than Kyoto, the capital of the medieval, to drink tea as a real tea-sipper.
A few days ago I enjoyed a little play (comedy, but poetry), “Sakura Shigure,” or “The Cherry-blossom Shower,” by my friend Gekko Takayasu—the play is the love between Yoshino and Saburobei. Yoshino was a courtesan of four or five hundred years ago—of course, not in the modern sense, but a type which the Tosa school artists were happy to paint, the most famous beauty of that age whose name was known even to China, although it was the age of isolation. It is said that Li Shozan, the Chinese poet, sent her a poem written on his meeting with her in a dream. It is written in Okagami: “Her temperament was sprightly; she was wise. Her charming spirit was impressive; she was at once free in disposition, and again sympathetic in feeling.” Yoshino was a rare personality; and it was the age when dignity and freedom were well protected even for a courtesan; in truth, she was in no way different from the maiden at a palace of the Heian period. Yoshino was a character which only the
