Here is a Jap baby, about as big and as round as a tangerine orange, feeding ducks. Here a little box a size larger than a walnut. Open it; inside are seated a man and boy playing some game with dice. The man is holding the dice cup up preparing to cast; in it are the dice, every cube separate and real, and each marked with the proper pips.
In the shop of Danjuro you are gazing, not upon bronzes and lacquers, but upon the mind of Japan, partly made visible. There is here evidence of patience and labor sufficient to conquer the world, beauty enough to charm the world, and ferocity enough to terrify it.
There is nothing so strange on earth as this art that reveals in glimpses the exquisite and the awful, where the lily blossoms and the dragon tramples it under foot.
That baby feeding the ducks, could anything be more laughable or lovable? But do not open the drawers of the cabinet he is standing on: they are filled with ivory obscenities carved with just as loving care.
No, the kakemonos and bronzes that adorn the drawing-rooms of Bayswater and Bedford Park do not disclose the whole of Japanese art. If you don’t believe me, then go to Japan and become a friend of Danjuro the curio-dealer, who lives in Jinrikisha Street, in the quaint city of Nagasaki.
“There’s no use talking,” said Leslie, the second day after his arrival at Nagasaki. “I don’t want to live in the European quarter. I want that white house up on the hill there you said was empty, and I want to buy it.”
“Weel,” said Mac—they were standing in Danjuro’s shop consulting—“I’m thinking you want more than it’s likely y’ll get. You cannot buy the house—rent it, maybe. Stay till I ask Dan.”
Dan and he had a consultation, the upshot of which was that the curio-dealer, after a cynical declaration to the effect that anything could be obtained for money, offered his services as an intermediary.
A friend of his, a brother dealer, a Mr. Initogo, or some such name, owned the house up there on the heights; he would probably let it. It was named the House of the Clouds, warranted rainproof and free from ghosts.
Mr. Initogo was fetched from across the way—a gentleman in horn spectacles, who looked as wise as Confucius but was a little bit deaf. After some five minutes’ polite bawling on the part of Mac and Danjuro, Mr. Initogo came to understand the matter, and at once declared with a thousand protestations of regret that the thing was impossible.