Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/240

 torchlight processions, and the river is one broad belt of light.

I first saw Kioto on the last day of the Gion matsuri, a festival which lasts for a month and brings all the population out-of-doors into one quarter during the evening. By dusk a babel of music and voices had arisen, which finally drew us down the steep and shady road, and through the great stone torii, to the Gion’s precincts. The court-yard was almost deserted, and looking through the great gate way to Shijo Street the view was dazzling and the shouts and chatter deafening. The narrow street was lined with rows of large white paper lanterns hanging above the house doors, and rows hanging from the eaves. Lanterned booths lined the curb, while humbler venders spread their wares on the ground in the light of flaring torches. Crowds surged up and down, every man carrying a paper lantern on the end of a short bamboo stick—the literal lamp for the feet—women bearing smaller lanterns, and children delighting themselves with gayly-colored paper shells for tiny candles. Boys marched and ran in long single files, shouting a measured chant as they cut their way through the crowd and whirled giant lanterns and blazing torches at the end of long poles.

From Gion gate to Shijo bridge the street was one wavering, glittering line of light, and crowded solidly with people. Where the street narrows near the bridge there is a region of theatres and side-shows, and there banners and pictures, drums and shouting ticket-sellers, and a denser crowd of people gathered. A loud shout and a measured chorus heralded a group of men carrying a Brobdingnagian torch, a giant bamboo pole blazing fiercely at its lofty tip. The crowd surged back to the walls as the torch-bearers ran by and on to the middle of Shijo bridge, where they waved the burning wand in fiery signals to the other bridges that the real 224