The clapping of hands has ceased; the toil of the day begins;
continually louder and louder the pattering of geta over the bridge. It
is a sound never to be forgotten, this pattering of geta over the
Ohashi--rapid, merry, musical, like the sound of an enormous dance; and
a dance it veritably is. The whole population is moving on tiptoe, and
the multitudinous twinkling of feet over the verge of the sunlit roadway
is an astonishment. All those feet are small, symmetrical--light as the
feet of figures painted on Greek vases--and the step is always taken
toes first; indeed, with geta it could be taken no other way, for the
heel touches neither the geta nor the ground, and the foot is tilted
forward by the wedge-shaped wooden sole. Merely to stand upon a pair of
geta is difficult for one unaccustomed to their use, yet you see
Japanese children running at full speed in geta with soles at least
three inches high, held to the foot only by a forestrap fastened between
the great toe and the other toes, and they never trip and the geta never
falls off. Still more curious is the spectacle of men walking in bokkuri
or takageta, a wooden sole with wooden supports at least five inches
high fitted underneath it so as to make the whole structure seem the
lacquered model of a wooden bench. But the wearers stride as freely as
if they had nothing upon their feet.
Now children begin to appear, hurrying to school. The undulation of
the wide sleeves of their pretty speckled robes, as they run, looks
precisely like a fluttering of extraordinary butterflies. The junks
spread their great white or yellow wings, and the funnels of the little
steamers which have been slumbering all night by the wharves begin to
smoke.
One of the tiny lake steamers lying at the opposite wharf has just
opened its steam-throat to utter the most unimaginable, piercing,
desperate, furious howl. When that cry is heard everybody laughs. The
other little steamboats utter only plaintive mooings, but unto this
particular vessel--newly built and launched by a rival company--there
has been given a voice expressive to the most amazing degree of reckless
hostility and savage defiance. The good people of Matsue, upon
hearing its voice for the first time, gave it forthwith a new and just
name--Okami-Maru. 'Maru' signifies a steamship. 'Okami' signifies a
wolf.