
unsophisticated Oriental. Such a correlation of ideas is only now
arising in Japan, and changes are beginning to be made, as a
consequence.

I cannot leave this point without drawing attention to the fact that
the development of the sense of smell in these directions is
relatively recent, even in the West. Of all the non-European nations
and races, I have no doubt Japan is most free from horrid smells and
putrid odors. And in view of our own recent emancipation it is not for
us to marvel that others have made little progress. Rat