OBSERVANCES AND PASTIMES
smooth and spontaneous action results from art hidden by its own perfection. It is also certain that the mechanics of the dance are as nothing to the Japanese spectator compared with the music of its motion, and that he interprets the staccato and legato of its passages with discrimination amounting almost to instinct and, in some degree, hereditary. In exceptional cases the foreigner's perception may be similarly subtle, but he must generally lack the faculty of apprehending the esoterics of the dance, and thus finds himself in the position of a man at an opera who has no libretto, or a play-goer without a knowledge of the plot.[1] It has already been shown that from prehistoric times dancing constituted a prominent feature in the worship of the deities, and that it had its origin in the fable which represents the inhabitants of heaven dancing before the cave into which the Goddess of the Sun had retired. From the sphere of religion it appears to have passed quickly and widely into the everyday life of the people, until at last the practice acquired a vogue unparalleled in any other country. Volumes might be written descriptive of the numerous dances taught to girls from their tender years, and, on a much smaller but still extensive scale, to boys also; and as for the repertoire of the professional expert, it is virtually inexhaustible. There have been occasions when the whole of the inhabitants of a city turned out
- ↑ See Appendix, note 25.
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