The Japanese history of dancing begins from the eighth to twelfth centuries. The _Bugaku_ and the _Kagura_, another ancient Japanese sacred dance, are considered the bases of all the other dances. The movements in both dances strive to express reverence, adoration and humility. The music of the old Japanese dances is solemn, weird and always in a minor key, and the instruments used are flutes and a drum. Stages were erected at all the principal Shinto temples and each temple had its staff of dancers. The _Kagura_ dance can still be seen at the temple of Kasuga at Nara. Like the Chinese, the Japanese lack dances known to us as folk-dancing. In the art of dancing Japan far surpasses China, this being due to the more emotional and poetic character of the race. The dancing of Japan, like its other arts, is outspokenly impressionistic and symbolic. It is graceful and dainty and gives evidence of thorough refinement. Dances of pungent racial tinge are those of the American Indians. The best known of the Indian pantomimes are the Ghost, Snake, and Dream Dances. Very little observed and recorded are their various war dances; still less their social dances. Stolid, impassive and stoic as is the man himself, so are his dances and other æsthetic expressions. Void of frivolous gaiety and passionate joy as an Indian remains in his life, so is his dance. His dance turns more about some mystic or religious idea than about a sexual one. There is that peculiar heavy and secretive trait in an Indian folk-dance that manifests itself so conspicuously in the dances of the Siberian Mongolians, as the Buriats, Kalmuks, and particularly the Finns. Though our space is limited, we shall here attempt to give an outline of the better known peculiarities of Indian folk-dances, particularly of the Dream Dance of the Chippewa tribe. The Chippewas or Ojibways were, at the arrival of the whites, one of the largest of the tribes of North America. They originally occupied the region embracing both shores of Lake Superior and Lake Huron. We owe the description of the Dream Dance to S. A. Barrett, according to whose view it is based on the story of an Indian girl who escaped into the lake upon the arrival of the white men and hid herself among the lilies, thinking they would soon leave. She remained in the lake for ten days without food or sleep, until the Great Spirit from the clouds rescued her miraculously and carried her back to her people. In memory of this event the ceremony of the Dream Dance was instituted and is performed annually in the open air, about the first of July. A special dance ground, from fifty to eighty feet in diameter, was prepared and marked off by a circle of logs or by a low fence. This circle was provided with an opening toward the west and one toward the east.