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 this samisen, the three-stringed instrument, not wild to us, but suggestive, not primitive but quite complex, will soon become impassioned into imagination; I dare say that we shall feel even a physical pain from love that the tune inspires, the love intensified into a feeling of sensuality. It is at such a moment when we forget the world and life, and pray to enshrine ourselves in love; why is it the samisen, does make us feel so, while having no power at all to command the foreign mind?”

“Not only in our sense of hearing”—I again resumed the chance to speak—“the other senses, whether they be five or ten, also work quite differently from those of the Westerners; and I cannot forget one instance to make me think that the American sense of seeing is a thing of a different order; that was the case of Sada Yacco and her company when they presented to the San Francisco audience, well, long ago, the sad secnescene [sic] of the farewell of Kusuoki and his little son. We thought it most strange when the saddest part to us Japanese made almost no impression on the American mind; of course, their ignorance of Rh