Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/29

 * to sixty professional musicians, dancers, and actors, dressed in rich costumes, and posturing, dancing, and singing to accompaniment of flute and drum whenever the dasbi halts.

Such is the organisation of the parish picnic. The "gently going cars" move with the utmost deliberation, pausing here and there while the drums beat, the flutes play, and the dancers dance, so that the intervals of rest are filled with the sounds of music and with the applause of merry crowds; the intervals of motion, with the swelling chaunt of the dashi-drawers. A hundred and sixty streets constitute the Sano parish. They contribute, for the purposes of the procession, forty-five bands, each of fifty youths, chosen by lot. Two days before the festival, the citizens begin to prepare their houses. The view-places on the roofs are fitted up; the lintels are draped; the mats are overspread with whatever of gay covering the family possesses; a background of glowing richness is made by ranging gold-foil screens in all rooms opening upon the street, and from the eaves as well as from poles along the route, red-and-white paper lanterns are suspended. It is a time of general feasting. The householder violates hospitality's fundamental principles if he fails to invite his friends from the less favoured quarters of the city, and every father takes care that his unmarried daughters shall be dressed in the costliest and most picturesque garments within reach of his purse. From first to last