Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/15

KYOTO

The noisy time has slipped away even gracefully at Kyoto. (I see that it—the barbarian of modern type—has still a certain amount of etiquette in Japan.) Content is so natural and even becoming here (at other places it is almost outlandish and at the same time even the most expensive thing to acquire), when one passes through the dustless streets of Kyoto, where the little houses with moss-eaten dark tiles humbly beg for their temporary existence on promise not to disturb the natural harmony with the green mountains and the temples that the holy spirits built. How different from the foreign houses, red or white, seeming even to push away the old-fashioned Nature with vain splenduor of scorn. The Kyoto people, moth-spirits or butterfly-ghosts, are born for pleasure-making, and to sip the tea. I say pleasure-making, but not in the modern meaning; the modern pleasure-making is rather a forced production of criticism, therefore often oppressive and always explanatory in attitude. I say they sip the tea; I do not mean the black