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LETTER LIV

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2010

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Summary

The “elegant repose” of Kiyôto degenerates into wearisome dawdling in the shops. They are slower than anywhere else. One can hardly buy the merest trifle in less than an hour. Three or four men and sharp, business like boys squat on the floor round a hibachi, with two or three wooden basins for money, several ledgers and ink boxes, and a soroban or two among them. They offer you the tabako bon and produce tea after every little purchase; and if I go with a Japanese, they waste more time in asking my age, income, where my husband is, if I am “learned,” and where I have been.

But the beauty of the things in many of the small, dingy shops is wonderful. Kiyôto is truly the home of art. There are wide mousseline de laines, with patterns on them of the most wildly irregular kind, but so artistic in grace of form and harmony of colour that I should like to hang them all up merely to please my eyes. From the blaze of gold and silver stuffs, stiff with bullion, used chiefly for ecclesiastical purposes, which one sees in some shops, one turns for rest to silk brocades in the most artistic shades of brown, green, and grey, with here and there a spray or figure only just suggested in colour or silver, and to silk crêpes so exquisitely fine that four widths at a time can be drawn through a finger ring, and with soft sprays of flowers or bamboo thrown on their soft, tinted grounds with an apparent carelessness which produces ravishing effects.

Type
Chapter
Information
Unbeaten Tracks in Japan
An Account of Travels in the Interior, Including Visits to the Aborigines of Yezo and the Shrines of Nikkô and Isé
, pp. 247 - 252
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010
First published in: 1880

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  • LETTER LIV
  • Isabella Lucy Bird
  • Book: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan
  • Online publication: 05 October 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511709845.028
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  • LETTER LIV
  • Isabella Lucy Bird
  • Book: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan
  • Online publication: 05 October 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511709845.028
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • LETTER LIV
  • Isabella Lucy Bird
  • Book: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan
  • Online publication: 05 October 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511709845.028
Available formats
×