piles of thin volumes in soft bindings of blue or brown. I have not
mentioned a Rembrandt drawing and next to it the vigorous but restful
brush lines of an artist priest of the century that brought Buddhism
to Japan; severe little gilt-bronze figures of deities from China, a
little older; pottery figures of exquisite beauty from the tombs of
Tang, a little later; Sung pottery, a dynasty farther on; Korai
celadons from Korean tombs of the same epoch; and whites and blue and
whites of Ming and Korean Richo. On the wall a black and yellow tiger
is "burning bright" on a strip of blood-red silk tapestry woven on a
Chinese loom for a Taoist priest 500 years ago. Cimabue's portrait of
St. Francis breathes over Yanagi's writing desk from one side, while
from the other Blake's amazing life mask looks down "with its Egyptian
power of form added to the intensity of Western individualism." These
are Yanagi's silent friends. His less quiet friends of the flesh have
felt that this room was a sanctuary and Yanagi a priest of eternal
things, but a priest without priestcraft, a priest living joyously in
the world. Above his desk is inscribed the line of Blake:

Thou also, dwellest in eternity

and Kepler's aspiration, "My wish is that I may perceive God whom I
find everywhere in the external world in like manner within and
without me."

FOOTNOTES:

[107] One of the reasons assigned for the suicide of the General was
thoughts of his responsibility for the terrible slaughter in the
assaults on Port Arthur.