Zaburo was a bright-eyed schoolboy of ten. Close-shaven and bare-footed, he raced from wing to wing of the hotel in a single cotton garment with cheerful impetuosity. At breakfast I would hear him on a balcony fifty yards away reading aloud in that monotonous sing-song which his countrymen adopt, even in trains, without evoking a protest from fellow-travellers. At first I imagined him to be reciting prayers, but this supposition was erroneous. Two or three times a day his knock would rattle on my sliding-door and a loud summons would entreat Edoardo San to keep him company. When his mother was occupied with private cares, he would obtain leave to visit with me the Benten-daki, and as we watched the tumbling terror of that lovely waterfall, sparkling against green boughs, I was the recipient of many schoolboy confidences. His great ambition was to fight for the Mikado; his accounts of school life were tinged with military ardour. The elder boys had guns and knapsacks of fur; in the summer boys and masters camped out together; his intimate friend, Rokutaro, had lost an elder brother in the war with China, and the others were quite envious of that funereal privilege. He remembered one verse of a song which his school-fellows were fond of singing, as they marched to the drill-ground. The air was spirited, but the words were more _naïf_ than ingenious, if the following stanza be typical of the rest:
_Ana u-reshi_ _yo-ro-ko-bashi_ _ta-ta-kai ka-chi no_
Oh, how full of bliss, how delightful ’tis, When you fight, to win the day!
_Momo chi-ji no_ _Ad-a wa mina_ _A-to naka nari nu_
Hundreds went before, Thousands are no more, All our foes have passed away. ]
Though precociously intelligent, Zaburo was not too old to play with toys, and the gift of a pop-gun cemented our too brief alliance.
In the middle of July falls the Buddhist festival of Bon, better known as the Feast of Lanterns, when the souls of the dead revisit the living. The decay of religion has unfortunately robbed this touching celebration of its more striking features. Formerly on the eve of the _fête_ the graves were hung with lanterns, that the spirits might be lighted on the way to their old homes. On the day itself the villagers fasted, but left before the household shrine flowers and water and a little food, while they went out towards evening and danced in a large circle, singing quaint songs and clapping their hands to the strains of drum and flute. Then, when the time was come for the spirits to return, on river and stream were launched a fleet of tiny boats of straw, each with its paper lantern, in which the invisible visitors were wafted back to shadow-land. These things are done no more, or only in remote rural districts. Danger to shipping caused the floating of little fire-ships to be prohibited in the ports, while at Tōkyō the ceremony of “opening the river” covers the Sumidagawa with gay pleasure-boats, and in the secular crackle of fireworks the sacred associations of the day are forgotten. In the villages the peasants have not abandoned the dance, which town-folk delegate to geisha, but its date varies from district to district, and I did not witness one until a month later at Akakura. Yet Ikao has contrived to preserve the more pious aspect of All Souls’ Day by two simple services of devotion in graveyard and temple.