These trifling observations seemed to please my friend, the art collector.
"But," said he, "I think our national love of the beautiful is perhaps most strongly exhibited in our feeling for outdoor beauty—our pilgrimages to spots famous for their scenery, our delight in the cherry-blossom season, the wistaria season, the chrysanthemum season, and by no means least in our gardens."
Undoubtedly he was right. The feeling for nature among his countrymen is general, mystical, poetic. Almost all Japanese write poetry. The poems of many emperors, empresses, and statesmen are widely known; and among the most celebrated Japanese poems those to Nature in her various aspects are by far the most numerous.
Let me here digress briefly to mention the interesting custom of O Uta Hajime, or Opening of Imperial Poems, a court function dating from the ninth century.
Each December the Imperial Household announces subjects for poems which may be submitted anonymously to the Imperial Bureau of Poems, in connection with the celebration of the New Year. The poems are examined by the bureau's experts, who select the best, to be read to the Imperial Family.
The choice for the year 1921 was made from seventeen thousand poems sent from all parts of the Empire, and when announcement was made of the names of those whose poems were read at the Court, it was discovered that, among them was an American lady, Frances Hawkes Burnett, wife of Col. Charles Burnett, military attaché of the American Embassy at Tokyo. Mrs. Burnett thus attains the unique distinction of being the only foreign woman ever to have won Imperial approval with a poem in the Japanese language.
Mrs. Charles Burnett in a 15th-Century Japanese Court costume. Mrs. Burnett's poems written in Japanese have received Imperial recognition