In the West the theatre long ago shook off, escaped, forgot the Church. Here the elder child, the mother rather, still lives by the side of her offspring, and lives unchanged. The _Nō_ to-day is as the _Nō_ of five hundred years ago, the _Nō_ which grew out of the sacred dances of an immemorable antiquity. Like the drama of the Greeks it has its choruses, its chants, its unities, its one or two actors masked, richly dressed, impressive, who move with a religious solemnity, and speak as voices, not as men. Its plays, too, are drawn from sacred legend, from the mythology of Shintō deities, from the mysteries of the Buddhist faith, and from the fairy tales of the race. Over it all there is a glamour as of a stolen glimpse into the buried past. To-day its language is archaic, but preserved by constant repetition, handed down from father to son in the families of nobles who, since _Nō_ first began, have played in _Nō_, it remains the language and the speech of those dead Japanese, who towards the fourteenth century organised the _Nō_. The chant is strange and piercing, its very notes and phrases are outside of all that we consider music, as unfamiliar as the speech of insects, or the song of the remotest fathers of mankind. It echoes like a voice from out the long dead worlds, piercing yet remote, and the _tink_ of pipes dies out. There falls a stillness in the room. It is the afternoon of the last day of the Iidamachi _Nō_. As in the theatres of Greece the plays, each of which lasts about two hours, are given one after another throughout the whole day, while between them comes the _Kiogen_ (mad words), or _folies dramatiques_, farce-like, Greek-like comedies, shorter even than the _Nō_. Many of the spectators have been here since the morning, and on the matting of the shallow square boxes are lacquered trays of food, on all teapots and tobacco-stands; others come to see a special play or so and go away again; but to one and all it is not an amusement, it is a study, a homage paid to the past, a rite. As the first notes of the strange piercing chant wail down the room, the pipes and cigarettes go out, the tiny tea-bowls are set down, and a silence falls. The actors, in their rich brocaded robes of a make and texture of a long dead past, come slowly through the passage-way on to the platform. Their masks are made of lacquer, and they speak in a slow nasal deep voice that seems to come from the very back of their throats. They speak with every muscle strained and taut. It sounds almost as outside of speech as the chant is outside of music, and they move in strange long strides. Such movements are not merely for artistic effect, nor to mark agitation, or to reproduce nature; they are often used to mark the passing of a period of time.