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Rh quiring not only physical training of the most rigorous character but a high degree of skill, is in turn intimately associated with the histrionic art. For an account of the early dances and their gradual merging into the classical drama or dance known as Nō (literally, "accomplishment"), the reader is referred to the third volume of Captain Brinkley's "Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature." Few foreigners ever learn to appreciate Japanese dancing. Its primary purpose is mimetic. "The mechanics of the dance," says Brinkley, "are as nothing to the Japanese spectator compared with the music of its motion, and he interprets the staccato and legato of its passages with discrimination amounting almost to instinct. In exceptional cases the foreigner's perception may be similarly subtle," but as he must generally be unable to apprehend the esoterics of the dance, he is "like one watching a drama where an unknown plot is acted in an unintelligible language."

As to the Japanese drama proper, it differs from our own chiefly in the stage setting and accessories, and in the greater importance given to the mimetic side of the performance.

An art essentially Japanese is that of flower arrangement. In its origin it is closely related to the Cha-no-yu, or Tea Ceremonial, which developed into a cult during the Shōgunate of Ashikaga Yoshimasa in the fifteenth century. This cult, which was founded on the four cardinal virtues of urbanity, courtesy, purity, and imperturbability, has been a