At home again, I slide open once more my little paper window, and look
out upon the night. I see the paper lanterns flitting over the bridge,
like a long shimmering of fireflies. I see the spectres of a hundred
lights trembling upon the black flood. I see the broad shoji of
dwellings beyond the river suffused with the soft yellow radiance of
invisible lamps; and upon those lighted spaces I can discern slender
moving shadows, silhouettes of graceful women. Devoutly do I pray that
glass may never become universally adopted in Japan--there would be no
more delicious shadows.
I listen to the voices of the city awhile. I hear the great bell of
Tokoji rolling its soft Buddhist thunder across the dark, and the songs
of the night-walkers whose hearts have been made merry with wine, and
the long sonorous chanting of the night-peddlers.
'U-mu-don-yai-soba-yai!' It is the seller of hot soba, Japanese
buckwheat, making his last round.
'Umai handan, machibito endan, usemono ninso kaso kichikyo no urainai!'
The cry of the itinerant fortune-teller.
'Ame-yu!' The musical cry of the seller of midzu-ame, the sweet amber
syrup which children love.
'Amail' The shrilling call of the seller of amazake, sweet rice wine.
'Kawachi-no-kuni-hiotan-yama-koi-no-tsuji-ura!' The peddler of
love-papers, of divining-papers, pretty tinted things with little
shadowy pictures upon them. When held near a fire or a lamp, words
written upon them with invisible ink begin to appear. These are always
about sweethearts, and sometimes tell one what he does not wish to
know. The fortunate ones who read them believe themselves still more
fortunate; the unlucky abandon all hope; the jealous become even more
jealous than they were before.
From all over the city there rises into the night a sound like the
bubbling and booming of great frogs in a march--the echoing of the tiny
drums of the dancing-girls, of the charming geisha. Like the rolling of
a waterfall continually reverberates the multitudinous pattering of geta
upon the bridge. A new light rises in the east; the moon is wheeling up
from behind the peaks, very large and weird and wan through the white
vapours. Again I hear the sounds of the clapping of many hands. For the
wayfarers are paying obeisance to O-Tsuki-San: from the long bridge they
are saluting the coming of the White Moon-Lady.[10]
I sleep, to dream of little children, in some mouldering mossy temple
court, playing at the game of Shadows and of Demons.