Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/300

 geisha, where every spring there is a long-drawn-out festival of dances to help on the rejoicings of the cherry-blossom season. But its great place of amusement, its Vanity Fair, is the narrow theatre or show street running from Sanjio to Shijo Street, just beyond the bridges. This thoroughfare is lined all the way with rows of shops, labyrinthine bazaars, stalls, and booths, theatres, side-shows, peep-shows, puppet-shows, wax-works, jugglers, acrobats, wrestlers, trained animals, story-tellers, fortune-tellers, all exploited by the voice and drum of their loquacious agents at the door-way. No jinrikishas are allowed to run on this highway, and day and night, morning and midnight, it is filled with strolling people and playing children. In winter it is a cheering refuge from the wider, wind-swept streets, and in summer days it is cool and shady, the pavement constantly sprinkled, and the light and heat kept out by mat awnings stretched across the narrow road-way from roof to roof, in Chinese fashion. At night it is the busiest place in Kioto, even with the rival attraction of the river-bed; crowded with revellers, torches flaring, drums and gongs sounding, the high-pitched, nasal voices, of the showmen sing-songing their stories and programmes; and peddlers, pilgrims, priests, men, women, and children, and the strangers within their gates, making up the throng. Once when a giantess was on exhibition in a tent the spectators, instead of being awed by her heroic eight feet of height, were convulsed with laughter at sight of her. Every movement of the colossus sent them into fresh spasms. It was like a personification of some netsuke group to see this huge creature, with hair-pins like clubs, and clogs as large as a door-step, standing with folded arms, while pigmy visitors climbed up to perch like insects on her shoulders.

In this ever-open market one may buy the tailless cats of the country; forlorn, spiritless creatures, staying at 284