“Put on your brightest _kimono_, O Haru San, and let us go!
“Bring ivory chop-sticks, lacquer-cup, And rice and wine, that we may sup.
“On honourable trees is set A rosy-petalled coronet.
“The shine of day, the sheen of night, Are drowned in cherry-blossom-light.
“We have no need of sun or star To revel at Mukōjima.”
But Mukōjima is no more to be compared with Yoshino than Rosherville with Stonehenge. The trees which line the broad Sumidagawa are beautiful but modern; their festal boughs are familiarised and a little vulgarised by the loud merry-making of cockney crowds; all this shouting and laughing recall a barbarian’s bank-holiday. Far westward, on the ridges of Yoshino, where no modern city disturbs the silence of the imperial _tumuli_, encircled by a low granite fence and enclosing dusty gold relics of dead kings, grow the Thousand Cherry-Trees of immemorial renown. Motoöri sang of them; Hiroshigi painted them; Jimmu. Tenno, the first of the Mikados, in his mausoleum fifteen miles away, is hardly more venerable than they. Every year pilgrims pass through the bronze gateway of the Zo-o-do Temple and climb the mountain side to rest beneath the canopy of tender, billowy blossom, which broods like an ever-renascent cloud of beauty above the Yamato plain, endeared by thirteen centuries of history and romance. Many pleasure-seekers mix with the white-robed pilgrims, who belong for the most part to distant villages and look on religion as an excellent excuse for change of interest and change of scene. Heedless of theology and harassed by no conviction of original sin, they return, like happy children from a picnic, with eyes brightened by the sea of colour and spirits clarified by pure mountain air. Soon the green hills are carpeted with flakes of soft flowerage; the brief splendour of the Thousand Trees is over; the scattered hamlets and holy mounds resume their ordinary quietude.
At Kyōto the cult of the national flower culminates in an annual celebration, the Miyako-odori, a spectacular ballet with choric interludes. For many years the same poet, an old resident, has been assigned the task of composing appropriate lyrics, in which the glories of some historic or legendary hero blend with the praises of the blushing _sakura_. Musicians, painters, dancers, are engaged to elaborate with auxiliary sound, design, and movement the series of dream-pictures which his fancy has evoked. But words and notes are really subsidiary to the dancing: the tale of the poet is chiefly told by the winding feet and waving arms, the ever-changing pose and mimicry, of the most highly trained geisha in Japan. These number as many as seventy, of whom eighteen combine the functions of choir and orchestra, now chanting, now accompanying on drum and mandoline the statuesque or processional development of the choregraphic theme. The Hanami-Kōji, specially set apart for such representations, is not easy to find. Though within the precincts of the theatrical quarter, it stands a little apart from the other houses, such as the Gion-za Theatre, and is far less capacious; in fact, it bears about the same proportion to its huge, banner-flaunting brethren as the smaller Queen’s Hall to Drury Lane. The structure, too, is entirely different from theirs. Three sides of the building are reserved for the performers. Instead of the parallel _hana-michi_, trisecting the audience and sloping from stage to entrance, two dancing platforms skirt the “pit” on left and right and join the extremities of the scene: on them sit the singing-girls, concealed at first by cotton curtains. No room remains for the public but the floor between the platforms and a gallery, which faces the drop-scene of the stage proper. As the performance only lasts an hour, it is repeated four or five times in the afternoon and evening of twenty days, and the price of admission to the best (gallery) seats is fifty _sen_, about one shilling, for economy and simplicity are conspicuous in this essentially popular entertainment.