ABSTRACT
Chiefly perhaps it is the crowds of Asakusa, Tokyo's Battersea Park, which send Rumour afoot with a deep question for the curious stranger-the crowds and their playthings in the temple grounds; the crowds and their worships on the temple stairs, in the temple hall. To be in the midst of any Japanese crowd, even in these days of Revolution ; to be a stranger from the ultimate West in the belly of a crowd of this ultimate
Eas t ; to be alone there ; to be singular, to be conspicuous, to be marked,—if only because one has six inches or five more of stature than the crowd-this, of itself, is to feel, even if one has only a little imagination, that the European attitude of amused interest, benignant commendation, fatherly encouragement, is not all that the case of Japan requires ; that it is far from sufficient; so far, that sometimes, as one recalls it, it seems apropos of nothing, or next to nothing. Here a big c Perhaps' insists on its importance in relation to the Revolution.
