chisellings where there are none, and could not possibly be, as if
ideographs belonged by natural law to rock formation. And stones will
begin, perhaps, to assume for you a certain individual or physiognomical
aspect--to suggest moods and sensations, as they do to the Japanese.
Indeed, Japan is particularly a land of suggestive shapes in stone, as
high volcanic lands are apt to be; and such shapes doubtless addressed
themselves to the imagination of the race at a time long prior to the
date of that archaic text which tells of demons in Izumo 'who made
rocks, and the roots of trees, and leaves, and the foam of the green
waters to speak.

As might be expected in a country where the suggestiveness of natural
forms is thus recognised, there are in Japan many curious beliefs and
superstitions concerning stones. In almost every province there are
famous stones supposed to be sacred or haunted, or to possess miraculous
powers, such as the Women's Stone at the temple of Hachiman at Kamakura,
and the Sessho-seki, or Death Stone of Nasu, and the Wealth-giving Stone
at Enoshima, to which pilgrims pay reverence. There are even legends of
stones having manifested sensibility, like the tradition of the Nodding
Stones which bowed down before the monk Daita when he preached unto them
the word of Buddha; or the ancient story from the Kojiki, that the
Emperor O-Jin, being augustly intoxicated, 'smote with his august staff
a great stone in the middle of the Ohosaka road, whereupon the stone ran
away!' [2]

Now stones are valued for their beauty; and large stones selected for
their shape may have an aesthetic worth of hundreds of dollars. And
large stones form the skeleton, or framework, in the design of old
Japanese gardens. Not only is every stone chosen with a view to its
particular expressiveness of form, but every stone in the garden or