What fun civilization is in its infancy! How bright and fresh the world looks at the dawn of consciousness! Listen:
"Your basket, with your pretty basket,/ Your trowel, with your little trowel,/ Maiden, picking herbs on this hillside,/ I would ask you: Where is your home?/ Will you not tell me your name?"
It was morning in Japan. Night — if night is a fitting metaphor for Neolithic prehistory — had been long, tens of thousands of years long. China, Egypt and Mesopotamia had thousands of years of civilization behind them; classical Greece had come and gone; classical Rome, long past its prime, was dying. Still, Japan slept on.