it commands a monopoly price, and can only be procured
by the wealthy. In Japan this is not the case, for the cheapest of
things may be found in graceful and artistic designs,--indeed can
hardly be found in any designs that are not graceful and artistic; and
the poorest and commonest of the people may have about them the little
things that go to cultivate the aesthetic part of human nature. It was
not the costly art of Japan that interested me the most, although that
is, of course, the most wonderful proof of the capacity and patience of
individuals among this heimin class: but it was the common, cheap,
every-day art that meets one at every turn; the love for the beautiful,
in both nature and art, that belongs to the common coolie as well as to
the nobleman. The cheap prints, the blue and white towels, the common
teacups and pots, the great iron kettles in use over the fire in the
farmhouse kitchen,--all these are things as pretty and tasteful in their
way as the rich crepes, the silver incense burners, the delicate
porcelain, and the elegant lacquer that fill the storehouse of the
daimi[=o]; and they show, much more conclusively than these costlier
things, the universal sense of beauty among the people.

The artisan works at his home, helped less often by hired laborers than
by his own children, who learn the trade of their father; and his
house, though small, is clean and tasteful, with its soft mats, its
dainty tea service, its little hanging scroll upon the walls, and its
vase of gracefully arranged flowers in the corner; for flowers, even in
winter and in the great city of T[=o]ky[=o], are so cheap that they are
never beyond the reach of the poorest. In homes that seem to the foreign
mind utterly lacking in the comforts and even the necessities of life,
one finds the few furnishings and utensils beautiful in shape and
decoration; and the money that in this country must be spent in beds,
tables, and chairs can be used for the purchase of _kakemonos_, flowers,
and vases, and for various gratifications of the aesthetic taste. Hence
it is that the Japanese laborer, who lives on a daily wage which would
reduce an American or European to the verge of starvation, finds both
time and money for the cultivation of that sense of beauty which is too
often crushed completely out of the lower classes by the burdens of this
nineteenth century civilization which they bear upon their shoulders. To
the Japanese, the "life is more th