f. In the shed the model of a junk was placed. Near it were ink and
small strips of paper. The junk was designed to receive poems on the
beauty of the iris and of the garden.

Nothing disturbs in a Japanese landscape. It is the harmonic combination
of untouched naturalness and high artistic cultivation. The tea-houses owe
much of their charm to the absence of paint. The benches, lintels, the
posts, are uncoloured, except by age. The white mats and the paper screens
act as a foil to the bright flashes of the musmes--waiting-girls--who move
noiselessly through the rooms like gigantic butterflies flitting to and
fro. The iris blooms are a rich mass of colour of blue and white, and the
gardener has exhausted his art in pruning all the unnecessary growths
without leaving a trace of his handiwork. The ride back was delightful.
Tokio at night is seen at its best; the river is then more fascinating.
Huge junks, with a solitary light at the masthead, glide by--fantastic
shadows in the purple haze. The tea-houses, with their festoons of
lanterns and orange interiors, in which one caught glimpses of singing
girls in their brilliant dresses, gleamed like golden patches in the cool
purple. The bridges sparkled with lights; the shops were bright with
colour; and all through the city, to enjoy the coolness of the night air,
groups of citizens were seated in the streets chattering as gaily and as
light-heartedly as only the Japs can.

[Illustration: IRIS GARDEN]

FLOWER ARRANGEMENT

CHAPTER VII

FLOWER ARRANGEMENT

One of the chief characteristics of the Japanese, which especially
distinguishes them from Europeans, is their intense fondness for
flowers--not the fondness which many English people affect, but an
instinctive love of the beautiful, and a poetical appreciation of
symbolism. The Japanese nature is artistic in essence, and in no more
delightful manner is the art of the people expressed than in the
cultivation of flowers. Flowers to them are a source of infinite and
unending joy, of which the chief pleasure lies in their proper placing
and arrangement. Every common Japanese workman, every fan-worker or
metal-worker, has some little flower carefully placed beside him at his
work; he loves and prunes and cares for it.

If you dine out with a friend you will be seated, not on the right-hand
side of the past-middle-age lady of the house, but near some beautiful
flower. The "honoured interior" would never have