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Remembered smiles; the morning gathering at the threshold of the old yashiki to wish the departing teacher a happy day; the evening gathering to welcome his return; the dog waiting by the gate at the accustomed hour; the garden with its lotus-flowers and its cooing of doves; the musical boom of the temple bell from the cedar groves; songs of children at play; afternoon shadows upon many-tinted streets; the long lines of lantern-fires upon festal nights; the dancing of the moon upon the lake; the clapping of hands by the river shore in salutation to the Izumo sun; the endless merry pattering of geta over the windy bridge: all these and a hundred other happy memories revive for me with almost painful vividness while the far peaks, whose names are holy, slowly turn away their blue shoulders, and the little steamer bears me, more and more swiftly, ever farther and farther from the Province of the Gods.
In 1632, Iemitsu confiscated his fief and exiled him to Takasaki in Kotsuke, where he was compelled to undergo confinement in the Yashiki of Ando Shigenaga. Fourteen months later, sentence of death was pronounced against him at the early age of twenty-eight. Other instances might be quoted showing how little mercy the Tokugawa shoguns extended to wrongdoers among their own relatives.
Again he was a very little boy in his father's yashiki, wandering from luminous room to room, playing in sunned spaces where leaf-shadows trembled on the matting, or gazing into the soft green dreamy peace of the landscape garden.
The fine old yashiki of Yamashiro, with its porter's lodge, stone path, entrance-porch, vestibule and the family homestead, was within.
It must not be allowed to turn our yashiki into a battlefield." Mr. Fujinami's meditations that morning had been most bitter. His literary preoccupation was only a sham. There was a tempest in the political world of Japan. The Government was tottering under the revelations of a corruption in high places more blatant than usual.
Then with a few jumps she was to announce it to a mosquito friend of hers, who would fly with the news to the gate-keeper of the yashiki, one Whirligig by name. So, punctually to the hour, the great double gate swung wide open, and the procession passed out and marched on over the hill. All the servants of Lord Long-legs were out, to see the grand sight.
Sometimes only by inquiry, or by the humming of the machinery, can you distinguish a factory from an old yashiki, or an old-fashioned Japanese school building, unless indeed you can read the Chinese characters over the garden gate. Some big brick factories and breweries exist; but they are very few, and even when close to the foreign settlements they seem incongruities in the landscape.
By day they could go out where they pleased; but they were under obligation to return at night to the yashiki before the gates of the court were closed. For it was feared that the Pets of the Gods might so far forget themselves as to condescend to become the darlings of adventurous mortals.
But in samurai homes, or within the grounds of the yashiki, some private performances of a particular character were given. Strolling players were the performers. I know several charming old samurai who have never been to a public theatre in their lives, and refuse all invitations to witness a performance. They still obey the rules of their samurai education.
The cortége enters one of the gate-towers of the old city-walls, passes beneath the shade of its ponderous copper-clad portals, and soon arrives at the main entrance of the Yamashiro yashiki. Here they find the street in front and the stone walk covered with matting, and a friend of Taro's, in full dress, waiting to receive the cortége.
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