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This house is a little way out from Tokyo, a suburban home with beautiful gardens and conservatories attached. The Count is the representative of a very old family of noble blood and proud traditions. One portion of his house is built and furnished in European fashion, but this is a part of the house where everything (except those up-to-date electric lights) is strictly according to the usages of the best Japanese society. Those windows (shoji) are oiled paper in bamboo frames and they can be pushed back and forth, opening the entire front to the air in bright weather. These sliding doors (fusuma) dividing the room in two are likewise covered with paper; they, too, can be removed, throwing the rooms into one. The floors, you see, are covered with two sets of fine straw matting. Such mats are always precisely 3x6 feet and one speaks of a "six-mat" room, a "twelve-mat" room, to indicate dimensions. The mats are exquisitely fresh and fine, for nobody treads upon them with clogs or sandals, --only with feet daintily clad in soft stockings. (Japanese stockings are woven with the great toe separated like the thumb of a mitten, for convenience in holding on the sandal or clog.) Host and guests sit on their heels upon these mats; a servant entering to serve her master would bow to the floor, and kneel while awaiting his orders. Meals are served from dishes set either on trays and mats or on very low stands a few inches above the floor.
That low platform at the end of the room is the tokonoma or place of honor for the display of the master's favorite flower-jar and hanging picture (kakemono) both genuine works of art and worth enormous sums. Japanese taste--an excellent model for the western world--forbids the crowding of any room with bric-a-brac, but the picture and vase may be often changed for others kept in storerooms to wait their turn.
From Notes of Travel, No. 8, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood.
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Serene Simplicity of the Home of Count Okuma, Tokyo, Japan.
Simplicité Sereine de la Maison du Comte Okuma, Tokio, Japon.
Ruhige Einfachheit von Graf Ofumas Heim, Tokio, Japan.
Simplicidad Serena de la Casa del Conde Okuma, Tokio, Japón.
Framträdande enkelhet i Grefve Okuma's hem, Tokyo, Japan.
Простота дома графа Окума, ТокіоЯпо-, нія.

Transcription Notes:
Text spot checked above double line, fixed one error in language translation