A Street in Kioto by Mortimer Menpes. 1901. Watercolor. Source: Japan: A Record in Colour, facing p. 82. Menpes found the typical Japanese umbrella delightful, a great changed to the (then) dull English umbrellas: "What a joy is the spectacle of all those lovely yellow paper umbrellas unfurling themselves beneath a shower like flowers before the sun, so different from the dark shiny respectability of our ghastly gamps at home!" (40). On another occasion, he recalls, "I shall never forget my first rainy day in Japan. I went out in the wet and stood there, hatless but perfectly happy, watching the innocent shops light up one by one, and the forest of yellow oil-paper umbrellas with the light shining through looking like circles of gold, ever moving and changing in the purple tones of the street" (100). — Jacqueline Banerjee
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Bibliography
Menpes, Dorothy. Japan: A Record in Colour. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1901. Internet Archive version of a copy in the University of California Libraries. Web. 26 June 2019.
Created 26 June 2019