The stranger in Japan sees so little of the intimacies of country life that I shall say something of further visits to what we should call county families.  My hosts, who seemed to be active to a greater or less degree in promoting the welfare of their tenants, lived in purely Japanese style.  Yet now and then in a beautiful house there was a showy gilt timepiece or some other thing of a deplorable Western fashion.  At all the houses without exception we were waited upon by the host and his son, son-in-law or brother, and for some time after our arrival our host and the members of his family would kneel, not in the apartment in which our zabuton (kneeling cushions) were arranged, but in the adjoining apartment with its screens pushed back.  Even when the time of sweets and tea had passed and a regular meal was served, all the little tables of food were brought in not by servants but by the master of the house and such male relatives as were at home.

When the duration of a Japanese meal is borne in mind, some idea may be gained of the fatigue endured by the head of a house in serving many guests.  The host sometimes honours his guests still further by eating apart from them or by partaking of a portion only of the meal.  The name of a feast in Japanese is significant, “a running about.”  The ladies of the house are usually seen for only a few minutes, when they come with the children to welcome the guests on their arrival; but on the second day of the visit the ladies may bring in food or tea or play the koto.

The foreigner, though on his knees, feels a little at a loss to know how to acknowledge politely the repeated bows of so many kneeling men and women.  He watches with appreciation the perfect response of his Japanese travelling companions.  It is difficult to convey a sense of the charm and dignity of old courtesies exchanged with sincerity between well-bred people in a fine old house.  Although all the shoji[30] are open, the trees of the beautiful garden cast a pensive shade.  The ancient ceremonial of welcome and introduction would seem ludicrous in the full light of a Western drawing-room, but in the perfectly subdued light of these romantically beautiful apartments, charged with some strange and melancholy emotion, the visitor from the West feels himself entering upon the rare experience of a new world.

Everyone knows how few are the treasures that a Japanese displays in his house.  His heirlooms and works of art are stored in a fireproof annexe.  For the feasting of the eye of every guest or party of visitors the appropriate choice of kakemono,[31] carving or pottery is made.  I had the delight of seeing during my country-house visiting many ancient pictures of country life and of animals and birds.  It was also a precious opportunity to inspect armour and wonderful swords and stands of arrows in the houses in which the men who had worn the armour and used the weapons had lived.  The way of stringing the seven-feet-high bow was shown to me by a kimono-clad samurai, as has been recorded in the previous chapter.  When he threw himself into a warlike attitude and with an ancient cry whirled a gleaming two-handed sword in the dim light thrown by lanterns which had lighted the house in the time of the Shoguns, the figures on old-time Japanese prints had a new vividness.