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The normal Japanese eye does not see the ideals of beauty in the human face and form in common with the Aryan vision. Benten or Knanon, with the features and drapery of the homelike beauties of Yamato or Adzuma, have ever been more lovely to the admiring eye of the Japanese sailor and farmer, than the Aryan features of the idols imported from India.
I have set my heart upon that girl O Koyo, whom I met to-day upon the Adzuma Bridge, and you must arrange a meeting between us." When Chokichi heard these words, he was amazed and frightened, and for a while he made no answer. At last he said "Sir, there is nothing that I would not do for you after the favours that I have received from you.
Adzuma, the ideal wife in the minds of samurai girls, finds herself loved by a man who, in order to win her affection, conspires against her husband. Upon pretence of joining in the guilty plot, she manages in the dark to take her husband's place, and the sword of the lover assassin descends upon her own devoted head.
Sometimes it had been like rain blowing over the plains of Adzuma, sometimes like the winds roaring down the passes of the Yoshino Mountains, and yet again like the voice of far cities. For many hours they listened without weariness, and thought that all the stories of the ancients might flow past them in the weird music that seemed to have neither beginning nor end.
Japan has no more beautiful scene, and Yamato stood silently gazing over its broad expanse, the memory of his beloved wife, who had given her life for his, coming back to him as he gazed. These words still haunt that land. In the poet's verse that broad plain is to-day called Adzuma, and one of the great ships of the new navy of Japan is named Adzuma-kuan.
"O Kuma, I want you to answer me a question: where has O Koyo gone to amuse herself to-day?" "Oh, you know the gentleman who was talking with you the other day, at the Adzuma Bridge? Well, O Koyo has fallen desperately in love with him, and she says that she is too low-spirited and out of sorts to get up yet." Chokichi was greatly pleased to hear this, and said to O Kuma "How delightful!
Then Genzaburô told him the whole story of his loves with O Koyo how he had first met her and fallen in love with her at the Adzuma Bridge; how Chokichi had introduced her to him at the tea-house at Oji, and then when she fell ill, and he wanted to see her again, instead of bringing her to him, had only given him good advice; and so Genzaburô drew a lamentable picture of his state of despair.
There was a certain Eta, who used to earn his living by going out every day to the Adzuma Bridge, and mending the sandals of the passers-by. Whenever Genzaburô crossed the bridge, the Eta used always to bow to him.
So Chokichi, in great glee at the good luck which had befallen him, began to revolve all sorts of schemes in his mind; and the two parted. But O Koyo, who had fallen in love at first sight with Genzaburô on the Adzuma Bridge, went home and could think of nothing but him.
Then, at a short interval, followed the Idzumo, flying Admiral Kamimura's flag, and the Iwate, Yakumo, Adzuma, Asama, and Tokiwa, in the order named, every ship flaunting two big battle-flags in the morning breeze.
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