Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/279

passengers across the long curving bridge, and one or two old fishermen wading in the shallows, when a message arrived inviting me to take tea with Assistant-Judge Nomura at his house on Castle-hill. Happening to arrive before the other guests, I was first shown a curious collection of prints, illustrating the costumes and customs of ancient Korea, and a series of pictures of all the ironclads belonging to the Japanese navy. This mixture of old and new was very characteristic of Mr. Nomura, who admired with enthusiasm Western dress, furniture, and religion, but reverenced at the same time his own national traditions. Naturally his knowledge of the two was one-sided, and he was happily unconscious that his fine collection of Inari and Satsuma ware was simply insulted by the base intrusion of a sixpenny London saucer. Four inhabitants of Matsuë—two young lawyers, a musician, and an old painter were announced, and the host at once took a more ceremonious tone. We all entered the tiny tea-room, nine feet square, containing four and a half mats, and were occupied for more than half an hour with cha-no-yu, the august tea-making, which seemed to me unnecessarily long, perhaps because it was conducted by a wizard in a grey coat and blue tie. I preferred the dainty witches of the Miyako-odori. Besides the formal ablution and handling of accessory instruments, at stated intervals a bell was rung, the room was swept, we walked from the house to the garden and back from the garden to the house with a scrupulosity that would have satisfied Hideyoshi himself. At last the august tea, thick and green and hot, was presented to each visitor, who drank with slow but noisy demonstrations of lip-homage, to testify polite satisfaction.