Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/296

 and patches of separate pictures which Western taste demands. In great establishments and monasteries there is a tsui taté, or flat, solid screen of a single panel, within the main door-way or vestibule—a survival of a Chinese fashion, intended less to baffle inquisitive eyes than to keep out evil spirits and beasts. Peculiar to Kioto are screens on which phosphorescent paint is used. A favorite design for these is the rice field at dusk, starred with flickering fire-flies, whose lights glow the more as the room darkens. A half century ago Gioksen, the artist, achieved great fame with these phosphorescent fire-flies; and recently the idea has been revived, with a fine promise of being vulgarized, growing coarser and cheaper in execution and poorer in quality, to meet the demands of the barbarian markets of the Occident. In the New-year week, when each family brings out its choicest screens, the display in the best streets is an art exhibition.

Screens of all sorts are more important in summer life than clothing, and, of necessity, are greatly relied on in the absence of garments. Screens with tiny windows in them shelter the undressed citizen and give him glimpses of the road, and screens with a variety of shelves and hooks bring a whole kitchen to the side of the hibachi on a windy day. Among summer screens, the commonest is the sudare, or curtain of reeds or tiny bamboo joints strung on threads. The waving of these strings and their tinkling sound are supposed to suggest the freshness of the stirring breeze, and the Japanese imagination transforms the bits of crystal, strung here and there, into cool rain-drops slipping down the bamboo stems. The taste of the foreign buyer has vulgarized the sudare, which is often a nightmare of crude design and worse color, weighted with glass beads of every color, and even made entirely of beads. The sudare in the streets of a Japanese town is almost as surely a sign of a shop where shaved ice and cooling drinks may be had, 280