SEVEN BEAUTIFUL FLOWERS OF LATE SUMMER
1. Susuki 2. Kikyo 3. Asago 4. Shion 5. Omnia-Meshi 6. Kiku 7. Hagi
Drawing by Teshoto Hario
an ignoramus who does not know the right thing to like. I was walking one day at Yoshida with a Japanese artist, a remarkable man who was engaged in making a series of steel-engravings, half landscape and half map, of the country round Fuji, and called his attention to a splendid clump of pink belladonna lilies growing near an old gray tomb; but he would not have them at all, said they were foolish flowers, and the only reason he gave me for not liking them was because they came up without any leaves. When we got back to our tea-house he took my pen and paper, and showed me what were the seven beautiful flowers of late summer—the convolvulus, the name of which in Japanese is “asago,” meaning the same as our “morning-glory;” wild chrysanthemum; yellow valerian; the lespedeza, a kind of bush clover; Platycodon grandiflorum, a purple-blue campanula; Eulalia japonica, the tall grass which covers so many of the hills; and shion, a rather insignificant-flowered aster. I noticed that some versions of the seven flowers differed from his; a large-flowered mallow is often substituted for the last he named. There are doubtless different schools which hold strong views on the subject, but on the morning-glory and some others they are evidently agreed. The auratum lily is a common wild flower in the hilly districts, and boiled lily bulbs are a favorite vegetable, but I could not find out which was considered the best variety for the table. O Shige San told me that it was a red lily; I looked in vain for any of that color in their gardens.
The cottages in the country round Kamakura are thickly thatched, and on the top of the thatch is laid a mass of earth held together by iris plants, which form a roof-crest of spiky green; near them in July there often were large hydrangea bushes covered with balls of blossom, the young flowers a pale yellow-green, changing as they grew older through bright blue to purple.
On the 9th of July the heat drove me from Europeanized Yokohama to the hills. I left the train at Utso-no-miya, a little town which has been financially ruined by the railway—for every one formerly stayed a night there instead of travelling straight through—and was delighted to find myself once more in thoroughly Japanese quarters. It was a wonderful moonlight night, and I wandered round the town in kimono and clogs, watched the people, and was stared at by them, climbed the steps to the big Shinto temple, and
