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.

[Illustration:  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