know, I suppose, that the miko-kagura, or temple dance of the priestesses does not at all approach your Western idea of dancing?«
“Oh, yes, my ignorance does not go quite so far after all”, I asured him. »They dance mainly with their hands. Harmonious movements, full of charming meanings for the intiated Acompanied perhaps by archaic music, ancient chants, the clapping of hands, the bubbling sounds of small drums. Have I retrieved my honor?«
He nodded and waved his hands towards the wood in which above the undergrowth of various shrubs and trees loomed the remnants of a once mighty and venerable cryptomeria grove.
»Two hundred steps more, and we are at the Temple of the Winds, or at least at its ruins«, he remarked.« »There was born the fame of O-Take, than whom the gods never had a more charming darling or a more bewitching dancer. She was also something of a soothsayer, if we may believe hearsay. There are no written proofs of it, though these are not lacking as far as her beauty and art went. But it seems that, unlike the Shinto priestesses of today, the miko of the olden times were sometimes endowed with clairvoyant and occult powers. It is said the Gods used to enter their bodies and speak through their lips.« He shrugged his soulders. »On the whole there is no reason for us to disbelieve that O-Take was also a divineress. Her bodily and spiritual gifts must have been many, for she ruined many men. But at that time she was no longer the darling of the gods.«
He stopped and for a while we walked in silence along a narrow and rough path, bordered on either side by fields that resembled glistening fens. Bright-colored dragon-flies darted above the water. Here and there a frog jumped from the path and splashed into one of the fields. From behind us again was wafted the singing of the villagers, now dragging in a melancholy manner.
»A strange concidence«, my companion remarked. »Just now they began an old song about our O-Take. Like a bamboo twing in spring she was — — those are the opening words of the ballad. Now, however, listen rather to the voices of our semi. I have heard that tropical cicadas are miserable fiddlers in comparison with our semi. I do not know; I never have been in the tropics, as you have.«
I assured him that the fame of the semi was entirely deserved. I did not wonder that the humble folk likened its droning to the voice of a Buddhist priest chanting the sacred sutras. He seemed to be delighted, and to forgive me my obdurate indifference to the name and history of that O-Take, to whom he himself doubtless was attracted. I recollected that his face was infused with color as if in momentary excitement when he began to relate about the beau-
