Identifier: mikadosempire05grif (find matches)
Title: The mikado's empire
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Griffis, William Elliot, 1843-1928
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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Fukui, before a shrine of Kampira stood a pine-tree abouta foot thick, plentifully studded with nails, the imperishable parts ofthese emblems of vicarious vengeance. Another, and a smaller, treehard by, wounded unto death by repeated stabs of the iron nails driv-en home by arms nerved to masculine strength, had long since with-ered away. It stood there, all scarred and stained by rust, and gut-tered into rottenness, a grim memorial of passions long since cooledin death, perchance of retribution long since accomplished. Whattales of love and desertion, anguish, jealousy, and vengeance couldeach rusty cross of iron points tell, were each a tongue! It seemedbut another of many proofs that the passions which thrill or tormentthe human soul are as strong in Japan as in those lands whose chil-dren boast that to them it is given to reach the heights of highest hu-man joy, and to sound the depths of deepest human woe. In Japan,also, Love is as strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave.
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THE MYTHICAL ZOOLOGY OF JAPAN, 477 XII. THE MYTHICAL ZOOLOGY OF JAPAN. As if to make amends for the poverty of the actual fauna in Japan,the number and variety of imaginary creatures in animal form are re-markably great. Man is not satisfied with what the heavens aboveand the waters under the earth show him. Seeing that every effectmust have a cause, and ignorant of the revelations of modern science,the natural man sees in cloud, tempest, lightning, thunder, earthquake,and biting wind the moving spirits of the air. According to the pri-yial mold of the particular human mind will the bodying of thesethings unseen be lovely or hideous, sublime or trivial. Only one bornamong the triumphs of modern discovery, who lives a few years in anAsiatic country, can realize in its most perfect vividness the definitionof science given by the master seer— the art of seeing the invisible. The aspects of nature in Japan are such as to influence the mindsof its mainly agricultural inhabitants to an ex

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