What I am really making for is a little print shop I saw as we passed along here this morning, with a number of Japanese drawings in the window. They are so queer, so well done, and yet so conventional that they have a charm of their own. Here it is! Look at that extraordinary picture of the great fish breaking through a hole in the blocks of ice! The ice looks cold, it is very well done, but the little bits of spray loop up round the fish in a stiff frill of a regular pattern. Then there is that one of the sea. It gives one a tremendous idea of a heavy lowering storm with the great indigo waves curling over that doomed boat, yet the edge of every wave has a sort of lace frill on it exactly alike! I must have those to take home; they won't take up any room.
As we enter the Jap lady who is selling the prints gives a long hiss. She bows profoundly, and so do we. They won't know us when we get home!
"But why did she hiss?" you ask Yosoji. He says it is a sign of respect. Oh! I thought they were nervous! How funny! As long as they don't expect me to do it back again—I can manage the bowing when there is no one there but you to see, but if I tried to hiss I should break down in the middle! I take out my purse to pay for the print. The money here is confusing, because there are yen and sen. A yen is equal to two shillings and a halfpenny, and a sen is only the hundredth part of a yen, or about a farthing. In order to reckon the change the old lady takes up a frame with beads strung across it on wires; I believe it's called an abacus, and they use them in kindergarten schools to teach children to count. She must be an ignorant old dame, and yet she looks wholly respectable. I wonder what Yosoji thinks of it. When we look at him he is quite demure and solemn and doesn't seem to notice anything odd.
Coming out of the shop we find the dearest trio of children gazing at us. Of all the sights in Japan the children are the most fascinating. They are so funnily dressed, like the odd little Jap dolls English children buy. These three are clad very magnificently in kimonos of silk crape, very soft, and brilliantly coloured, with huge coloured sashes. Their little heads, with straight all-round fringes of black hair sticking out like brushes, are deliciously comic. They regard us gravely and without any fear or shyness.
It is getting dark; suddenly someone lights a Chinese lantern across the street, and almost as if it were a given signal another pops out and another and another. Chinese lanterns with us are used for decoration, and it is impossible to help feeling as if it were a festival when we see them gleaming along the street among the coloured streamers.
Altogether the lanterns, the gay dresses, the smiling faces, the funny shops, the clear deep blue of a perfect evening sky seen overhead, make a glorious picture. Shut your eyes and "think back" a moment. Think of Oxford Street on a wet night when the shops are shut and the high arc-lights shine down coldly on rigid lines and bleak grey walls!
A JAP VILLAGE.