Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/106

 picturesquely attired, and carrying bright-hued umbrellas with crane-and-tortoise patterns, accompany the little girls and take a subordinate part in the dance, during which the children sing a simple refrain in unison, and beat out the rhythm of their movements on their toy drums. The gebon-odori of Wakayama prefecture is a type of elders' dancing. Seventy or eighty merchants join in the performance. They put on hats adorned with artificial flowers; wear black surcoats over white body-garments; carry gourds, umbrellas, gongs, and drums, and recite a religious formula as they dance. Many provincial centres have dances peculiar to the locality, the motives of the performances showing endless variety, and the costumes being of the most fanciful character. These must be seen to be appreciated. The songs chaunted during the dances are innumerable. Generally the ideas are trivial, and the verselets owe their value to the cadence of their five-syllabled and seven-syllabled lines—a kind of metre scarcely capable of being musically reproduced in English words—and to the recurrence of similar sounds in different senses, rather than to the beauty or loftiness of the sentiments they embody. Here are three specimens, the two first translated from the repertoire of the Bon dances, the third from that of the "Flower Dance" of Bingo province:—