There is nothing else to challenge
it. Perhaps had I seen Everest from Darjeeling I might have a different
story to tell; but I missed it. The Taj? Yes, the Taj is a divine work
of man; but it has not the serene lofty isolation of this sublime
mountain, rising from the plain alone and immense with almost perfect
symmetry.
I was not to see Fujiyama again for a week or so, but in the meanwhile I
saw the Daibutsu, the giant figure of Buddha, at Kamakura, in all its
bland placidity. These were the only big things I found in Japan.
TWO FUNERALS
Yokohama is industrial and dirty everywhere but on the drive beside the
harbour, and on the Bluff, where the rich foreigners live. I visited one
house on this pleasant eminence and there was nothing in it to suggest
that it was in Japan any more than in, say, Cheltenham. The form was
English, the furniture was English, the pictures and books were English;
photographs of school and college cricket elevens gave it the final home
touch. Only in the garden were there exotic indications. The English
certainly have the knack of carrying their atmosphere with them. I had
noticed that often in India; but this Yokohama villa was the completest
exemplification.
Wandering about the city I came one morning on a funeral procession that
ought to have pleased Henry Ward Beecher, who, on the only occasion on
which I heard him, when he was very old and I was very young, urged upon
his hearers the importance of bright colours and flowers instead of the
ordinary habiliments and accoutrements of woe.
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