Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/102



doubt your heart of teal flower-lover will be quick to denounce Dangozaka of Tokyo, where the annual chrysanthemum show, the most bewildering, fantastic thing of the world, in fact, is held. It is not only Hoichi, but everybody whose mind is in an old-fashioned quiet cast will call the waxwork chrysanthemum showman of Dangozaka an inferior heart of man. However, no one who never saw it can imagine the cleverness and some sort of wonderful art of Japan that are expressed in these show-pieces. Most of the scenes of the Dangozaka puppet show are from an old play, or a page of history, or most memorable of all, the newest occurrences of the day commemorated in chrysanthemums. The central idea is to build the flower monument of the years before we enter into sleep, silence, and oblivion, and the rather cruel act of separation from flower of December and January sets in with snow and storm. Indeed, autumn is the very season for our minds to think and reflect what we did in the last nine Rh