sculptured with image of Bodhisattva Mahâsthâma

137 Illustrations in the Text Kanétataki (“The Bell-Ringer”), natural size 57 Matsumushi, slightly enlarged 60 Suzumushi, slightly enlarged 63 Umaoi, natural size 67 Kirigirisu, natural size 68 Kusa-hibari, natural size 69 Yamato-suzu (“Little-Bell of Yamato”), natural size 69 Kin-hibari, natural size 70 Kuro-hibari, natural size 70 Emma-kōrogi, natural size 71 Emma-kōrogi 72 Kutsuwamushi, natural size 73 Kantan, natural size 75

Exotics

—“Even the worst tea is sweet when first made from the new leaf.”—Japanese proverb.

Exotics and Retrospectives

Fuji-no-Yama

The most beautiful sight in Japan, and certainly one of the most beautiful in the world, is the distant apparition of Fuji on cloudless days,—more especially days of spring and autumn, when the greater part of the peak is covered with late or with early snows. You can seldom distinguish the snowless base, which remains the same color as the sky: you perceive only the white cone seeming to hang in heaven; and the Japanese comparison of its shape to an inverted half-open fan is made wonderfully exact by the fine streaks that spread downward from the notched top, like shadows of fan-ribs. Even lighter than a fan the vision appears,—rather the ghost or dream of a fan;—yet the material reality a hundred miles away is grandiose among the mountains of the globe. Rising to a height of nearly 12,500 feet, Fuji is visible from thirteen provinces of the Empire. Nevertheless it is one of the easiest of lofty mountains to climb; and for a thousand years it has been scaled every summer by multitudes of pilgrims. For it is not only a sacred mountain, but the most sacred mountain of Japan,—the holiest eminence of the land that is called Divine,—the Supreme Altar of the Sun;—and to ascend it at least once in a life-time is the duty of all who reverence the ancient gods. So from every district of the Empire pilgrims annually wend their way to Fuji; and in nearly all the provinces there are pilgrim-societies—Fuji-Kō,—organized for the purpose of aiding those desiring to visit the sacred peak. If this act of faith cannot be performed by everybody in person, it can at least be performed by proxy. Any hamlet, however remote, can occasionally send one representative to pray before the shrine of the divinity of Fuji, and to salute the rising sun from that sublime eminence. Thus a single company of Fuji-pilgrims may be composed of men from a hundred different settlements.

By both of the national religions Fuji is held in reverence. The Shintō deity of Fuji is the beautiful goddess Ko-no-hana-saku-ya-himé,—she who brought forth her children in fire without pain, and whose name signifies “Radiant-blooming-as-the-flowers-of-the-trees,” or, according to some commentators, “Causing-the-flowers-to-blossom-brightly.” On the summit is her temple; and in ancient books it is recorded that mortal eyes have beheld her hovering, like a luminous cloud, above the verge of the crater. Her viewless servants watch and wait by the precipices to hurl down whomsoever presumes to approach her shrine with unpurified heart.... Buddhism loves the grand peak because its form is like the white bud of the Sacred Flower,—and because the eight cusps of its top, like the eight petals of the Lotos, symbolize the Eight Intelligences of Perception, Purpose, Speech, Conduct, Living, Effort, Mindfulness, and Contemplation.

But the legends and traditions about Fuji, the stories of its rising out of the earth in a single night,—of the shower of pierced-jewels once flung down from it,—of the first temple built upon its summit eleven hundred years ago,—of the Luminous Maiden that lured to the