Of a quite different character are the dances of Japan, of which Marcella A. Hincks gives to us a comprehensive picture. According to her, dancing in Japan is an essential part of religion and national tradition. In one of the oldest Japanese legends we are told that the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, being angry, hid herself in a cave, so that the world was plunged in darkness and life on earth became intolerable. The eight million deities of the Japanese heaven, seeing the sorrow and destruction wrought by Amaterasu’s absence from the world, sought by every means possible to coax her from her retreat. But nothing could prevail on her to leave it, until one god, wiser than the others, devised a plan whereby the angered goddess might be lured from her hiding place. Among the immortals was the beautiful Ame-No-Azume, whom they sent to dance and sing at the mouth of the cave, and the goddess, attracted by the unusual sound of music and dancing, and unable to withstand her curiosity, emerged from the concealment, to gaze upon the dancer. So once more she gave the light of her smile to the world. The people never forgot that dancing had been the means of bringing back Amaterasu to Japan, therefore from time immemorial the dance has been honored as a religious ceremony and practiced as a fine art throughout the Land of the Rising Sun. Dancing in Japan is not associated with pleasure and joyful feeling alone; every emotion, grave or gay, may become the subject of a dance. Some time ago funeral dances were performed around the corpse, which was placed in a building specially constructed for that purpose, and though it is said that originally the dancers hoped to recall the dead to life by the power and charm of their dance, later the measures were performed merely as a farewell ceremony. The Japanese dance is of the greatest importance and interest historically. Like her civilization, and the greater number of her arts, Japan borrowed many of her dance ideas from China, though the genius of the people very soon developed many new forms of dance, quite distinct from the Chinese importation. From the earliest times dancing has been closely associated with religion: in both the Shinto and the Buddhist faiths we find it occupying foremost place in worship. The Buddhist priests of the thirteenth century made use of dancing as a refining influence, which helped to refine the uncultured military class by which Japan was more or less ruled during the early Middle Ages.