As I returned to the inn from these Elizabethan scenes I noticed that
I was preceded in the crowd by a spectacled policeman who carried a
paper lantern. Although, as I have explained, the stage plays given in
the street were continued all night, only one arrest was made. The
prisoner was a drunkard who proved to be a medicine seller but
described himself as a journalist. I went to see the clean wooden cell
where topers are confined until they are sober. It had a very low
door, so that culprits might be compelled to enter and leave humbly on
their knees.

We had begun our festival day at six in the morning by attending a
celebration at the Shinto shrine. "Although it is no longer necessary,
perhaps, to attend the ceremony in a special kind of _geta_," said our
landlady, "it would be as well if you observed the old rule not to
attend without taking a bath in the early morning."[119]

At the ancient shrine the townspeople whose turn it was to attend the
annual function had assembled in ceremonial costumes. One man wore his
hair tied up in the fashion of the old prints. The plaintive strains
of old instruments made the strange appeal of all folk music. A
decorous procession was headed by the piebald pony of the shrine.
Youths and maidens carried aloft tubs of rice, vegetables, fish and
_saké_. These were received by the chief priest. He carefully placed a
strip of cloth before his mouth and nose[120] and addressed the chief
deity, all heads being bowed. Then the priest placed the offerings in
the darkened interior of the shrine. There was a cheery naturalness in
all the proceedings. A few small children in gay holiday dress ran
freely among the worshippers and encountered indulgent smiles. When an
end had been made of offering food and drink the priest within the