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Read before the Asiatic Society of Japan, October 17, 1894. During the spring of 1891, I visited the settlement in Matsue, Izumo, of an outcast people known as the yama-no-mono.
It would be interesting, my friend added, to learn the origin of their songs and their dances; for their songs are not in their own special dialect, but in pure Japanese. And that they should have been able to preserve this oral literature without deterioration is especially remarkable from the fact that the yama-no-mono were never taught to read or write.
Singing the Daikoku-mai was, in fact, the special hereditary art of the yama-no-mono, and represented their highest comprehension of aesthetic and emotional matters. In former times they could not obtain admittance to a respectable theatre; and, like the hachiya, had theatres of their own.
Numbers of these baskets were visible, principally at the doors of the smaller dwellings. They are carried on the back, and are used to contain all that the yama-no-mono buy, old paper, old wearing apparel, bottles, broken glass, and scrap-metal. "A woman at last ventured to invite us to her house, to look at some old colored prints she wished to sell.
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