JAPANESE MUSIC  YOU may perhaps have heard that nothing is more distinctly at variance than Eastern and Western ideas of music. In almost all other things the European and the Eastern find something which they both admire, but in music it is not so. The European satisfies his		musical appetite with the resonant tones of the cornet and bassoon; the pathetic strains of the violin and harp; the full, rich chords of the organ and piano, whose lingering tones thrill his heart with holy impulses; and the harsh but lively refrains of the street organ. The Eastern satisfies his with very much less, in fact I might almost say with little more than a half tuned set of three strings and something to twang them with. The Chinaman does not go so far as three strings in all his instruments, many have only one, and the Indian revels mostly in a drum; but in Japan a greater variety of music is found, and after some time one grows to like the samisen and koto when played for a very short time, and half a street away. Most Japanese players prefer playing the whole day when they once begin, however. The koto is a very difficult instrument, and the Japanese play it very cleverly with little pointed ivory thimbles on their fingers with which they click the strings. The samisen is more like the banjo, but not so highly tuned, and it is played with a piece of ivory something like a shoulder-blade of mutton.
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