[9] Ichi-wa--Izumo-no-Taisha-Sama-ye; Ni-ni-wa--Niigata-no-Irokami-Sama-ye; San-wa--Sanuki-no-Kompira-Sama-ye; Shi-ni-wa--Shinano-no-Zenkoji-Sama-ye; Itsutsu--Ichibata-O-Yakushi-Sama-ye; Roku-niwa--Rokkakudo-no-O-Jizo-Sama-ye; Nanatsu--Nana-ura-no-O-Ebisu-Sama-ye; Yattsu--Yawata-no-Hachiman-Sama-ye; Kokonotsu--Koya-no-O-teradera-ye; To-niwa--Tokoro-no-Ujigami-Sama-ye.
And the voices of all the dancers in unison roll out the chorus:
Utterly different this whirling joyous Honen-odori from the Bon-odori which I witnessed last year at Shimo-Ichi, and which seemed to me a very dance of ghosts. But it is also much more difficult to describe. Each dancer makes a half-wheel alternately to left and right, with a peculiar bending of the knees and tossing up of the hands at the same time--as in the act of lifting a weight above the head; but there are other curious movements--jerky with the men, undulatory with the women--as impossible to describe as water in motion. These are decidedly complex, yet so regular that five hundred pairs of feet and hands mark the measure of the song as truly as if they were under the control of a single nervous system.
It is strangely difficult to memorise the melody of a Japanese popular song, or the movements of a Japanese dance; for the song and the dance have been evolved through an aesthetic sense of rhythm in sound and in motion as different from the corresponding Occidental sense as English is different from Chinese. We have no ancestral sympathies with these exotic rhythms, no inherited aptitudes for their instant comprehension, no racial impulses whatever in harmony with them. But when they have become familiar through study, after a long residence in the Orient, how nervously fascinant the oscillation of the dance, and the singular swing of the song!
This dance, I know, began at eight o'clock; and the Ondo-tori, after having sung without a falter in his voice for an extraordinary time, has been relieved by a second. But the great round never breaks, never slackens its whirl; it only enlarges as the night wears on. And the second Ondo-tori is relieved by a third; yet I would like to watch that dance for ever.
'What time do you think it is?' my friend asks, looking at his watch.