The chanting having proceeded for a few minutes the girls take up the song and enter spiritedly into the dance.  One challenges another and at a certain stage of the lively song with the sharp cry "Hoi!" makes a motion with her hand.  Failure on the part of the other instantaneously and exactly to copy this gesture entails the forfeiture of a garment, which is at once frankly removed.  Cold and mechanical at the outset, the music grows spirited as the girls grow nude, and the dancers themselves become strangely excited as they warm to the work, taking, the while, generous potations of saki to assist their enthusiasm.

Let it not be supposed that in all this there is anything of passion, it is with these women nothing more that the mere mental exaltation produced by music, exercise and drink.  With the spectators (I have heard) it fares somewhat otherwise.

When modesty’s last rag has been discarded, the girls as if suddenly abashed at their own audacity, fly like startled fawns from the room, leaving their patrons to make a settlement with conscience and arrange the terms upon which that monitor will consent to the performance of the rest of the dance.  For the dance proper—­or improper—­is now about to begin.  If the first part seemed somewhat tropical, comparison with what follows will acquit it of that demerit.  The combinations of the dance are infinitely varied, and so long as willing witnesses remain—­which, in simple justice to manly fortitude it should be added, is a good while—­so long will the “Chon Nookee” present a new and unexpected phase, but it is thought expedient that no more of them be presented here, and if the reader has done me the honor to have enough of it, we will pass to the consideration of another class of dances.

Of this class those most in favor are the Fan and Umbrella dances, performed, usually, by young girls trained almost from infancy.  The Japanese are passionately fond of these beautiful exhibitions of grace, and no manner of festivity is satisfactorily celebrated without them.  The musicians, all girls, commonly six or eight in number, play on the guitar, a small ivory wand being used, instead of the fingers, to strike the strings.  The dancer, a girl of some thirteen years, is elaborately habited as a page.  Confined by the closely folded robe as by fetters, the feet and legs are not much used, the feet, indeed, never leaving the floor.  Time is marked by undulations of the body, waving the arms, and deft manipulation of the fan.  The supple figure bends and sways like a reed in the wind, advances and recedes, one movement succeeding another by transitions singularly graceful, the arms describing innumerable curves, and the fan so skilfully handled as to seem instinct with a life and liberty of its own.  Nothing more pure, more devoid of evil suggestion, can be imagined.  It is a sad fact that the poor children trained to the execution of this harmless and pleasing dance are destined, in their riper years, to give their charms and graces to the service of the devil in the ‘Chon Nookee’.  The umbrella dance is similar to the one just described, the main difference being the use of a small, gaily colored umbrella in place of the fan.