On a table in the middle of this chaste apartment lay a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and a yellow book. The room was open to the early morning sunlight; the paper walls were pushed back. Mr. Fujinami moved a square silk cushion to the edge of the matting near the outside veranda. There he could rest his back against a post in the framework of the building—for even Japanese get wearied by the interminable squatting which life on the floor level entails—and acquire that condition of bodily repose which is essential for meditation.
Mr. Fujinami was in the habit of meditating for one hour every morning. It was a tradition of his house; his father and his grandfather had done so before him. The guide of his meditations was the yellow book, the Rongo (Maxims) of Confucius, that Bible of the Far East which has moulded oriental morality to the shape of the Three Obediences, the obedience of the child to his parents, of the wife to her husband, and of the servant to his lord.
Mr. Fujinami sat on the sill of his study, and meditated. Around him was the stillness of early morning. From the house could be heard the swish of the maids' brooms brushing the tatami, and the flip-flap of their paper flickers, like horses' tails, with which they dislodged the dust from the walls and cornices.
A big black crow had been perched on one of the cherry-trees in the garden. He rose with a shaking of branches and a flapping of broad black wings. He crossed the lake, croaking as he flew with a note more harsh, rasping and cynical than the consequential caw of English rooks. His was a malevolent presence "from the night's Plutonian shore," the symbol of something unclean and sinister lurking behind this dainty beauty and this elaboration of cleanliness.
Mr. Fujinami's meditations were deep and grave. Soon he put down the book. The spectacles glided along his nose. His chest rose and fell quickly under the weight of his resting chin. To the ignorant observer Mr. Fujinami would have appeared to be asleep.
However, when his wife appeared about an hour and a half afterwards, bringing her lord's breakfast on another red lacquer table she besought him kindly to condescend to eat, and added that he must be very tired after so much study. To this Mr. Fujinami replied by passing his hand over his forehead and saying, "D[=o]m[=o]! So des' né! (Indeed, it is so!) I have tired myself with toil."
This little farce repeated itself every morning. All the household knew that the master's hour of meditation was merely an excuse for an after-sleep. But it was a tradition in the family that the master should study thus; and Mr. Fujinami's grandfather had been a great scholar in his generation. To maintain the tradition Mr. Fujinami had hired a starveling journalist to write a series of random essays of a sentimental nature, which he had published under his own name, with the title, Fallen Cherry-Blossoms.
Such is the hold of humbug in Japan that nobody in the whole household, including the students who respected nothing, ever allowed themselves the relief of smiling at the sacred hour of study, even when the master's back was turned.
* * * * *
"O hay[=o] gozaimas'!"