We spent the late afternoon and early evening in the state apartments of the temple of the Green Lotus, where we looked at strange dances and listened to curious music.

All was sacred and mystic, according to traditions transmitted orally from early ages, and all the more liable to disappear as the heredity of occupation which has been the mark of Japan is more and more endangered by modern views and modern "openings."

When we had wandered through those shady apartments in the long, low buildings of the temple gardens, and had seen the paintings of their screen walls, and the carvings of their transoms, we sat down in one of the largest rooms, the wall screen was removed which divided us from another, and we had then a ready-made stage before us. Light came in from the open veranda, now stripped of all screens, against whose platform many unbidden, unofficial guests, acquaintances of acquaintances, and people about the temple, leaned in a mass of heads and arms and busts. Outside the light was filtered green and orange through the trees, and caught the edges of all forms in the shade within. The orchestra of flutes and drums occupied a little recess, from behind which the dancers appeared in turn. Behind the musicians, a great violet curtain, with three temple crests in white, made a twilight background for their white and blue dresses, gilded by the lights in the tall candlesticks on the floors before them. With the sound of the instruments two boys came around the corner of the screen, and, saluting, stepped off in short, zigzag movements, evidently learned by rote, and which had a certain strange elegance. They were performing the butterfly dance, and made out very distinctly the crisscross flight of the insects. When they lighted or poised before lighting their feet struck the ground and they swayed without stepping away. They wore butterfly wings, and wide sleeves melting into them, and their silver diadems, filled up with twigs of flowering plants, made out a faint fringe of antennæ. They wore the ugly ancient trousers of yellow silk, and long trains of embroidered green satin trailed on the mats behind them. Broad bands of blue and white across the chest, and a white belt, recalled the insect original, and blue and white wings drooped over their wide green satin garments. Each carried a flowering branch in his hand. It was all more strange than beautiful, with a mysterious impression of remote antiquity, as if invented for some prehistoric Polynesian worship. In some of the next dances, whose names I do not remember, and which were carried out by men, the flat mask, with a wide triangle for eyes and another for the mouth, made out just this similitude. In another dance two men glided about the room, listening and finding their way; then warriors in antique Chinese costume, with great helmets and halberds, and coats of mail, and long trains, appeared singly and by twos, and marched and counter-marched; and finally, standing by their lances, laid at their feet, drew and held up their swords, while each other peaceful hand was extended in the gesture that we know as the pontifical blessing; and this ended the dance of "Great Peace," probably some relic of early triumphant Chinese dynasties.

It was now evening: the blue light of the open veranda made large square openings in the golden room. Outside, against the balustrade, pressed dark forms, with faces reddened by the light inside—the outside lookers-on. Inside, the gold walls and the gilded ceiling, the great gold temple drum, the yellow mats, and the white dresses of the musicians, made a soft bloom like the hollow of a lotus, when the last performer, in rose-red and crimson, glided into the room, swinging from side to side, and brandishing a gilded scepter. Uncouth gestures and enormous strides, with no meaning that I could make out, a frightful mask that hung far away from the face, with loose jaw and projecting mane and a long red, pointed hood, made an impression as barbarous, as meaningless, as splendid, and as annoying as what we might feel before the painted and gilded idol of some little known and cruel creed. This was the dance of "Ra Dragon King," and closed the entertainment.

We exchanged some words with the late performers in their insignificant everyday clothes, and rode home in the twilight through the little roads, where Kioto gentlemen were rushing their horses up and down, wrapped in wide riding trousers, which fluttered along the horses' flanks....

We have also given a soirée,—that is to say, a supper, with the proper trimmings of musical entertainment and dancing, and were probably the most amused of all the people there. The amusement consisted, in great measure, of our not knowing just what we were going to have, for otherwise the details were simple to monotony. We had one of the upper floors of a fashionable inn. It was very hot, and we were glad to find that we should be at supper in our loosest bath robes. There was nothing unusual—though everything is novel to us—but the extreme smallness of the many gei-shas, who sat between us at the end of the dinner, passed the sakè, said witty things, of which we understood not one word, gave us much music on the samisen (the three-stringed guitar) and on the flute, and sang, and gave us dances. But they were absolutely incredible in the way of littleness. It did not seem possible that there were real bones inside their narrow little wrists and dolls' fingers. What there was in most of their little heads I don't know, but I could have imagined sawdust. For the doll illusion, for the painted face and neck and lips, all done upon the same pattern from pure conventionality (not at all like our suggestive painting), and the sudden stopping sharply at a line on the little slender neck, gave me the feeling of their having artificial heads. The gentle little bodies disappeared entirely inside of the folds of the dress and the enormous bows of the sash. And when the tall youngsters, Americans, whom we had invited, began to romp with the playthings, late in the evening, I felt anxious about possible breakage, such as I remember, in nursery days, when we boys laid hold of our sisters' dolls.

A PILGRIM.

But this artificial impression disappears as with all novelty in people, and when one of the youngest of these child-women, at some moment in the evening, removed the mask of the jolly fat woman (that you know by the prints), behind which she had been singing, the little sad face told its contradictory story as touchingly as with any of her Aryan sisters. And late in the evening, when the fun, I suppose, was uproarious, we went to the extreme of writing and painting on fans, and one of our merchant guests wasted India-ink in mock tattooing of his bared arm and shoulder.