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perspectives of real and objective time; and that I might be left with nothing more than the mere imitation or, to say it another way, with nothing more than an accurately stuffed specimen of my childhood.
    Everyone experiences some such incident in his childhood. In most cases, however, it assumes such a slight form, hardly worthy of being called even an incident, that it is apt to pass by unnoticed. . . .
    The scene of which I speak took place once when a crowd celebrating the Summer Festival came surging in through our gate.
    Both for my sake and because of her bad leg, my grandmother had persuaded the neighborhood firemen to arrange for the festival processions of the district to pass along the street before our gate. Originally there had been another prescribed route for the festivals, but the chief fireman took it upon himself to arrange some slight detour each year, and it had become a custom to pass our house.
    On this particular day I was standing in front of the gate with other members of the household. Both leaves of the vine-patterned iron gate had been thrown open, and water had been sprinkled neatly on the paving stones outside the gate. The hesitant sound of drums was drawing near.The plaintive melody of a chant, in which individual words only gradually became distinguishable, pierced through the confused tumult of the festival, proclaiming what might be called the true theme of this outwardly purposeless uproar—a seeming lamentation for the extremely vulgar mating of humanity and eternity, which could be consummated only through some such pious immorality as this. In the tangled mass of sound I could gradually distinguish the metallic jingle of the rings on the staff carried by the priest at the head of the procession, the stuttering roar of the drums, and the medley of rhythmic shouts from the youths shouldering the sacred shrine. My heart was beating so suffocatingly that I could scarcely stand. (Ever since then violent anticipation has always been anguish rather than joy for me.)
    The priest carrying the staff was wearing a fox mask. The golden eyes of this occult beast fastened themselves too intently upon me, as though to bewitch me, and the procession passing before my eyes aroused in me a joy akin to terror. Before I knew it, I felt myself grab hold of the skirt of whoever it was from our house that was standing beside me: I was ready to run away at the first excuse. (Ever since those days this has been the attitude with which I have always confronted life: from things too much waited for, too much embellished with anticipatory daydreams, there is in the end nothing I can do but run away.)
    Behind the priest came a group of firemen, carrying on their shoulders the offertory chest, festooned with sacred garlands of twisted straw, and then a crowd of children carrying a tiny, frivolously bouncing shrine. Finally the principal shrine of the procession drew near, the majestic black and gold omikoshi. From afar we had already seen the golden phoenix on its peak, swaying and rocking dazzlingly above the din and bustle, like a bird floating to and fro among the waves; already the sight had filled us with a sort of bewildered feeling of uneasiness. Now the shrine itself came into view, and there was a venomous state of dead calm, like the air of the tropics, which clung solely about the shrine. It seemed a malevolent sluggishness, trembling hotly above the naked shoulders of the young men carrying the omikoshi. And within the thick scarlet-and-white ropes, within the guardrails of black lacquer and gold, behind those fast-shut doors of gold leaf, there was a four-foot cube of pitch-blackness.
    This perfect cube of empty night, ceaselessly swaying and leaping, to and fro, up and down, was boldly reigning over the cloudless noonday of early summer.
    The shrine drew closer and closer. The young men who carried it were wearing summer kimono, all of the same pattern, the thin cotton material revealing almost all