a Rabelaisian touch, some were
nasty, but nearly all had wit. The following is an entirely harmless
example:

Mr. Potato of the Countryside
Got his new European suit.
But a potato is still a potato.
He took one and a half _rin_[161] out of his bag
And bought _ame_[162] and licked at it.

Here are three others:

Tip-toe, tip-toe,
Creaks the floor.
Girl made prayer,
Dreading ghost.
But 'twas her lover
Who stealthily came.

Dancer, dancer,
Do not laugh at me.
My dance is very bad,
But I only began last year.

How thin a thin-legged man may be
If he does not take his _miso_ soup.[163]

The quality of these dramatic songs will be entirely missed if the
reader does not bear in mind the mimetic skill of the amateur Japanese
dancer and his power as a contortionist. Clever dancers often use
their powers in a humorous pretence of clumsiness. Of the freer sort
of songs I may quote two:

Never buy vegetables in Third Street,[164]
You'll lose 30 sen and your nose.

Onions from a basket hanging in the _benjo_[165]
Were cooked in _miso_[166] and given to a blind man,
But that chap was greatly delighted.

Some of the other songs may be described, I suppose, as obscene, if
obscene be, as the dictionary says, "something which delicacy, purity
and decency forbid to be exposed"; but "delicacy, purity and decency"
must be considered in relation to climate, work and social usage. What
one feels about some critics of _Bon_ songs and dances is that they
need a course of _The Golden Bough_. Such an illustration as _Bon_
songs furnish of the moral and mental conditions from which country
folk must raise themselves is of value if rural sociology is a real
thing. There is far too much theorising about the countryman and the
countrywoman, far too much idealising of them and far too much rating
of them as clods. If country people of all lands are free-spoken let
us be neither hypercritical nor hypocritical. A big gap seems to yawn
between the paddy-field peasant in his breech clout and the immaculate
clubman, but what difference is there between the savour of the
average _Bon_ song and of many a smoking-room jest which is not to the
credit of the peasant? At an inn in Naganoken a Japanese artist on
holiday showed me his sketch book. Among his drawings was a