One is sometimes startled by the garish colors of Japanese garments designed for special occasions. Mounted on an exquisite cherry-wood frame and encased in thick glass, a padded green-red-yellow-and-blue silk kimono exhibited in the Asian wing of many a museum puzzles one because of its incongruity with other Japanese objects exhibited in the very same room. Where are the proverbial refinement and reserve? Where is the cultivated elegance that graces this sword here or that cup over there? But one is reassured upon learning from eyewitnesses like Lady Murasaki, who gave us the memory of Prince Genji for all eternity, that Japanese noblemen were fond of moonlit parties dedicated to music and poetry. One realizes that the silk kimono was not meant for the sharp light of a museum cage. Indeed, the kimono would reveal the splendor of its true colors only in the pale light of plum-tree blossom at midnight.