As you stroll
along the village street you see what every one is doing, for the fronts
of the houses are all open, and you can see into every corner of each
dwelling.
Behind the houses tall bamboos shoot up, and the bamboo is welcome, for it
is a tree of many uses. Its wood serves for the framework of houses, and
its leaves are often used as thatch. It will make a dish, a box, a plate, a
bowl, an oar, a channel for conveying water and a vessel for carrying it, a
fishing-rod, a flower-vase, a pipe-stem, a barrel-hoop, a fan, an umbrella,
and fifty other things, while young bamboo shoots are eaten and considered
a great delicacy.
On fine summer evenings, when the work of the day is over, the villagers
gather in the court of the village temple for the odori, the open-air
dance. The court is decked with big beautiful paper lanterns, but there is
a special one called toro (a light in a basket). The toro is often two feet
square by five feet high. On one side of it is the name of the god in whose
temple court the dance is being held, while the other is reserved for some
short poem, written by one of the youths of the village. There is keen
competition among them for the honour of writing the poem chosen to be
inscribed on the toro, and two of these tiny poems run thus:
"I looked upon the cherry that blooms by the fence, down by the woodman's
cottage,
And wondered if an untimely snow had fallen upon it."
"Into the evening dew that rolls upon the green blade of the tall-grown
grass in Mushashi Meadow
The summer moon comes stealthily and takes up her dwelling.
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