"I see rising out of darkness, a lotus in a vase. Most of the vase is invisible; but I know that it is bronze, and that its glimpsing handles are bodies of dragons. Only the lotus is fully illuminated: three pure white flowers, and five great leaves of gold and green, an artificial lotus. The reason that I see the lotus, one memory of my first visit to a Buddhist sanctuary, is that there has come to me an odor of incense. Often when I smell incense, this vision defines; and usually thereafter other sensations of my first day in Japan revive in swift succession with almost pain acuteness."
- Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo 小泉八雲)
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