Page:My Japanese Wife.djvu/169

Rh way along a terrace and take up our position to form a part of the audience outside a miniature theatre.

There is not much to see. What there is would scarcely amuse any one less unsophisticated in the Thespian art than the Japanese. It is something like a shadow=show. Only the horrible puppets which appear and go through almost incomprehensible antics are realities, which, in truly terrifying masks, cause Mousmé what are known as delightful “creeps,” and send her hand clutching at my arm. The noises from an orchestra of four or five which accompany the doings of the characters, some of which are a mixture of man and beast, ghoul-like and given to sudden and unlooked-for appearances and disappearances, are weird and disquieting; of harmony the musicians know nothing. Their colour tones are all blues, greens, grays, and bilious yellows; their merits, that they are