I asked if the villagers really believed that their dead returned at the Bon season. The answer was, "Only the old men and young children believe that the dead actually come, but the young men and young women, when they see the burning of the flax-plant and the other things that are done, think of the dead; they remember them solemnly at this time." And I think it was so. The stranger to a Japanese house, in which there is not only a Shinto shelf but a Buddhist shrine—where the name plates of the dead for several generations are treasured—cannot but feel that, when all allowances are made for the dulling influences of use and wont, the plan is a means of taking the minds of the household beyond the daily round. The fact that there is a certain familiarity with the things of the shrine and of the Shinto shelf, just as there is a certain freedom at the public shrines and in the temple, does not destroy the impression. When a man has taken me to his little graveyard I have been struck by the lack of that lugubriousness which Western people commonly associate with what is sacred. The Japanese conception of reverence is somewhat different from our own. As to sorrow, the idea is, as is well known, that it is the height of bad manners to trouble strangers with a display of what in many cases is largely a selfish grief. A manservant smiled when he told me of his only son's death. On my offering sympathy the tears ran down his face.
FARMER'S WIFE
When the Bon season ended on the fourteenth all the flowers and decorations of the domestic shrines were taken early in the morning to the bridge over the diminished river and flung down. The idea is perhaps that they are carried away to the sea. (As a matter of fact there was so little water that almost everything flung in from the bridge remained in sight for weeks until there was a storm.) When the flowers and decorations had been cast from the bridge the people went off to worship at the graves. Many coloured streamers of paper, written on by the priest, were flying there.
The Bon dances took place five nights running in the open space between the Shinto shrine and the old barn theatre. Nothing could have been duller. The line from Ruddigore came to mind, "This is one of our blameless dances." The first night the performers were evidently shy and the girls would hardly come forward. Things warmed up a little more each night and on the last night of all there was a certain animation; but even then the movement, the song and the whole scheme of the dance seemed to be lacking in vigour. What happened was that a number of lads gradually formed themselves into a ring, which got larger or smaller as the girls joined it or waited outside. The girls bunched together all the time. None of the dancers ever took hands. The so-called dancing consisted of a raising of both arms—the girls had fans in their hands—and a simple attitudinising. The lads all clapped their hands together in time, but in a half-hearted kind of way; the girls struck the palms of their left hands with their fans. The boys were in clean working dress. Some had towels wound round their heads, some wore caps and others hats. The girls were got up in all their best clothes with fine obi and white aprons. The music was dirge-like. It was not at all what Western people understand to be singing. The performers emitted notes in a kind of falsetto, and these five or six notes were repeated over and over and over again. The only word I can think of which approximately describes what I heard, but it seems harsh, is the Northern word, yowling. First the lads yowled and then the girls responded with a slightly more musical repetition of the same sounds. For all the notice the boys appeared to take of the girls they might not have been present. The lads and lasses were no doubt fully conscious, however, of each other's presence. The dancing took place on the nights of the full moon. But it was cloudy, and, owing to the big surrounding trees, the performance was often dimly lit.
To me the dancing was depressing, but that is not to say that the dancers found it so. Dancing began at eight o'clock and went on till midnight. "They would not be fit for their work next day if they danced later," a sober-minded adult explained. This was only one suggestion among many that the dance has been devitalised under the respectabilising influence of the policeman and village elders who had forgotten their youth. To the onlooker it did not seem to matter very much whether the dance, as it is now, continues or not. Occasionally one had 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 saké and even the girls had lost their demureness.
MOTHER AND CHILD