Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan - First Series by Lafcadio Hearn
page 109 of 333 (32%)
page 109 of 333 (32%)
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picturesque, traditional--which for six hundred years has been the
attitude of the Japanese woman serving tea. Verily, no small part of the life of the woman of Japan is spent thus in serving little cups of tea. Even as a ghost, she appears in popular prints offering to somebody spectral tea-cups of spectral tea. Of all Japanese ghost-pictures, I know of none more pathetic than that in which the phantom of a woman kneeling humbly offers to her haunted and remorseful murderer a little cup of tea! 'Now let us go to the Bon-ichi,' says Akira, rising; 'she must go there herself soon, and it is already getting dark. Sayonara!' It is indeed almost dark as we leave the little house: stars are pointing in the strip of sky above the street; but it is a beautiful night for a walk, with a tepid breeze blowing at intervals, and sending long flutterings through the miles of shop draperies. The market is in the narrow street at the verge of the city, just below the hill where the great Buddhist temple of Zoto-Kuin stands--in the Motomachi, only ten squares away. 5 The curious narrow street is one long blaze of lights--lights of lantern signs, lights of torches and lamps illuminating unfamiliar rows of little stands and booths set out in the thoroughfare before all the shop-fronts on each side; making two far-converging lines of multi- coloured fire. Between these moves a dense throng, filling the night with a clatter of geta that drowns even the tide-like murmuring of voices and the cries of the merchant. But how gentle the movement!- there is no jostling, no rudeness; everybody, even the weakest and |
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