an impression that it had once been a folk dance of vigour and
significance. But the present-day performance might have been
conceived and presented by a P.S.A. All this is true when the dance is
contrasted with an English West-country dance or a dance in Scotland
at Hallowe'en. But it must be remembered that the _Bon_ dance during
the first nights is in the nature of a lament for the dead. There is
something haunting in the strange little refrain, though it is
difficult to hum or whistle it. Perhaps the whole festival is too
intimately racial to be fully understood by a stranger. By the end of
the festival, on the night of merrymaking in honour of the village
guardian spirit, things were livelier. Some of the lads had evidently
had _sake_ and even the girls had lost their demureness.

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD]

After the Buddhist _Bon_ season was over it was the turn of Shinto,
and the village children were paraded before the shrine. A number of
Shinto priests in the neighbourhood took a leading part in making the
customary offerings and the local priest read a longish address to the
guardian spirit of the village. Respectful correctness rather than
devoutness is the phrase which one would ordinarily be disposed to
apply to the ceremonies at a Shinto shrine, but the local priest was
reverential. The ceremonies of the day evidently meant a great deal to
him. The children paid a well-drilled attention. They also sang the
national anthem and a special song for the day under the leadership of
the school teacher, who played on a portable harmonium which sounded
as portable harmoniums usually sound. The whole proceedings wore a
semi-official look.

Happily there was nothing semi-official about the wrestling to which
we were invited later in the day. A special little platform had been
put up for us. The ring was made on rice chaff and earth. The
wrestlers squatted in two parties at opposite sides of the ring. They
did not wear the straw girdles of the professionals. Each man had a
wisp of cotton cloth tied round his waist and between his legs. One of
the best things about the wrestling was the formal introduction of the
competitors. A weazened little man with a tucked-up cotton kimono and
bare legs, but with the address and dignity of a "No" player,
proclaimed the names and styles--it seems that the wrestlers have a
fancy to be known by the names of mountains and rivers--in a fashion
which recalled the tournament.