Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/220

186 lay supine and heavy-featured, she resembled a Beaudelairian giantess in

Could she really be of the same race as the fragile, geisha-fairies of the Myako-odori? Her photograph had better claim perhaps to the title of miyage than the crystal and jade kakemono weights, which we bought from a specious hawker on the cliffs. He who would conform to Japanese etiquette, with its charming code of trifling generosities, is sorely perturbed by this problem of miyage. The dictionary defines it clearly enough: "A present made by one returning home from a journey, or by one coming from another place generally of some rare or curious production of another place" Now, I was perpetually "coming from another place," and the search before I left it for "some rare or curious production," which would serve as a present for Ashikaga or Tōkyō friends, baffled at times even my insatiable curiosity. The hawker's streaked pebbles were pretty enough as pledges of transitory kindness, but the souvenirs most vividly stamped on the tablets of remembrance by the glaring sunlight of Naoetsu in August show a vision of brown sea-goddesses against a turquoise sea.