I LOOKED aside through the window where the young-green willow branches, to use a Japanese phrase, almost smoked in uneasiness like the love-touched heart of a girl, when our talk (nothing better than an informal talk on art and poetry to fill an hour of an April afternoon already grown gold and slow) flagged; we three found a haven from the city's noise by a little table at the restaurant off Ginza, the Boulevard of Tokyo. My friend-composer finished his cup of tea, and took up again his talk where he had left off.
    "Once I made the late Mr. K., the well-recognised Japanese musician connected with the Kabukiza Theatre, listen to the tune of Payne's 'Home, Sweet Home.' What did he say, do you suppose, when it was over ? You are mistaken to think his musical mind rightly responded when he appeared fallen in meditation; he said to my amazement: 'That was very grand.' And he said further that he would like to play it, for instance, at the scene first or last, where many samurais in formal [<45] dress, sitting in perfect order, were ready to speak their greeting of New Year's Day to their lord just stepped out from within ; indeed, that was what I never expected to hear. However, I was amused to think it was another instance to prove how differently in music the Japanese mind, at least, the old Japanese mind, is pleased to work from the West; you can imagine how mystified he looked when I told him about the nature of tune I had played him."
    This delightful talker looked upon me as if he wanted my word to endorsement; my mind grew at once alive, being given an interesting subject even for serious consideration ; and I said:
    "I had my own experiences not only once when I found myself in exactly the same situation as that Mr. K.; it was in the earlier days of my American life, when my exotic Japanese mind was still far from being acclimatised in the West. Once in New York, my American friend took me one evening to a certain Webber and Field to see the so-called artists in the 'cake-walk'-whether they were [<46] negroes or whites I hardly remember now—that fantastic way of step on the stage most popular in those days. I knew that I could not help laughing when I saw the players with stove-pipe hat red or blue, with ribboned huge cane in hand, leaping across the stage like vagarious spirits who had dethroned themselves of their own free will; but once when I closed my eyes to give my sense of hearing full play, what do you suppose? I confess that my tears strangely fell without being called. My friend said sarcastically : 'is it a Japanese way to cry when you are jolly ?' When he meant that we Japanese often act in the reverse, and generally speaking, that we are paradoxical people by nature, I think that somehow he hit the right mark; but I dismissed the whole thing without answering him, because it was a question too complicated to explain in one breath. And I am sure that he would have asked me why, even if I had told him simple that the music merry to him sounded to me sadly."
    "Dr. C., you know, the German professor at the Musical College," my friend-composer interrupted me, as, doubtless, he wished to say [<47] something before he forgot it, " most savagely denies even to-day after twenty years' residence here, our having any harmony in music; but the fact is that our Japanese mind is most deliciously, tenderly, sadly moved where the Western mind finds it most unsatisfactory. Listen to a samisen music (which is said in the West to be nothing more than a noise wild or primitive at the best) in a little lyrical tune, for instance, with the song which you (Yone Noguchi) translated :

His haori
She hid,
His sleeves
She held.
Must you go, my lord,'
Says she.
From the lattice window
She slid
The Shoji slight,
And she cries:
Don't you see the snow?'