and gave to the short squat knives a romantic air and to the broad wooden spoons a suggestion of witchcraft:  finally, the little shrine to the Kitchen God, perched on a shelf close to the ceiling, looking like the facade of a doll’s temple, and decorated with brass vases, dry grasses, and strips of white paper.  The wide kitchen was impregnated with a smell already familiar to Asako’s nose, one of the most typical odours of Japan, the smell of native cooking, humid, acrid and heavy like the smell of wood smoke from damp logs, with a sour and rotten flavour to it contributed by a kind of pickled horse-radish called Daikon or the Great Root, dear to the Japanese palate.

The central ceremony of Asako’s visit was her introduction to the memory of her dead parents.  She was taken to a small room, where the alcove, the place of honour, was occupied by a closed cabinet, the butsudan (Buddha shelf), a beautiful piece of joiner’s work in a kind of lattice pattern covered with red lacquer and gold.  Sadako, approaching, reverently opened this shrine.  The interior was all gilt with a dazzling gold like that used an old manuscripts.  In the centre of this glory sat a golden-faced Buddha with dark blue hair and cloak, and an aureole of golden rays.  Below him were arranged the ihai, the Tablets of the Dead, miniature grave-stones about one foot high, with a black surface edged with gold upon which were inscribed the names of the dead persons, the new names given by the priests.

Sadako stepped back and clapped her hands together three times, repeating the formula of the Nichiren Sect of Buddhists.

“Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o]! (Adoration to the Wonderful Law of the Lotus Scriptures!)”

She instructed Asako to do the same.

“For,” she said, “we believe that the spirits of the dead people are here; and we must be very good to them.”

Asako did as she was told, wondering whether her confessor would give her penance for idolatry.  Sadako then motioned her to sit on the floor.  She took one of the tablets from its place and placed it in front of her cousin.

“That is your father’s ihai,” she said; and then removing another and placing it beside the first, she added,—­

“This is your mother.”

Asako was deeply moved.  In England we love our dead; but we consign them to the care of nature, to the change of the seasons, and the cold promiscuity of the graveyard.  The Japanese dead never seem to leave the shelter of their home or the circle of their family.  We bring to our dear ones flowers and prayers; but the Japanese give them food and wine, and surround them with every-day talk.  The companionship is closer.  We chatter much about immortality.  We believe, many of us, in some undying particle.  We even think that in some other world the dead may meet the dead whom they have known in life.  But the actual communion of the dead and the living is for us a beautiful and inspiring metaphor rather than a concrete belief.  Now the Japanese, although their religion is so much vaguer than ours, hardly question this survival of the ancestors in the close proximity of their children and grandchildren.  The little funeral tablets are for them clothed with an invisible personality.