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It was a tremendous crisis, but the Government showed itself strong and cool ; and even had Saigo not made that fatal delay of eight weeks before the impregnable citadel of Kumamoto, he would have been none the Itss surely crushed. Clioshu and Tosa stood aloof. The man who organised and directed the Imperial forces against the insurgent chief was his own brother, Saigo Tsuguraichi. Baffled at Kumamoto, defeated by overwhelming odds in his successive attempts to force the western and eastern coast roads, Saigo saw that his daring enterprise had failed. After the last fierce battle at Kobeoka he left his shrunken army to surrender in a body ; and himself, with five hundred clansmen who refused to part from their chief in his dire extremity, fought his way into the South, and laid hold of Kagoshima once again, driving out the newlv-installed authorities. For a fortnight they kept possession. It was on this hill of Shiroyama that they entrenched themselves for a last stand, and were cut to pieces by fifteen thousand Imperial troops. Those who did not perish in the fight chose the death of harakin, consecrated by a hundred glorious traditions. The rebellion had lasted less than eight months.Thus were the last embers of feudalism trodden out in blood ; and young Japan screwed down its potdiat firmly, once for all, upon a head boiling with the fever of progress. But. friends and foes alike '^grieved over the fate of Saigo ; and here in Kagoshima the very people who now admit that he was hopelessly wrong-headed cherish a passionate loyalty to his memory. They love to show’ you the spot wherelike all the Japanese. The ladies, in particular, were wonderfully tolerant of an intrusive and rather disreputable-looking vagrant armed with a camera. The winning grace and simple dignity of these women were things delightful to encounter. And what struck me here with the suddenness of a discovery was that you could tell mistress from maid almost as uniformly by the type of features as by the differences of manner and dress. All the shapely oval faces were in one class, all the plebeian pudding-faces in the other. Ko such sharp distinction hokl3 good in the other sex, a remarkable case in point beiwi the harsh and repellent visage of the Emperor himself.So much shaggy luxuriance of natural woodland had prepared me to take a peculiar pleasure in the exquisite, trim hedgerows and gardens. Perhaps it was in some measure because of the Japanese taste growing upon me that I found the gardens here phenomenally pretty. They had clear rushing water, and spaces of bright sand and of fresh green turf ; and at the end of each little artificial landscape, forming a part of it to the eye, looked up the peak of Saku-rajima. By this time I had begun to realise the true intent of the Japanese garden,-which is not a pleasance, but a picture. And I perceived, more visibly than heretofore, the ideal of Japanese ornament (a term almost synonymous with Japanese art). It is an ideal of suggestion rather than expression ; of wayward and graceful suggestion, -whose exuberance is governed by an iron law of restraint.“ In tier Beschninkmiff zevjt sieh erst der meider.” Yet, to our eyes, the Japanese
Newspaper Details
North China Herald
Shanghai, Shanghai, CN
Fri, Jul 23, 1897
Page 38
Full Page
Clipped by
Canton S.
OK, USA 08 Nov 2023
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North China Herald
