Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/67

 methods of obtaining a livelihood. Among these the most numerous were the beggars. Many kinds of beggars plied their profession in ancient Japan. There was the ordinary itinerant beggar; the cross-roads beggar; the river beggar (so called because he inhabited a hut constructed of boulders from the bed of a stream); the mendicant friar, who sometimes asked for alms in the most commonplace manner, sometimes went about with a wooden bowl and a long-sleeved robe, sometimes beat a metal vessel or a gourd and recited prayers or intoned formulas about the evanescence of life, sometimes chaunted verses and struck attitudes; and finally, there was the mummer beggar, who acted a part similar to that of the waits in England. Almost as numerous as the beggars were the professional caterers for amusement in various forms: the man who, with a deftly waved fan in his hand and a variously folded kerchief on his head, danced a musicless measure by the roadside; the puppet-show man; the performer of the sarugaku music; the monkey-master; the keeper of a miniature shooting-gallery where flirting and assignations were more important than archery; the actor, the Dog-of-Fo dancer, the brothel-keeper, the peep-show man, the dog-trainer, the snake-charmer, the story-teller, the riddle-reader, the juggler, the acrobat, and the fox-tamer. Necromancers and diviners were also reckoned among outcasts,—a significant fact, indicating the robust sentiment of the military age as