shows also the real character of some weaknesses in our own
civilization. It forces reflection upon the useless multiplicity
of our daily wants. We must have meat and bread and butter; glass
windows and fire; hats, white shirts, and woolen underwear; boots
and shoes; trunks, bags, and boxes; bedsteads, mattresses,
sheets, and blankets: all of which a Japanese can do without, and
is really better off without. Think for a moment how important an
article of Occidental attire is the single costly item of white
shirts! Yet even the linen shirt, the so-called "badge of a
gentleman," is in itself a useless garment. It gives neither
warmth nor comfort. It represents in our fashions the survival of
something once a luxurious class distinction, but to-day
meaningless and useless as the buttons sewn on the outside of
coat-sleeves.

(1) Critics have tried to make fun of Sir Edwin Arnold's
remark that a Japanese crowd smells like a geranium-flower. Yet
the simile is exact! The perfume called jako, when sparingly
used, might easily be taken for the odor of a musk-geranium. In
almost any Japanese assembly including women a slight perfume of
jako is discernible; for the robes worn have been laid in drawers
containing a few grains of jako. Except for this delicate scent,
a Japanese crowd is absolutely odorless.


V

The absence of any huge signs of the really huge things that
Japan has done bears witness to the very peculiar way in which
her civilization has been working. It cannot forever so work; but