Jinrikisha Days in Japan

Nammikawa, the first _cloisonné_ artist of the world, has his home, his workshop, and his little garden in a quiet corner of the Awata district. Most visitors never pass beyond his ante-room, as Nammikawa holds his privacy dear, and that small alcove with the black table gives little hint of what lies beyond. The more fortunate visitor follows the master through a dark recess to a large room with two sides open to the garden, and a tiny balcony overhanging a lakelet. He claps his hands, and big golden carp rise to the surface and gobble the mochi thrown them. In that little paradise, barely sixty feet square, are hills, groves, thickets, islands, promontories, and bays, a bamboo-shaded well, and a shrine, while above the farthest screen of foliage rise the green slopes of Maruyama.

A Japanese friend, who described Nammikawa as "the most Japanese and most interesting man in Kioto," took us to drink tea with him in this charming garden, and, on the hottest afternoon of a hot Kioto summer, we noted neither time nor temperature until the creeping shadows warned us to depart. Old Japan seemed to re-live in the atmosphere of that garden, and a cha no yu was no more finished than the simple tea-ceremony the master performed there. By the old etiquette a Japanese gentleman never intrusted to any servant the making of tea for a guest, nor allowed the fine art of that simple, every-day process to be exercised unseen. The tea-tray, brought and set before the master, bore a tiny jewel-like teapot of old Awata, and the tiny _cloisonné_ cups with plain enamelled linings were as richly colored as the circle of a tulip's petals, and smaller far. With them was a small pear-shaped dish, not unlike our gravy-boats, a beautiful bronze _midzu tsugi_, or hot-water pot, and a lacquer box holding a metal tea-caddy filled with the finest leaves from Uji tea-gardens. Taking a scoop of yellowed ivory, carved in the shape of a giant tea-leaf, our host filled the little teapot with loosely-heaped leaves, and having decanted the hot water into the little pear-shaped pitcher to cool a little, poured it upon the tea-leaves. Immediately he drew off the palest amber fluid, half filling each cup, and presented them to us, resting on leaf-shaped stands or saucers of damascened metal.