Jinrikisha Days in Japan
the first huge symbol. Full in the west gleamed a torii, a pillared gate-way of fire. From every house-top and from the bridges came the shouts of enthusiastic spectators, and the children in the rooms below us twittered like a box full of sparrows. For centuries the priests of mountain temples have taught their simple parishioners to lay their gathered firewood in the proper lines, and regular trenches mark the course of each device. The longer lines of the big Dai are each a half-mile in length, and the five miles’ distance of our point of view dwarfed them to perfect proportions. These fiery symbols burned for half an hour before they began to waver, and long after their images still danced and burned in our vision against the succeeding blackness.
Down in the city the crowds surged through the lanterned streets, each adding the illumination of his hand-lantern to the scene. The river-bed was all recrossing lines and arches of lights, and myriad points of uncovered flames were reflected in the waters. The hill-sides twinkled and glowed with the innumerable torches in the cemeteries, and thus, lighted back to their tombs by all the city and the hill-side, the Buddhist spirits rest until the next midsummer season recalls them to their joyous Kioto.
CHAPTER XXV
THE PALACES AND CASTLE
Kioto remains faithful to its traditions, and yields but slowly to the foreign fashions which absorb Tokio. Tokio has nineteenth-century political troubles, even demagogues and hare-brained students, that unruly young element, the soshi, keep it in a state of agitation, and sometimes appeal to the old two-handed sword, the dagger,
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