Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/88

 camellias, and aralias." It coincides very nearly in latitude with the region of the Mediterranean; but the character of the two is as different as can well be imagined. The Japanese region is the delight of the botanist. The Mediterranean region, with its severer forms and more sparing growth, better pleases the artist, who loves vegetation less for its own sake than as a setting for the works of man.

 Bowing to the Emperor's Picture is a point of Japanese etiquette that has caused much heart-burning among foreigners and native Christian converts. The custom is no ancient one, dating back as it does only to 1891. It came in, like so much else, as a result of the modern recrudescence of imperialism, and is now observed in all schools and many public offices on certain occasions of annual recurrence. The ground whereon objection has been taken to it is that it savours of idolatry. But surely such an interpretation rests on confusion of thought. A human ruler is no Baal or Moloch. We have never heard of any one refusing to bow to the Japanese emperor, or any other emperor, when seen in the flesh. What harm, then, can there be in saluting his picture? Moreover, if a prostration made before the living emperor does not amount to "worship," how in reason can one made before his picture be so construed? This case and the case of the heathen idol are not parallel.

 Bronze. See Things Japanese/Metal-work

 Buddhism. Many writers, from St. Francis Xavier downwards, have drawn attention to the superficial resemblances between the Buddhistic and the Roman Catholic ceremonial,—the flowers on the altar, the candles, the incense, the shaven heads of the priests, the rosaries, the images, the processions. In point of dogma, a whole world of thought separates Buddhism from every