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You are out at the eastern side of the city in a park belonging to a Shinto temple dedicated to Sugawara-no-Michizane, a Japanese Saint of ten centuries ago. It is said that these grounds were laid out in imitation of certain grounds where he lived when he was on earth.

You are looking from a famous old bridge which crosses the pond with a semicircular arch. The water down below is alive with carp and goldfish, swimming lazily about under the surface on which wistaria petals are falling. The picnickers over there in the flower-roofed arbor feed the fishes with bits of rice-cake and make great pets of them. It is a favorite place to bring children (see the little people over there with their mothers), but it is enjoyed by men, too, as much as by women and children. Here in Japan even the commonest workman and the humbles homemakers take sincere delight in the beauty of flowers; everybody takes pains to come here in blossom-time, just to sit under these trellises, drink tea and eat little cakes and enjoy the feathery loveliness of those swinging, swaying festoons of purple and white. Nowhere in the world does wistaria grow in fuller perfection; many of these clusters you see now hanging from that bamboo trellis overhead are two feet long -- some nearly three feet.

Those gentle-mannered men and women in the open-air tea house will call at the temple itself before going home, to say a prayer and leave some modest offering of money. There are few formal gatherings to hear sermons or anything of that sort; some of the many priests attached to the temple are always on duty, and worshipers, more or fewer, are always coming to reverence the shrines of the gods. 

(For some excellent Buddhist sermons, see Scherer's "Japan To-day.")

From Notes of Travel, No. 8, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood. 


Flower-Lovers under Wistaria Arbors at Kameido, Tokyo, Japan.
Amateurs de Fleurs sous des Berceaux de Wistaria a Kameido, Tokio, Japon.
Blumenliebhaber unter Wiftaria-Lauben bei Kameido, Tofio, Japan. 
Amantes de Flores debajo de Glorietas de Wistaria en Kameido, Tokio, Japón.
Blomälskare under Wistariaträd vid Kameido, Tokyo, Japan.
Любители цвѣтовъ въ Камейдо, Токiо, Японiя.