i6S 



THE <H IDE TO N ATI/RE 



The Japanese Beautiful World. 

 BY MAS! Jllso HONDA, NEW YORK CITY. 



[Masujiro Honda was formerly Professor 

 of English in the Higher Normal College 

 Tokyo, and was sent to the United States and 

 England by the Educational Department of 

 the Japanese Government to Study the methods 

 of teaching modern languages. Translated 

 into English "Human Bullets, a Soldier's 

 Story of the Siege of Port Arthur." Lectured 

 on Japan and on International Peace both in 

 England and America. Is now Secretary of 

 the Oriental Information Agency, established 

 in New York last year with the object of sup- 

 plying business men and the general public 

 with accounts and reports of the real condi- 

 tions of Japan. — Ed.] 



As descendants of nature-adorers as 

 well as of ancestor-worshippers, the 

 people of Japan have evolved among 

 themselves a peculiar way of deriving 

 much enjoyment from simple, inex- 

 pensive things of nature. An old clas- 

 sical writing of our country narrates 

 a story of protecting frogs from the 

 ravages of crows. The nobilitv living 

 in the Imperial capital used to have 

 ponds in front of their residences, in 

 order to keep the croaking little musi- 

 cians, that were usually heard only in 

 paddy-fields of the country; and across 

 the roofs of their palaces, ropes were 

 spread to scare away ravenous birds, 

 that otherwise would have perched 

 there to descend upon the innocent 

 dwellers of the pond. Again, it was 

 an old custom of ours to have insect- 

 listening parties out on the moor. 

 Rugs were spread on the grass, under 

 a bright moon ; tea and refreshments 

 were served ; and men and women 

 quietly listened to various kinds of 

 singing insects, to the eulogy of which 

 they composed short verses. It is a 

 pity that the busy life of modern days 

 has taught us to confine insect-singers 

 in bamboo cages, instead of leaving 

 them in their natural surroundings. 



What a primitive taste, you will say, 

 to find any music in the croaking of 

 the frogs or in the chirping of the 

 insects ! Yes. nothing can be more 

 primitive than nature herself: but if 

 wc listen patiently and, appreciatively, 

 her still small voices give us scarcel'v 

 less solace, less encouragement, less 

 instruction, than that voice within our- 

 selves which is far more still and small. 



MASUJIRO HONDA. 



We have learned to hear the voice 

 even of a flower. The lotus — that em- 

 blem of the human soul, because, grow- 

 ing in the mud of material existence, 

 yet it blossoms out in everlasting 

 splendor — when the lotus-bud bursts 

 open before sun-rise, it does so with a 

 sudden popping sound. Very early on 

 a summer's morning, people will 

 throng to a lotus-pond to wait with 

 bated breath for a couple of hours, just 

 to listen to one single pop of the burst- 

 ing bu '.,. as if to the very voice of 

 eternit} . 



The Japanese art of floral arrange- 

 ment originated from a genuine love 

 of natural beauty. Centuries ago, a 

 Buddhist priest felt unspeakable com- 

 passion for the flowers, picked for mo- 

 mentary inspection, and soon thrown 

 on the road. He exercised all his in- 

 genuity to keep those discarded flow- 

 ers alive as long as posible. This has 

 since developed into an elaborate sys- 

 tem of floral composition, uniting 



