Lafcadio Hearn

1 Derived from the Sanscrit stupa.

2 'The real origin of the custom of piling stones before the images of Jizo and other divinities is not now known to the people. The Custom is founded upon a passage in the famous Sutra, "The Lotus of the Good Law."

'Even the little hoys who, in playing, erected here and there heaps of sand, with the intention of dedicating them as Stupas to the Ginas,-they have all of them reached enlightenment.' - Saddharma Pundarika, c. II. v. 81 (Kern's translation), 'Sacred Books of the East,' vol. xxi.

1 Yane, 'roof'; shobu, 'sweet-flag' (Acorus calamus).

2 At the time this paper was written, nearly three years ago, I had not seen the mighty bells at Kyoto and at Nara.

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KAMAKURA.

1 It is related in the same book that Ananda having asked the Buddha how came Mokenren's mother to suffer in the Gakido, the Teacher replied that in a previous incarnation she had refused, through cupidity, to feed certain visiting priests.

2 A deity of good fortune

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IT is just past five o'clock in the afternoon. Through the open door of my little study the rising breeze of evening is beginning to disturb the papers on my desk, and the white fire of the Japanese sun is taking that pale amber tone which tells that the heat of the day is over. There is not a cloud in the blue - not even one of those beautiful white filamentary things, like ghosts of silken floss, which usually swim in this most ethereal of earthly skies even in the driest weather.

by Lafcadio Hearn

"Perhaps all very marked national characters can be traced back
to a time of rigid and pervading discipline" - WALTER BAGEHOT.

by Lafcadio Hearn