THE DANCE IN JAPAN.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2206, 23 November 1920, Page 4

THE DANCE IN JAPAN.

Japan is a land where dancing is purely a feminine art, writes the Tokio correspondent of the Morning Post.’’ No Japanese male has ever been so bereft of dignity as to dance. The most charming lady that ever tripped the light fantastic would not succeed hi inducing him to take a turn. This is not to say that he docs not dearly delight in seeing the poetry of-motion, however; and this pleasure in Japan is only afforded by the professional dancer, known as the geisha. European ideas in favour of promiscuous dancing between the sexes no Japanese can well understand. It is inconceivable (hat a Japanese wife or daughter should allow the familiarity of a male acquaintance taking her in charge and bouncing her about the room in a wall/, or jazz. The thing would simply be impossible. No Japanese husband would tolerate it for a moment, even if his wife so far forgot herself as to go in for such immodest frivolity. Yet there are Japanese who have danced, and there are Japanese who will dance again. At the annual ball in honour of the Imperial birthday the dance is led off by even princes and princesses with foreign diplomats for partners; but it is, of course, the mildest of steps, with scarcely, a touch of the glove, hardly more than a drill promenade. This is in deference to Western ideas of high-class entertainment, which only goes to show how far the Japanese will go in trying to please their guests. Naval and military officers have been known to study Western dancing, too, in order not to be considered out of it when attending entertainments abroad, but they dance with Western women, never with Japanese. The Japanese read in Western newspapers of the numbers ad' married people led into conjugal infidelity through the dance, and feel their own convictions continued. According to reports of divorce cases in foreign newspapers, many of the female delinquents have admitted that they were first led astray by falling in love will) a dancing partner. The young /nan IJo 1 1, who was hanged in Manchester recently, for the murder of Mrs Breaks, was reported in the daily press as one of the most distinguished dancers in his circle, and it was .-aid that all the young women were crazy to dance with him. But such sad episodes seem to the Japanese to ju-iify their notion that dancing is not it proper amusement for the sexes. This does not mean, unfortunately. that Japan is more highly moral than the dancers of the West. In regard to sex, perhaps, the Japanese man is less so, but his dealings with women are more discreet. The Japanese dance is not a mathematical formula like that of the West: it is a natural and graceful interpretation of a poem or story, preferably an epic or it love scene, quite in accordance with the original idea of the dance as religious performance to convey an idea and its emotion. It is never so sensuous or vulgar as the bailer is at limes. Halt a dozen Japanese git Is dancing is as much like an angelic representation as anything on earth can well be. It is like the way of the wind over golden corn Helds, or gentle waves over a subsiding sea !