Fortunately they form a solid majority in every land, a mass not easily moved, and even in progressive Japan it will be a long time before ill-cut trousers and steam-ploughs replace the kimono and the spade. The Tokaido Railway takes you in twelve hours from Hamamatsu to Kōbe, and while waiting till a new passport came from Tōkyō I had time to see a little more of the beautiful country around that hospitable port. The shores near Suma and Maiko, a little to the westward, are picturesque, and close by is the Strait of Akashi, through which a constant stream of traffic passes, ships of all kinds and sizes, from the little fishing-boats towed from the beach, to the big steamers from Europe and America. The island of Awaji lies across the entrance to the Inland Sea, leaving a narrow passage at each end; but the tide rushes so violently through the Naruta Channel to
[Illustration: THE ISLAND OF AWAJI, FROM MAIKO]
the south, between Awaji and Shikoku, that it is often unnavigable, and most of the shipping comes this way. There are the remains of a Daimio’s castle at Akashi; the main building is gone, and the plateau on which it stood is now a garden with tea-booths, but the foundation walls, the corner turrets, and the moat show what an important stronghold it must have been; and the view from it, down the Inland Sea to the west, over to the Shikoku Mountains on the south, and eastward to Osaka Bay and the hills of Yamato, is extensive and very fine in its outlines. At Maiko
[Illustration: ON THE SHORE NEAR MAIKO, THE STRAIT OF AKASHI TO THE RIGHT]
there is a grove of curiously blown and twisted pine-trees, with the quaint forms which are loved by all artists, especially by the Japanese; and near Suma, wherever the wiry grasses had got a foothold among the sand, the shore was gay with scarlet lilies. The botanic name of this flower, which is really more like an amaryllis than a lily, is _Nerine japonica_. Its Japanese name is not so easy to determine, for wherever I went it had a different one; some of these names are shiwata-bana, teku-sari, chiridji, and ushino-ninniku (cow-garlic), but I think the commonest is higambana (equinox flower), and the best, for its opening marks the change of the season, the beginning of the end. It is probably because of this that, beautiful as it appears to European eyes, to the Japanese it is a flower of ill omen, associated in their minds with death and decay, and never used in art or in floral arrangements. The children, indeed, gather great armfuls of it; but they never take it inside their homes; the great bunches they have collected are either scattered among the family tombstones or left to wither on the foot-paths. They seem to like picking it because its juicy stem snaps so easily, and often amuse themselves as they sit by the road-side by breaking the stalks half through, leaving them hanging in regular joints, much as our children make dandelion or daisy chains. Near a little graveyard set down among the rice-fields the flowers grew in great profusion, making a gorgeous splash of brilliant color as a foreground to the gray stones, the yellowing grain, and the pale blue distant hills. The rice was ripening fast, and flocks of