reason of Japan gradually supplanting us in certain cruder forms of
production should be abundantly compensated for in the better market
for our own higher-grade goods that we shall find among a people of
increasing wealth and steadily advancing standards of living.

In any fair contest for the world's trade there seems little reason to
fear any disastrous competition from Japan. Perhaps she has been
allowed to make the contest unfair in Manchuria or elsewhere, but
that, as Mr. Kipling would say, is another story.

Kobe, Japan.

{48}

VI

BUDDHISM, SHINTOISM, AND CHRISTIANITY IN JAPAN

One of the most fascinating places in all Japan is Kyoto, the old
capital of the empire, and one of its most picturesque and historic
cities. Without great factories such as Osaka boasts of, without the
political importance of Tokyo, and without shipping advantages such as
have made Kobe and Yokahoma famous, Kyoto is noted rather for
conserving the life of old Japan. Here are the family industries, the
handicrafts, and a hundred little arts in which the Land of the Rising
Sun excels.

Little themselves in stature, the people of Japan are best in dealing
with little things requiring daintiness, finish, and artistic taste.
Some one has said that their art is "great in little things and little
in great things," and unlike many epigrams, it is as true as it is
terse.

A traveler gets the impression that most of their shops, or "stores,"
as we say in America, are for selling bric-a-brac, toys, lacquer ware,
bronzes, or ornamental things of one kind or another; but perhaps this
is largely because they give an artistic or ornamental appearance to a
thousand utensils and household articles which in America would be raw
and plain in their obvious practicality. The room in which I write is
a fine illustration of this: finished in natural, unpainted woods,
entirely without "fussiness" or show, and yet with certain touches and
bits of wood carving that make it a work of art. Upon this point I
must again quote Lafcadio Hearn, whose {49} books, although often more
poetic and laudatory than accurate, are nevertheless too valuable to
be neglected by any student of Japan:

"It has been said that in a Greek city of the fourth century before
Christ every household utensil, even the most trifling object, was
in respect of design an object of art; and the same fact is true,
though in another and stranger way, of all things in a Japan