Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/100

 tuned with petitions. There is some sprinkling of powdered incense over the embers of the hempen bonfire in order that the fumes, mingling with the ghostly essences that permeate the air, may smother evil influences; sometimes, too, men light their pipes in the flame, thinking thus to inhale good fortune; sometimes they step over the fire to avert or heal certain maladies, and sometimes they preserve the cinders as a charm against disease. But the spirits come and go unworried by petitions. Neither their advent nor their presence inspires feelings of awe or horror. The average Japanese is not without a dread of ghosts, and may easily be persuaded into a quiet but firm conviction in the reality of a haunted house, but the spirits that come to visit him in his home at Bon time are friends whom he loves and trusts. His disposition is to receive them with dance and song rather than with shrinking and aversion, and it thus fell out that among the multitude of Japanese fêtes none was so conspicuously marked by dancing performances. The past tense is here used, for these Bon dances have fallen under the ban of the law in modern Japan, and though still practised in the provinces, are no longer to be seen in the great cities. It is on record that, some two thousand years ago, men and women of all classes, princes and princesses of the blood not excepted, were wont to assemble upon hill-tops or in the streets, and to engage in dances, one object of which was identical with