Kokoro
Kokoro
Japanese Inner Life Hints
The papers composing this volume treat of the inner rather than of the outer life of Japan -- for which reason they have been grouped under the title Kokoro (heart)... This word signifies also mind, in the emotional sense; spirit; courage; resolve; sentiment; affection; and inner meaning, -- just as we say in English, "the heart of things."
Book Excerpt
sm, which is a street, between mountains, which are houses. I am tired, because I have walked many miles between those precipices of masonry, and have trodden no earth,--only slabs of rock,--and have heard nothing but thunder of tumult. Deep below those huge pavements I know there is a cavernous world tremendous: systems underlying systems of ways contrived for water and steam and fire. On either hand tower facades pierced by scores of tiers of windows,--cliffs of architecture shutting out the sun. Above, the pale blue streak of sky is cut by a maze of spidery lines,--an infinite cobweb of electric wires. In that block on the right there dwell nine thousand souls; the tenants of the edifice facing it pay the annual rent of a million dollars. Seven millions scarcely covered the cost of those bulks overshadowing the square beyond,--and there are miles of such. Stairways of steel and cement, of brass and stone, with costliest balustrades, ascend through the decades and double-decades of stories; but no foot trea
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