le, the streets become more
noisy and crowded. All along the houses are endless stalls raised on
trestles, displaying sweetmeats of every color, toys, branches of
flowers, nosegays and masks. There are masks everywhere, boxes full of
them, carts full of them; the most popular being the one that represents
the livid and cunning muzzle, contracted as by a deathlike grimace, the
long straight ears and sharp-pointed teeth of the white fox, sacred to
the God of Rice. There are also others symbolic of gods or monsters,
livid, grimacing, convulsed, with wigs and beards of natural hair. All
manner of folk, even children, purchase these horrors, and fasten them
over their faces. Every sort of instrument is for sale, among them many
of those crystal trumpets which sound so strangely--this evening they are
enormous, six feet long at least--and the noise they make is unlike
anything ever heard before: one would say gigantic turkeys were gobbling
amid the crowd, striving to inspire fear.

In the religious amusements of this people it is not possible for us to
penetrate the mysteriously hidden meaning of things; we can not divine
the boundary at which jesting stops and mystic fear steps in. These
customs, these symbols, these masks, all that tradition and atavism have
jumbled together in the Japanese brain, proceed from sources utterly dark
and unknown to us; even the oldest records fail to explain them to us in
anything but a superficial and cursory manner, simply because we have
absolutely nothing in common with this people. We pass through the midst
of their mirth and their laughter without understanding the wherefore, so
totally do they differ from our own.

Chrysantheme with Yves, Oyouki with me, Fraise and Zinnia, our cousins,
walking before us under our watchful eyes, move slowly through the crowd,
holding hands lest we should lose one another.

Along the streets leading to the temple, the wealthy inhabitants have
decorated the fronts of their houses with vases and nosegays. The
peculiar shed-like buildings common in this country, with their open
platform frontage, are particularly well suited for the display of choice
objects; all the houses have been thrown open, and the interiors are hung
with draperies that hide the back of the apartments. In front of these
hangings, and standing slightly back from the movement of the passing
crowd, the various exhibited articles are placed methodically in a row,
under the full glare of