But here I am in ancient Japan; probably no European
eyes ever looked upon these things before.
A window shaped like a heart peeps out upon the garden, a wonderful
little garden with a tiny pond and miniature bridges and dwarf trees,
like the landscape of a tea-cup; also some shapely stones of course, and
some graceful stone lanterns, or t[=o]r[=o], such as are placed in the
courts of temples. And beyond these, through the warm dusk, I see
lights, colored lights, the lanterns of the Bonku, suspended before each
home to welcome the coming of beloved ghosts; for by the antique
calendar, according to which in this antique place the reckoning of time
is still made, this is the first night of the Festival of the Dead.
As in all other little country villages where I have been stopping, I
find the people here kind to me with a kindness and a courtesy
unimaginable, indescribable, unknown in any other country, and even in
Japan itself only in the interior. Their simple politeness is not an
art; their goodness is absolutely unconscious goodness; both come
straight from the heart. And before I have been two hours among these
people, their treatment of me, coupled with the sense of my utter
inability to repay such kindness, causes a wicked wish to come into my
mind. I wish these charming folk would do me some unexpected wrong,
something surprisingly evil, something atrociously unkind, so that I
should not be obliged to regret them, which I feel sure I must begin to
do as soon as I go away.
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