Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/34

8 that most forcibly strikes the traveller who is acquainted with those regions. In Japan abundant water and a humid atmosphere have clothed the country with a mantle of tropical luxuriance and created in the Eastern Sea a world of fragrant flowers and riotous vegetation, the very antithesis of the harsh outlines and sun-scorched deserts of Western Asia. Here is a land that is kissed, not scourged, by the sun. Here, too, the gentle and kindly nature of the people testifies to the peaceful influence of Buddhism, contrasting strongly with the fierce fanaticism of Western Asia inspired by the militant creed of Mohammed. The humble worshipper at the shrine of his ancestors, the æsthetic acolyte chanting with monotonous iteration the meaningless "Namu Amida Butsu" of the Buddhic liturgy, has little in common with the perfervid apostle of Islam: the intricate and ingenious architecture of the one contrasts markedly with the grand and simple conceptions of the other.

Nor is the difference of the two creeds of East and West Asia less marked in its effects upon the social life of the people. "You