proofread

Fox Footprints/Japan

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
For works with similar titles, see Japan.
4487605Fox Footprints — JapanElizabeth Jane Coatsworth
Japan
Little lacquer cups in boxes of light wood exquisitely made:
The swords of the samurai, with guards inlaid in patterns of silver and gold, which, once drawn, must be sheathed with honor or in the bodies of their bearers:
The children at evening, in their bright dresses, playing about the streets:
The stupid, lumpish faces of the women in the fishing villages:
The grotesque yet overwhelming dignity of the Ne dancers, masked and brilliant, declaiming before the painted pine of the background:
The tracks of ghost foxes through the woods where the boys hunt for mushrooms in the autumn:
The restraint of the tea ceremony:
The long swirl of the robes of the beauties of the Green Houses:
The farm girls with their kimono-skirts caught in their belts, planting young rice shoots knee-deep in the ooze of the terraces, thinking curiously, as they see their faces reflected in the brown water, of the white powdered skins of the city girls:
The consumptive look of the clerks kneeling on clean mats like ascetics in contemplation:
Compactness.