This is Mr. Fujinami’s study—­like all Japanese rooms, a square box with wooden framework, wooden ceiling, sliding paper shoji, pale golden tatami and double alcove.  All Japanese rooms are just the same, from the Emperor’s to the rickshaw-man’s; only in the quality of the wood, in the workmanship of the fittings, in the newness and freshness of paper and matting, and by the ornaments placed in the alcove, may the prosperity of the house be known.

In Mr. Fujinami’s study, one niche of the alcove was fitted up as a bookcase; and that bookcase was made of a wonderful honey-coloured satinwood brought from the hinterland of China.  The lock and the handles were inlaid with dainty designs in gold wrought by a celebrated Kyoto artist.  In the open alcove the hanging scroll of Lao Tze’s paradise had cost many hundreds of pounds, as had also the Sung dish below it, an intricacy of lotus leaves caved out of a single amethyst.

On a table in the middle of this chaste apartment lay a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and a yellow book.  The room was open to the early morning sunlight; the paper walls were pushed back.  Mr. Fujinami moved a square silk cushion to the edge of the matting near the outside veranda.  There he could rest his back against a post in the framework of the building—­for even Japanese get wearied by the interminable squatting which life on the floor level entails—­and acquire that condition of bodily repose which is essential for meditation.

Mr. Fujinami was in the habit of meditating for one hour every morning.  It was a tradition of his house; his father and his grandfather had done so before him.  The guide of his meditations was the yellow book, the Rongo (Maxims) of Confucius, that Bible of the Far East which has moulded oriental morality to the shape of the Three Obediences, the obedience of the child to his parents, of the wife to her husband, and of the servant to his lord.

Mr. Fujinami sat on the sill of his study, and meditated.  Around him was the stillness of early morning.  From the house could be heard the swish of the maids’ brooms brushing the tatami, and the flip-flap of their paper flickers, like horses’ tails, with which they dislodged the dust from the walls and cornices.

A big black crow had been perched on one of the cherry-trees in the garden.  He rose with a shaking of branches and a flapping of broad black wings.  He crossed the lake, croaking as he flew with a note more harsh, rasping and cynical than the consequential caw of English rooks.  His was a malevolent presence “from the night’s Plutonian shore,” the symbol of something unclean and sinister lurking behind this dainty beauty and this elaboration of cleanliness.

Mr. Fujinami’s meditations were deep and grave.  Soon he put down the book.  The spectacles glided along his nose.  His chest rose and fell quickly under the weight of his resting chin.  To the ignorant observer Mr. Fujinami would have appeared to be asleep.