[Xpp-general] Ible explanation of nudity and bathing see Finck's _Lotos Time in Japan_, pp.

[Hageny <da...@ca...>]

S to life, as though loth or afraid to die rather than drop untimely,
preferring to rot on her stem; her showy colors and heavy odors--all
these are traits so unlike our flower, which carries no dagger or poison
under its beauty, which is ever ready to depart life at the call of
nature, whose colors are never gorgeous, and whose light fragrance never
palls. Beauty of color and of form is limited in its showing; it is a
fixed quality of existence, whereas fragrance is volatile, ethereal as
the breathing of life. So in all religious ceremonies frankincense and
myrrh play a prominent part. There is something spirituelle in
redolence. When the delicious perfume of the _sakura_ quickens the
morning air, as the sun in its course rises to illumine first the isles
of the Far East, few sensations are more serenely exhilarating than to
inhale, as it were, the very breath of beauteous day. When the Creator
himself is pictured as making new resolutions in his heart upon smelling
a sweet savor (Gen. VIII, 21), is it any wonder that the sweet-smelling
season of the cherry blossom should call forth the whole nation from
their little habitations? Blame them not, if for a time their limbs
forget their toil and moil and their hearts their pangs and sorrows.
Their brief pleasure ended, they return to their daily tasks with new
strength and new resolutions. Thus in ways more than one is the sakura
the flower of the nation. Is, then, this flower, so sweet and
evanescent, blown whithersoever the wind listeth, and, shedding a puff
of perfume, ready to vanish forever, is this flower the type of the
Yamato spirit? Is the Soul of Japan so frailly mortal? IS BUSHIDO STILL
ALIVE? Or has Western civilization, in its march through the land, alre