Withal this figure stood before me, not thrust to view like the ordinary nude, but enveloped in an atmosphere that lends mystery to everything in it; only suggesting, so to speak, the profound loveliness of its beauty behind a thin veil. A few scales in a spread of inky cloud, make one see in fancy the horned monster of a dragon behind the canvas; such is the power of art and spirit behind it. The vision before me, was perfect, as art would have it in its atmosphere, geniality and phantasmality. If it be true that painting carefully six times six, thirty-six scales of a dragon can only end in a ludicrousness, there is a psychic charm in gazing not too clearly at the stark nakedness of a body. When the figure appeared before my eyes I fancied to see in it a heavenly maiden, fled from the moon, standing hesitatingly, being hard pressed by the chasing aurora.
The figure gradually rose out of the water, and I feared that a step more would make it a thing of this fallen world. But just in the nick of time, the black hair shook like a magician’s wand calling for wind, and the snowy vision swept through the whirling cloud of steam and flew up the steps to the doorway. A moment later a woman’s ringing chuckle sounded on the other side of the door, leaving dying echoes behind in the still quiet of the bath room. The agitated water of the tank washing over my face, I stood on my feet, and its waves beat me about my chest. The water overflowed from the bath with a noise.
VIII
I had tea, with a priest named Daitetsu, the abbot of Kaikanji temple, and a lay-youth of about twenty-four years, as my fellow-guests, and Nami-san’s father, of course as mine host, in his own room. Nami-san is the name of the O-Jo-san of Shiota.
The room was one of about six mats, but looked rather small and narrow, with a large square short-legged rosewood table in the centre. The table stood partly on a Chinese rug and partly on a tiger skin, which together nearly filled the floor of the room. The youth and I squatted cross-legged on the rug, and the priest and the host on the skin. There was something undeniably continental in the rug, with a crazy sort of appearance in its figures, as is the case with most things Chinese. But that is where their value resides. You gaze at Chinese furniture and ornaments. You think they are dull or grotesque; but presently you become conscious that there is in that dullness or grotesqueness something that has a power of fascinating you irresistibly, and that is what makes them precious. Japan produces her art goods with the attitude of a pickpocket; and the West is large in scale and fine in execution, but inalterably worldly and practical. A train of thought of some such trend was coursing in me as I sat down, with the youth sharing the rug.
The tiger skin, on which the priest sat, had its tail stretched out near my knees, and its head under mine host, who seemed to have had all his grey hair pulled out of his head and planted in his cheeks and chin. Whiskers and beard were growing rampantly in a striking contrast to the shiny smoothness of his uppermost regions. He, the host, lay on the table tea things, not the paraphernalia for stiff ceremonial powdered tea drinking, but just for sipping clear green tea.
“We have a guest in the house—we haven’t had one for quite a while—and I thought, we should have a quiet tea party. …” said the old man turning toward the priest.
“Thank you for your invitation. I have not called on you for weeks, and was thinking I should come down to see you today.” The priest looked about sixty years old, with a rotund face, that would do credit to a picture of Bodhidharma in a congenial mood. He seemed to be a friend of mine host of long standing.
“Is this gentleman your guest?”
Nodding his head in acknowledgment, the old gentleman took up a kyusu teapot and poured—no—permitted a few drops of yellowish green liquid to trickle, in turns, into four tea cups, producing faint echoes of pure sweet flavour on my olfactory organ.
“You must feel lonesome, alone in a country place like this?” The priest began to speak to me.
“Haa,” I answered in a most equivocal sort of way; for a “yes” would have told a lie; but if I said “no,” it would have required a long string of explanations.
“No, Osho-san,” interposed my host “this gentleman has come out here for painting. He is even keeping himself busy.”
“Oh, so, that is good. Of the Nanso school?”
“No, Osho-san,” I replied this time. I thought he would not understand, if I said oil painting, and I did not say so.
“No,” the old one again took it upon himself to complete information, “his is that oil painting.”
“Ah, I see, the Western painting, which Kyuichi-san, here works at? I saw the kind, for the first time, in his production; it was very beautifully done.”
The young one opened his mouth at length and most diffidently asserted that “It was a poor affair.”
“You showed some of your stuff to Osho-san?” asked the old man. Judging by the tone in which this was said and the attitude assumed by the old one towards the young, they would seem to be relatives.
“No, it was only that I was caught painting by the Osho-sama at Kagamiga Ike pond, the other day.”
“Hum, is that so? Well, here
