love of symbolism and allegory, associate it with courage and undaunted spirit; their simplicity in appearance, their utter lack of wealth in floral substance, has become profitably an object-lesson for the cherishing of pride even in poverty. A thought of plum-blossom reminds me of an age, perhaps the age under the Hojo feudalism, when life’s simplicity was promulgated even as a theory; I think the love and admiration of the plum-blossom belong to a comparatively modern age in Japan, which is almost agelessly old. But I do not mean to say they had no admirer in ancient age: they had, for instance, Michizane of the nineth century.
There is, in fact, an almost endless list of people in Japanese tradition or story who have left a sign of close attachment for them; they are not the flowers for children and people uneducated, but for those of culture and imagination, who are in truth their creators and at the same time their admirers. The mere existence of them as flowers is slight; but it is our imagination that makes them great.
Now, speaking of the evolutionary side, it seems to me that they have almost reached the
