Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/31

 parting and anon gathering again with a sort of mystery of Oriental fatalism; the first and last impression is a weariness not altogether unpleasant, ghostly at the beginning and tantalisingly human afterward. That weariness originates in the confusion, physical and spiritual, to speak symbolically, the strange mess of red, blue, yellow, green, and what not. (Fame be eternal of Utamaro, Hokusai, and Hiroshige, those colour magicians of art, the true exponents of Japanese life!)

This Tokyo was at the first the town of samurai of two swords, of mind more bent on learning how to die than how to live, proper to say, founded by Iyeyasu Tokugawa, the mighty prince of the Tokugawa feudalism, four hundred year ago, whose want of artistic education made it quite natural for him not to see the poetical side of city-building; he allowed every whim and imagination of the people to take their own free course. This neglect, more fortunate than otherwise, produced a great variety in colour and humanity that system and wisdom never could create, that were at once paradoxical, but highly interesting. Rh