Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/45

 eyes, aquiline nose, and a Roman countenance—quite fit for a heroine. Riders call at her tea-house for tea, rice, and eels, prawns, clams, pea-nuts, sponge-cake, or beer, and insist upon seeing her. This Richardson affair cost the Japanese the bombardment of Kagoshima, and an indemnity of £125,000; but Susan did not share in the division of that sum.

According to one version Susan’s strand is the spot where Taro of Urashima, the Rip Van Winkle of Japan, left his boat and nets, and, mounting a tortoise, rode away to the home of the sea-king, returning by the same tortoise to the same spot. On its sands he opened the box the sea-king had given him, and found himself veiled in a thin smoke, out of which he stepped an old, old man, whose parents had been dead a hundred years. The fishermen listened to his strange tale, and carried him to their daimio, and on fans, boxes, plates, vases, and fukusas Taro sits relating his wonderful tale to this day.

Ten miles inland from Bukenji’s temples is the little village of Kawawa, whose headman has a famous collection of chrysanthemums, the goal of many autumnal pilgrimages. This Kawawa collection has enjoyed its fame for many years, the owner devoting himself to it heart and soul, and knowing no cooling of ardor nor change of fancy. His great thatched house in a courtyard is reached through a black gate-way at the top of a little hill, and the group of buildings within his black walls gives the place quite a feudal air. Facing the front of the house are rows of mat sheds, covering the precious flowers that stand in files as evenly as soldiers, the tops soft masses of great frowsy, curly-petalled, wide-spreading blooms, shading to every tint of lilac, pink, rose, russet, brown, gold, orange, pale yellow, and snow white. It was there that we ate a salad made of yellow chrysanthemum petals, most æsthetic of dishes. The trays of golden 29