Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/70

 But the most trivial aim derives dignity from the earnestness with which it is pursued, and the Japanese can be just as much in earnest about the lightest fancy as about the weightiest fact. They know how to be picturesquely great in small things, and if the faculty is crushed hereafter by collision with the hard realities of Western civilisation, the artistic world will be so much the poorer. During the first century of this pine-transplanting observance, its leaf-plucking adjunct was simply symbolical, but from the time of the Emperor Saga the practical precepts of Chinese traditions were adopted, and the leaves came to serve as seasoning for soup. Seven kinds had to be selected by those that aimed at strict orthodoxy, but common folks contented themselves with two. These they placed on a block, and with a large knife in each hand chopped rythmically to the seven-syllabled refrain:—

Here once more appear the birds of ill omen which the ample-hatted Eta maiden has already been seen driving away with samisen strains on New Year's day. Their connection with the preparation of the "seven-herb" soup is an affair of sound, not sense. The Chinese were wont to