Ten minutes after we had forgotten Mrs. Kurumaya and her grievances, for Kishimoto had invited me to visit his quarter of Hongo, and on the way thither we engaged in a vain effort to find the grave of the painter Hokusai. Yet the indications given by Professor Revon in his careful monograph seemed exact. We discovered the little monastery of Sekioji (divine promises) near Asakusa, and, having traversed the short avenue of cherry-trees which leads to the temple door, began our search among the black, lichen-stained tombs. In the third row we should have found a stone bearing on one side the words—
"Hokusai, of Shimosa Province,
Famous Genius, Sincere Man,
Died May 10, 1849."
and on the other a poem, which the old man of eighty composed on his death-bed, one summer evening half a century before—
"Lightly a man's soul,
Lightly a fire-fly,
Passes in summer
Over the plains."
But though a young priest came to our assistance, the neglected row of undecipherable inscriptions guarded their secret, and we were obliged to give up the search.
Kishimoto could not understand the foreigner's admiration for Hokusai, and regarded it with the same tolerant contempt as most Germans exhibited thirty years ago towards admirers of Wagner. "There is nothing noble," he cried, "in his pictures, nothing sublime. He simply reproduced the vulgar street
