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NIKKO

It is difficult to take a neutral attitude towards the temples at Nikko, although indifference is said to be the “highest” of Japanese attitudes; I mean there are only two ways—like or dislike—for their barbarous splendour in gold and red lacquer deprived of the inspiration of the imagination and melancholy, definite to the limit. And it altogether depends on one’s mood; if a man’s large stomach is well filled (also his purse), their despotic wealth would not be too overwhelming, and he might even be disposed to sing their eternal beauty as the ultimate achievement of human endeavour, I believe I have been sometimes in such a state myself. But the pessimistic mind, critical even where criticism is not called for, skipping all the physical expression for the spiritual communication, will find Nikko a sad dilettantism of art, at the best a mere apology of a squandering mind; there is nothing more unhappy than wastefulness in the orld of art. It is not the real Japanese mind, I think, to build a house for the dead, as I know that it goes