Fuji is both sublime and human.
No other country has a symbol like this. When the Japanese think of
Japan they visualise Fuji: returning exiles crowd the decks for the
first glimpse of it; departing exiles with tears in their eyes watch it
disappear. There is not a shop window but has Fuji in some
representation; it is found in every house; its contours are engraved on
teaspoons, embossed on ash-trays. You cannot escape from its
counterfeits; but if you have seen it you do not mind.
When on my way home I found myself in an American picture gallery,
either in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston or New York, I lingered longest
in the rooms where the coloured prints of the Japanese masters hang--and
America has very fine collections, particularly in Boston--and I stood
longest before those landscapes by Hokusai and Hiroshige in which Fuji
occurs. Hokusai in particular venerated the mountain, and in many of his
most beautiful pictures people are calling to each other to admire some
new and marvellous aspect of it. It was he who drew Fuji as seen through
the arch of a breaking wave! I was looking at the British Museum's
example of this daring print only a few days ago, and, doing so, living
my Myanoshita days again.
There is much in Japan that is petty, much that is too material and not
a little that is disturbing; but Fuji is there too, dominating all, calm
and wise and lovely beyond description, and it would be Fuji that lured
me back.
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