"Japanese style looks nicer," said Asako, thinking how big and vulgar a bedstead would appear in that clean emptiness and how awkwardly its iron legs would trample on the straw matting; "but isn't it draughty and uncomfortable?"
"I like the foreign beds best," said Sadako; "my brother has let me try his. It is very soft."
So in this country of Asako's fathers, a bedstead was lent for trial as though it had been some fascinating novelty, a bicycle or a piano.
The kitchen appealed most to the visitor. It was the only room to her mind which had any individuality of its own. It was large, dark and high, full of servant-girls scuttering about like little mice, who bowed and then fled when the two ladies came in. The stoves for boiling the rice interested Asako, round iron receptacles like coppers, each resting on a brick fireplace. Everything was explained to her: the high dressers hung with unfamiliar implements in white metal and white wood: the brightly labelled casks of saké and shoyu (sauce) waiting in the darkness like the deputation of a friendly society in its insignia of office: the silent jars of tea, greenish in colour and ticketed with strange characters, the names of the respective tea-gardens: the iron kettle hanging on gibbet chains from the top of the ceiling over a charcoal fire sunk in the floor; the tasteful design of the commonest earthenware bowl: the little board and chopper for slicing the raw fish: the clean white rice-tubs with their brass bindings polished and shining: the odd shape and entirely Japanese character which distinguished the most ordinary things, and gave to the short squat knives a romantic air and to the broad wooden spoons a suggestion of witchcraft: finally, the little shrine to the Kitchen God, perched on a shelf close to the ceiling, looking like the façade of a doll's temple, and decorated with brass vases, dry grasses, and strips of white paper. The wide kitchen was impregnated with a smell already familiar to Asako's nose, one of the most typical odours of Japan, the smell of native cooking, humid, acrid and heavy like the smell of wood smoke from damp logs, with a sour and rotten flavour to it contributed by a kind of pickled horse-radish called Daikon or the Great Root, dear to the Japanese palate.
The central ceremony of Asako's visit was her introduction to the memory of her dead parents. She was taken to a small room, where the alcove, the place of honour, was occupied by a closed cabinet, the butsudan (Buddha shelf), a beautiful piece of joiner's work in a kind of lattice pattern covered with red lacquer and gold. Sadako, approaching, reverently opened this shrine. The interior was all gilt with a dazzling gold like that used an old manuscripts. In the centre of this glory sat a golden-faced Buddha with dark blue hair and cloak, and an aureole of golden rays. Below him were arranged the ihai, the Tablets of the Dead, miniature grave-stones about one foot high, with a black surface edged with gold upon which were inscribed the names of the dead persons, the new names given by the priests.
Sadako stepped back and clapped her hands together three times, repeating the formula of the Nichiren Sect of Buddhists.
"Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o]! (Adoration to the Wonderful Law of the Lotus Scriptures!)"
She instructed Asako to do the same.
"For," she said, "we believe that the spirits of the dead people are here; and we must be very good to them."
Asako did as she was told, wondering whether her confessor would give her penance for idolatry. Sadako then motioned her to sit on the floor. She took one of the tablets from its place and placed it in front of her cousin.