Suddenly, as when one throws a stone into the water, the crowd surged forwards, then rippled slowly back; half a dozen white-uniformed policemen, with the distinctive, distinguished face of the _samurai_, were coming over the bridge, driving the people before them, back and back. The confused noise of indistinct shouting filled the air. Suddenly on to the bridge came running in a sort of jog-trot a crowd of bareheaded men, their short white tunics hardly reaching to the thigh and their brown legs naked beneath, all tugging and straining at a huge unwieldy car, which moved in jerks on its wheels of solid wood. On each side ran bands of men brandishing flaming torches in their hands, while priests in gorgeous apparel came behind. And priests and people, torch-bearers and car-pullers, were chanting as they ran, a fierce, wild cry, which went on and on. The car-pullers swayed from side to side, tossing their hands above their heads, the torch-bearers rocked, sending great flaming fragments among the crowd, and we all stood pressed together, shrinking back from the burning torches, and the feet of the car-pullers, singed here, trampled there, in one sweating mass of hot humanity. In the middle of the bridge the car stood still. The men in white tunics moved restlessly on their feet, straining at the cords; the torch-bearers chanted louder, tossing their torches in the air; the priests hurried to the front, and stood gesticulating while the wild, monotonous cry, gathering fierceness and frenzy from its very monotony, thundered and roared. Then with a sudden swirl the car turned round, and torch-bearers, car-pullers and priests were rushing back again to the same fierce wild cry, the same frenzied swaying of the bodies, and the same mad tossing of the arms. The sacred procession had come, was gone. Slowly the crowd rippled back, on over the bridge, back down the street, the policemen disappeared, the drums of the _geisha_ booths and the invitations of the stall-owners rang out again. Down on the surface of the river the floating tables grew fuller and fuller. Kyoto’s nightly _soirée_ was at its height. VIII NŌ A room whose sloping floor is cut into chess-board squares; each square flat and matted, so that the back is twelve inches high and level with the front of the square above; a bare still wooden room long and crowded. Each matted square thick with kneeling men and women, the long-headed aquiline faces of the nobles and the _samurai_. At the end a platform with an opening vaguely leading from it. No scenery, no footlights, no curtain. It is the theatre for the performance of the _Nō_. Those sacred old world plays written many hundred years ago, acted by _samurai_ for _samurai_, the religious mysteries and moralities of Japan.