Out of the shadow of the temple a processional line of dancers files
into the moonlight and as suddenly halts--all young women or girls,
clad in their choicest attire; the tallest leads; her comrades follow in
order of stature; little maids of ten or twelve years compose the end
of the procession. Figures lightly poised as birds--figures that somehow
recall the dreams of shapes circling about certain antique vases; those
charming Japanese robes, close-clinging about the knees, might seem, but
for the great fantastic drooping sleeves, and the curious broad girdles
confining them, designed after the drawing of some Greek or Etruscan
artist. And, at another tap of the drum, there begins a performance
impossible to picture in words, something unimaginable, phantasmal--a
dance, an astonishment.
All together glide the right foot forward one pace, without lifting
the sandal from the ground, and extend both hands to the right, with a
strange floating motion and a smiling, mysterious obeisance. Then the
right foot is drawn back, with a repetition of the waving of hands
and the mysterious bow. Then all advance the left foot and repeat the
previous movements, half-turning to the left. Then all take two gliding
paces forward, with a single simultaneous soft clap of the hands, and
the first performance is reiterated, alternately to right and left;
all the sandalled feet gliding together, all the supple hands waving
together, all the pliant bodies bowing and swaying together. And so
slowly, weirdly, the processional movement changes into a great round,
circling about the moonlit court and around the voiceless crowd of
spectators. [5]
And always the white hands sinuously wave together, as if weaving
spells, alternately without and within the round, now with palms upward,
now with palms downward; and all the elfish sleeves hover duskily
together, with a shadowing as of wings; and all the feet poise together
with such a rhythm of complex motion, that, in watching it, one feels
a sensation of hypnotism--as while striving to watch a flowing and
shimmering of water.
And this soporous allurement is intensified by a dead hush. No one
speaks, not even a spectator. And, in the long intervals between the
soft clapping of hands, one hears only the shrilling of the crickets in
the trees, and the shu-shu of sandals, lightly stirring the dust. Unto
what, I ask myself, may this be likened? Unto nothing; yet it suggests
some fancy of somnambulism--dreamers, who dream themselves flying,
dreaming upon their feet.
And there comes to me the thought that I am looking at something
immemorially old, something belonging to the unrecorded beginnings of
this Oriental life, perhaps to the crepuscular Kamiyo itself, to the
magical Age of the Gods; a symbolism of motion whereof the meaning
has been forgotten for innumerable years. Yet more and more unreal the
spectacle appears, with its silent smilings, with its silent bowings, as
if obeisance to watchers invisible; and I find myself wondering whether,
were I to utter but a whisper, all would not vanish for ever save the
grey mouldering court and the desolate temple, and the broken statue of
Jizo, smiling always the same mysterious smile I see upon the faces of
the dancers.
Under the wheeling moon, in the midst of the round, I feel as one within
the circle of a charm. And verily this is enchantment; I am bewitched,
bewitched by the ghostly weaving of hands, by the rhythmic gliding of
feet, above all by the flitting of the marvellous sleeves--apparitional,
soundless, velvety as a flitting of great tropical bats. No; nothing I
ever dreamed of could be likened to this. And with the consciousness of
the ancient hakaba behind me, and the weird invitation of its lanterns,
and the ghostly beliefs of the hour and the place there creeps upon me
a nameless, tingling sense of being haunted. But no! these gracious,
silent, waving, weaving shapes are not of the Shadowy Folk, for whose
coming the white fires were kindled: a strain of song, full of sweet,
clear quavering, like the call of a bird, gushes from some girlish
mouth, and fifty soft voices join the chant:
Sorota soroimashita odorikoga sorota, Soroikite, kita hare yukata.
'Uniform to view [as ears of young rice ripening in the field] all clad
alike in summer festal robes, the company of dancers have assembled.'
Again only the shrilling of the crickets, the shu-shu of feet, the
gentle clapping; and the wavering hovering measure proceeds in silence,
with mesmeric lentor--with a strange grace, which, by its very naivete,
seems old as the encircling hills.
Those who sleep the sleep of centuries out there, under the grey stones
where the white lanterns are, and their fathers, and the fathers of
their fathers' fathers, and the unknown generations behind them, buried
in cemeteries of which the place has been forgotten for a thousand
years, doubtless looked upon a scene like this. Nay! the dust stirred
by those young feet was human life, and so smiled and so sang under this
self-same moon, 'with woven paces, and with waving hands.'
Suddenly a deep male chant breaks the hush. Two giants have joined the
round, and now lead it, two superb young mountain peasants nearly nude,
towering head and shoulders above the whole of the assembly. Their
kimono are rolled about their waistilike girdles, leaving their bronzed
limbs and torsos naked to the warm air; they wear nothing else save
their immense straw hats, and white tabi, donned expressly for the
festival. Never before among these people saw I such men, such thews;
but their smiling beardless faces are comely and kindly as those of
Japanese boys. They seem brothers, so like in frame, in movement, in the
timbre of their voices, as they intone the same song:
No demo yama demo ko wa umiokeyo, Sen ryo kura yori ko ga takara.
'Whether brought forth upon the mountain or in the field, it matters
nothing: more than a treasure of one thousand ryo, a baby precious is.'
And Jizo the lover of children's ghosts, smiles across the silence.
Souls close to nature's Soul are these; artless and touching their
thought, like the worship of that Kishibojin to whom wives pray. And
after the silence, the sweet thin voices of the women answer:
Oomu otoko ni sowa sanu oya Wa, Qyade gozaranu ko no kataki.
'The parents who will not allow their girl to be united with her lover;
they are not the parents, but the enemies of their child.'
And song follows song; and the round ever becomes larger; and the hours
pass unfelt, unheard, while the moon wheels slowly down the blue steeps
of the night.
A deep low boom rolls suddenly across the court, the rich tone of some
temple bell telling the twelfth hour. Instantly the witchcraft ends,
like the wonder of some dream broken by a sound; the chanting ceases;
the round dissolves in an outburst of happy laughter, and chatting, and
softly-vowelled callings of flower-names which are names of girls, and
farewell cries of 'Sayonara!' as dancers and spectators alike betake
themselves homeward, with a great koro-koro of getas.
And I, moving with the throng, in the bewildered manner of one suddenly
roused from sleep, know myself ungrateful. These silvery-laughing folk
who now toddle along beside me upon their noisy little clogs, stepping
very fast to get a peep at my foreign face, these but a moment ago were
visions of archaic grace, illusions of necromancy, delightful phantoms;
and I feel a vague resentment against them for thus materialising into
simple country-girls.