immense translucency,
souls of people who thought in ways never resembling occidental ways.

Writing later to Chamberlain, Hearn acknowledged that what delighted him
those first days in Japan was the charm of nature in human nature, and
in human art, simplicity, mutual kindness, child-faith, gentleness,
politeness ... for in Japan even hate works with smiles and pretty
words.

For the first time Hearn was not merely describing a sensuous world of
sights and sounds, but a world of soft domesticity, where thatched
villages nestled in the folds of the hills, each with its Buddhist
temple, lifting a tilted roof of blue-grey tiles above a congregation of
thatched homesteads. Can anything be more delightful than his
description of one of the village inns, with its high-peaked roof of
thatch, and green-mossed eaves, like a coloured print out of Hiroshige's
picture-books, with its polished stairway and balconies, reflecting like
mirrored surfaces the bare feet of the maid-servants; its luminous rooms
fresh and sweet-smelling as when their soft mattings were first laid
down. The old gold-flowered lacquer ware, the diaphanous porcelain
wine-cups, the teacup holders, which are curled lotus leaves of bronze;
even the iron kettle with its figurings of dragons and clouds, and the
brazen hibachi whose handles are heads of Buddhist lions; distant as it
was from all art-centres, there was no object visible in the house which
did not reveal the Japanese sense of beauty and form. "Indeed, wherever
to-day in Japan one sees anything uninteresting in porcelain or metal,
something commonplace and ugly, one may be almost sure that detestable
something has been shaped under foreign influence. But here I am in
Ancient Japan, probably no European eyes ever looked upon these things
before."

After he had submitted to being bathed by his landlord, as if he had
been a little child, and eaten a repast of rice, eggs, vegetables and
sweetmeats, he sat smoking his kiseru until the moon arose, peeping
through the heart-shaped little window that looked out on the garden
behind, throwing down queer shadows of tilted eaves, and horned gables,
and delightful silhouettes. Suddenly a measured clapping of hands became
audible, and the echoing of _geta_, and the tramping of wooden sandals
filled the street. His companion, Akira, told him they were all going to
see the dance of the Bon-odori at the temple, the dance of the Festival
of the Dead, and that they