Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/50

 scenes of sylvan beauty. Thatched roofs, whose ridge poles are beds of lilies, shaded by glorified green plumes of bamboo-trees, tall, red-barked cryptomerias, crooked pines, and gnarled camphor-trees, everywhere charm the eye. Little red temples, approached through a line of picturesque torii—that skeleton gate-way that makes a part of every Japanese view or picture—red shrines no larger than marten boxes; stone Buddhas, sitting cross-legged, chipped, broken-nosed, headless, and moss-grown; odd stone tablets and lanterns crowd the hedges and banks of the road-side, snuggle at the edges of groves, or stand in the corners of rice fields.

Fair as the spring days are, when the universal green mantle of the earth is adorned with airy drifts of plum and cherry-blossoms, the warm, mellow sunshine, glorious tints and clear bright air of autumn are even fairer. One may forget and forgive the Japanese summer for the sake of the weeks that follow, an Indian summer which often lasts without break for four months after the equinoctial storm. Except that Fujiyama gleams whiter and whiter, there is no suggestion of winter’s terrors, and only a pleasant crispness in the bracing and intoxicating air. When the maple leaves begin to turn, and a second rose-blossoming surpasses that of June in color, prodigality, and fragrance, autumnal Japan is the typical earthly Paradise. Every valley is a floor of golden rice stubble, every hill-side a tangle of gorgeous foliage. The persimmon-trees hang full of big golden kaké, sea and sky wear their intensest blue, and Fujiyama’s loveliness shines out against the western sky. In among the yellowing stubble move blue-clad farmers with white mushroom hats. Before the farm-houses men and women swing their flails, beating the grain spread out on straw matting. The rice straw, whether bunched in pretty sheaves, tied across poles, like a New-year’s fringe, or stacked in collars around the tree-trunks, is always 34