Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/31

26 snoring, growling, and hissing of the engines day and night. Alas, he could not foresee the future of a few hundred years when he died. But I welcomed the news when the sudden removal of the grave was reported as a result, a fortunate result indeed, of the expansion of the railway track; this time, to be sure, I thought, his grey-loving, solitary soul would be pleased to find a far better sleeping-place, as he was to be moved to the large old garden of the Kokka Club (a well-known artist club), with a deep pond where many gold fish peep underneath the umbrella-like lotus leaves in early summer, and in later autumn the hagi or two-coloured lespedozas (Kenzan's beloved subject) would lean upon the water to admire their own images; and it is a matter thrice satisfactory to think that this new place is also in Negishi (which somehow recalls Hampstead, though there is no natural resemblance between them).

I was invited to attend the memorial exhibition of Kenzan's work to commemorate the removal of his grave the other day. With the greatest anticipation I went there with two friends of mine, a fellow poet and an artist, both of them great admirers of Kenzan Ogata. When we entered the ground, we found at once that the Buddhist ceremony, that is the Sutra-reading called Kuya Nembutsu, around the newly dug