mask--the mask of a goblin, a Tengu, grotesque beyond description,
with an enormous nose--so grotesque that I feel remorse for having
looked at it.

The sticks are votive offerings. By dedicating one to the shrine, it is
believed that the Tengu may be induced to drive one's enemies away.
Goblin-shaped though they appear in all Japanese paintings and carvings
of them, the Tengu-Sama are divinities, lesser divinities, lords of the
art of fencing and the use of all weapons.

And other changes gradually become manifest. Akira complains that he can
no longer understand the language of the people. We are traversing
regions of dialects. The houses are also architecturally different from
those of the country-folk of the north-east; their high thatched roofs
are curiously decorated with bundles of straw fastened to a pole of
bamboo parallel with the roof-ridge, and elevated about a foot above it.
The complexion of the peasantry is darker than in the north-east; and I
see no more of those charming rosy faces one observes among the women of
the Tokyo districts. And the peasants wear different hats, hats pointed
like the straw roofs of those little wayside temples curiously enough
called an (which means a straw hat).

The weather is more than warm, rendering clothing oppressive; and as we
pass through the little villages along the road, I see much healthy
cleanly nudity: pretty naked children; brown men and boys with only a
soft narrow white cloth about their loins, asleep on the matted floors,
all the paper screens of the houses having been removed to admit the
breeze. The men seem to be lightly and supply built; but I see no
saliency of muscles; the lines of the figure are always smooth. Before
almost every dwelling, indigo, spread out upon little mats of rice