Our destination was Maibara, a little town on Lake Biwa, not many miles from Hikone. As I passed it by rail I had noticed that the flooded fields on the margin of the lake were covered with a blue-flowered water-plant, a good foreground to the blue water and the distant mountains, and I hoped for blue skies to complete the picture, but they came only at rare intervals. On a piece of waste
BLUE WATER-WEED
ground near my tea-house a travelling theatre had been erected, a structure of bamboo poles with mats hung over them, which was not calculated to keep an audience dry, and not once during my stay were the company able to give a performance. The manager occupied the room next mine; he was an excellent performer on the samisen, and a pious man withal. Every morning from seven till half-past he said his prayers, repeating in a monotonous singsong voice a sentence which sounded to me like “Ya ya yura no,” and tapping two blocks of wood together to keep time. He belonged to the Shingon sect of Buddhists.
THE TRAVELLING THEATRE, MAIBARA