Page:Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan.pdf/117

Rh, floated many curious things like shadows, things that did not exist at all, but merely visions of his fevered brain. First there appeared the old skirt which his mother used to wear. When he had been a child, how often he had clung to it in joy or sorrow! Poor Khashoji stretched out his hands to grasp it, but it at once eluded him. It flapped like transparent silk-gauze, allowing the drifting banks of clouds to be seen through its folds like glittering mica, and then it disappeared altogether.

Then behind that gauzy film appeared the same vast fields of sesame which had grown at the rear of his house—the sesame fields, which in mid-summer were dotted with delicate, pale flowers. He tried hard to see if he and his brothers were playing there, but there was no sign of a human being. He could only see the ghastly, pale flowers and leaves of the sesame basking in a dim sunshine, and soon they also vanished into the blue of the sky.

Then a strange thing appeared, wriggling in the sky. It proved to be a big ‘Dragon-lantern,’ the kind which is carried in the streets during religious festivals. It was some twenty feet long, and its body was a framework of bamboo, covered with paper. On it was painted in red and blue a gorgeous dragon. Though it was bright day-light, the candles in the lantern were alight, and as it floated in the air the lantern looked to him like a real, living creature. He noted how its long whiskers waved to and fro as it moved along. And lo! it too gradually melted from his sight, then