I have a rural note of one of my visits to the No.[219] One farce brought on an inferior priest of a sect which is now extinct but surely deserves to be remembered for its encouragement of mountain climbing.  This “mountain climber,” as he was called, was hungry and climbed a farmer’s tree in order to steal persimmons. (The actor got on a stool, obligingly steadied by a supposedly invisible attendant, and pretended to clamber up a corner post of the stage.) While he was eating the persimmons he was discovered by their owner.  The farmer was a man of humour and said that he thought that “that must be a crow in the tree.”  So the poor priest tried to caw.  “No,” said the farmer, “it is surely a monkey.”  So the priest began to scratch after the manner of monkeys.  “But perhaps,” the farmer went on, “it is really a kite.”  The priest flapped his arms—­and fell.  The farmer thought that he had the priest at his mercy.  But the priest, rubbing his beads together, put a spell on him and escaped.  The word No is written with an ideograph which means ability, but No also stands for agriculture.[220]

FOOTNOTES: 

[211] The Kwanto plain (73 by 96 miles) includes most of Tokyo and Saitama prefecture, and also the larger part of Kanagawa and Chiba and parts of Ibaraki, Gumma and Tochigi.

[212] The characters on these slabs are beautifully written.  They have usually been penned by distinguished men.

[213] The Japanese man wears below his kimono or trousers a pair of bathing shorts.  Peasants frequently wear in the fields nothing but a little cotton bag and string.

[214] Poor households ordinarily use, instead of movable hibachi, a big square box in an opening in the floor and resting on the earth.

[215] When I was in Tokyo, tradesmen’s messenger boys received only their food, lodging and clothing and an occasional present, with help no doubt in starting a linked business when they were out of their time.  Now such youths, as a development of the labour movement, are on a wage basis and receive 20 yen a month.

[216] The place has since been burnt down.  A bigger building has been erected.

[217] See Appendix LXII.

[218] There is also the occasional whiff of the benjo; but, as an agricultural expert said, “It is not a bad thing that a people which is increasingly under the influence of industrialism should be compelled to give a thought to agriculture.”  There are European countries famous for their farming whose sanitary experts are evidently similarly minded.

[219] The fact that Dr. Waley’s scholarly book is the third work on the No to be published in England in recent years is evidence that a knowledge of a form of lyrical drama of rare artistry is gradually extending in the West.

[220] Hence the names of the two national agricultural organisations, Teikoku Nokai, that is the Imperial Agricultural Society, and Dai Nippon Nokai, that is the Great Japan Agricultural Society.