Exotics and Retrospectives

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1898. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... Insect-Musicians * Mushi yo mushi, Naite ingwa ga Tsukuru nara? O insert, insert !--think you that Karma can be exhausted by song? --Japanese poem. I IP you ever visit Japan, be sure to go to at least one temple-festival, -- en-nichi. The festival ought to be seen at night, when everything shows to the best advantage in the glow of countless lamps and lanterns. Until you have had this experience, you cannot know what Japan is, --you cannot imagine the real charm of queerness and prettiness, the wonderful blending of grotesquery and beauty, to be found in the life of the common people. In such a night you will probably let yourself drift awhile with the stream of sight-seers through dazzling lanes of booths full of toys indescribable -- dainty puerilities, fragile astonishments, laughter-making oddities; -- you will observe representations of demons, gods, and goblins; -- you will be startled by mando -- immense lantern-transparencies, with monstrous faces painted upon them; -- you will have glimpses of jugglers, acrobats, sword-dancers, fortune-tellers; -- you will hear everywhere, above the tumult of voices, a ceaseless blowing of flutes and booming of drums. All this may not be worth stopping for. But presently, I am almost sure, you will pause in your promenade to look at a booth illuminated like a magic-lantern, and stocked with tiny wooden cages out of which an incomparable shrilling proceeds. The booth is the booth of a vendor of singing-insects; and the storm of noise is made by the insects. The sight is curious; and a foreigner is nearly always attracted by it. But having satisfied his momentary curiosity, the foreigner usually goes on his way with the idea that he has been inspecting nothing more remarkable than a particular variety of toys for child...