LOTUS-LAND JAPAN.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 429, 10 January 1912, Page 7

LOTUS-LAND JAPAN.

—■ ' w ■ r SPIRIT OP THE ANCIENT TEMPLES. At such places as Kurodani, Chioin, and Eikwando, one goes not onlj to see the temples themselves, bul also to feast the senses in the matcby less harmony and grace with whict the hand of time has clothed theii surroundings. None but the most artistic people in the world coulc have designed or conceived such grand, reposeful settings ; and the passing of the centuries has but added the soft charm that only time can give.

There is an atmosphere of simple dignity about these temples that touches the very soul. One cannot approach them except with reverence. One cannot enter them with

out being purified in mind ; foi thoughts are elevated to loftiei planes, and no believer in the faitt these grand old s structures adorn, nor any other believer either, coulc ever seek their precincts without deriving some benefit from the act. All their beauty, and the carefa and imperceptible merging of the art of man with the handiwork of nature is planned to calm the spirit anc bring rest and joy to the troubled heart. Anger is dispelled, gria! softened, and anguish tempered to him who roams their lovely grounds with reverent mind, and a feeling of blessed contentment and rest enters into his so>ul.

fHE MODERN JAPANESE GIRL.

The Japanese girl is no longer content to remain a pretty chattel oJ ;he home. Her emancipation is progressing by leaps and bounds, and she now expects, and is allowed, such xeedom as must rudely shock her grandmother when the old lady thinks of the days when she was in ler teens.

Healthy athletic exercises, every lay at school, are fast changing the entire physique of the modern Japmese girl, and she is already larger, and heavier and longer-limbed than ier mother. She demands fresh air md country walks, and the habit of *oing unattended to school has bred in her an independence that enables ler to walk the straets unnoticed, and without fear of molestation. From the standpoint of the older )eople this change is not altogether for the good, for she is losing some if that feminine charm which caused liafeadio Hearn to describe her as 'the sweetest type of woman the world has ever known." SUNRISE IN MOUNT FUJI. A number of pilgrims are waiting to salute the sun. The blue-black leavens are turning grey, and the luivsring stars are dimmed. The ";rey becomes a more beautiful grey, soft and opalescent—like pearl. A timid blush comes over the pearl, rose-tinting it. The blush suffuses slowly into delicate pink. The pink deepens and becomes momentarily more vivid, flushing the whole arch of heaven, and great shafts of gold radiate from the cast to the zenith and the poles. The clouds, which lie close-wrapped about the earth below are a fiery sea, with purple shadows, and waves whose crests change from silver to scarlet and vermillion, and then the whole slowly metamorphoses into a crucible of molten gold. It is a spectacle of sublime beauty and magnificence. Breathlessly and with throbbing hearts the pilgrims drink in the glorious phenomena.of this climax of their lives. They will tell of it to their children, and their childrsn's children, and their names will ever be deeper reverenced for the Mecca they have seen. The skies have gone through every colour of the prism. Suddenly a spark, a flame, and then a dazzling burst of fire : and lo and behold, the rosy morning is awake once more on Fuji's pearly crest, while Japan below is yet enveloped in the filmy mists of night.—"ln Lotus-Land Japan."