There are many other trees in the rich flora of Japan which are as gay as the maples, though no others which show as great a variety of color; the dark leaves of the tulip-tree turn to a rich cadmium yellow, and the icho (Salisburia) is covered with pale gold, while many of the shrubs, grasses, and herbaceous plants with bright and varied tints help to relieve the solemn everlasting green of the pines and cryptomerias which clothe the eternal hills.
And so in a blaze of glory the Japanese year ends; but long before these last leaves have fallen the camellias are once more in flower, and continue until the plum blossom comes in February, a connecting link in the chain of beauty and flowers which encircles this happy land. One of my last days in Tōkyō was spent in showing my drawings to the students of the Uyeno School of Art, where Professor Okakura, the president, who combines with a good knowledge of Western art a great reverence for that of his own country, is attempting with no small success to keep up the artistic tradition, and to revive those artistic industries which were falling into decay. He had invited artists of other schools, some of whom had studied in Paris and Rome, but I was most interested in the remarks and questions of the purely Japanese students, and in their eagerness to discover any motive, besides the reproduction of nature, in work so different from their own.
At the Asakusa matsuri they were already selling emblems suited for the new year—the rice-rake to scrape
THE ARSENAL GARDEN, KOISHIKAWA, TŌKYŌ
together dollars; the rice-bag, daikon, and red tai, suggestive of good fare; and the target with an arrow in the bull’s-eye, meaning, “May you hit the mark!” arranged round a mask of the goddess of fortune; and with a stock of these to bring me good-luck, I sailed away on the 10th of December across the dreary and flowerless Pacific.