While the aged landlord conducts me to the bath, the wife prepares for
us a charming little repast of rice, eggs, vegetables, and sweetmeats.
She is painfully in doubt about her ability to please me, even after I
have eaten enough for two men, and apologizes too much for not being
able to offer me more.
"There is no fish," she says, "for to-day is the first day of the Bonku,
the Festival of the Dead; being the thirteenth day of the month. On the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth of the month nobody may eat fish.
But on the morning of the sixteenth day, the fishermen go out to catch
fish; and everybody who has both parents living may eat of it. But if
one has lost one's father or mother then one must not eat fish, even
upon the sixteenth day."
While the good soul is thus explaining I become aware of a strange
remote sound from without, a sound I recognize through memory of
tropical dances, a measured clapping of hands. But this clapping is very
soft and at long intervals. And at still longer intervals there comes to
us a heavy muffled booming, the tap of a great drum, a temple drum.
"Oh! we must go to see it," cries Akira; "it is the Bon-odori, the
Dance of the Festival of the Dead. And you will see the Bon-odori danced
here as it is never danced in cities--the Bon-odori of ancient days. For
customs have not changed here; but in the cities all is changed."
So I hasten out, wearing only, like the people about me, one of those
light wide-sleeved summer robes--yukata--which are furnished to male
guests at all Japanese hotels; but the air is so warm that even thus
lightly clad, I find myself slightly perspiring.
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