`HO-TEI'
A COLOURED DRAWING BY HOKUSAI
What monster have we here? Who is he that sprawls thus, ventrirotund,
against the huge oozing wine-skin? Wide his nose, narrowly-slit his
eyes, and with little teeth he smiles at us through a beard of bright
russet--a beard soft as the russet coat of a squirrel, and sprouting
in several tiers according to the several chins that ascend behind it
from his chest. Nude he is but for a few dark twists of drapery. One
dimpled foot is tucked under him, the other cocked before him. With a
bifurcated fist (such is his hand) he pillows the bald dome of his
head. He seems to be very happy, sprawling here in the twilight. The
wine oozes from the wine-skin; but he, replete, takes no heed of it.
On the ground before him are a few almond-blossoms, blown there by the
wind. He is snuffing their fragrance, I think.
Who is he? `Ho-Tei,' you tell me; `god of increase, god of the corn-
fields and rice-fields, patron of all little children in Japan--a
blend of Dionysus and Santa Claus.' So? Then his look belies him. He
is far too fat to care for humanity, too gross to be divine. I suspect
he is but some self-centred sage, whom Hokusai beheld with his own
eyes in a devious corner of Yedo. A hermit he is, surely; one not more
affable than Diogenes, yet wiser than he, being at peace with himself
and finding (as it were) the honest man without emerging from his own
tub; a complacent Diogenes; a Diogenes who has put on flesh.
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