sportsman, who knows that, game-laws or no game-laws, the wild fowl
will never fail in winter; and the days are long past when my Lord the
Shogun used to ride forth with a mighty company to the wild places
about Mount Fuji, there camping out and hunting the boar, the deer,
and the wolf, believing that in so doing he was fostering a manly and
military spirit in the land.

There is one serious drawback to the enjoyment of the beauties of the
Japanese country, and that is the intolerable affront which is
continually offered to one's sense of smell; the whole of what should
form the sewerage of the city is carried out on the backs of men and
horses, to be thrown upon the fields; and, if you would avoid the
overpowering nuisance, you must walk handkerchief in hand, ready to
shut out the stench which assails you at every moment.

It would seem natural, while writing of the Japanese country, to say a
few words about the peasantry, their relation to the lord of the soil,
and their government. But these I must reserve for another place. At
present our dealings are with the pretty village of Meguro.

At the bottom of a little lane, close to the entrance of the village,
stands an old shrine of the Shintô (the form of hero-worship which
existed in Japan before the introduction of Confucianism or of
Buddhism), surrounded by lofty Cryptomerias. The trees around a Shintô
shrine are specially under the protection of the god to whom the altar
is dedicated; and, in connection with them, there is a kind of magic
still respected by the superstitious, which recalls the waxen dolls,
through the medium of which sorcerers of the middle ages in Europe,
and indeed those of ancient Greece, as Theocritus tells us, pretended
to kill the enemies of their clients. This is called _Ushi no toki