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covered a portion of the spectators’ section. His own seat as an honored guest, Honda thought, was there beneath the canopy.
    A welcoming delegation of white-robed priests appeared and told him that the head of the shrine would be honored to receive him. Honda glanced quickly over his shoulder at the white disk of the morning sun blazing down upon the kendo ground as he followed the priests to the shelter of the shrine office.
    Though he usually wore a grave expression, Honda was not an especially pious man. As he looked beyond the shrine at the towering cedars of Mount Miwa shining in the awesome brilliance of the morning sky, he had the feeling of being in the presence of divinity. Nevertheless, he was far from being possessed by a mood of devotion.
    The feeling that the mystical enwraps the world like a pure atmosphere differs considerably from an outlook that, while acknowledging the mystical, simply does not think of it as having anything to do with ordinary affairs. Honda was of course sympathetic to the mystical. It was somewhat like affection for a mother. But from about the age of nineteen he had felt he could get along quite well without it, a feeling that had by now become second nature to him.
    After Honda and the various local dignitaries had greeted one another at length and exchanged cards, the chief priest brought them all to the entrance of the corridor leading to the shrine itself where two miko were waiting. The guests put out their hands for the young girls to pour water over them according to the Shinto purification ceremony. Within the shrine were the fifty participating athletes, a cluster of blueclad figures. Honda was accorded the place of honor as the guests seated themselves.
    Ritual flutes sounded, and then a priest in tall cap and white robe advanced to the altar and began to recite a dedicatory prayer: “Here in the terrible presence of the great divinity of Omiwa, the Sacred Prince, Omononushi Kushimigatama, forever enthroned beneath the heavens, forever favored by the light of the sun, here upon this holy ground of Omiwa . . .”
    As he prayed, the priest waved above the heads of everyone the sacred green sakaki branch hung with strips of white paper. Taking his turn after a member of the sponsoring association, Honda, as representative of the guests, accepted the sakaki branch and raised it reverently before the altar of the gods. Next to make the offering was the representative of the athletes, an old man of about sixty, whose kendo uniform was a faded blue. In the course of all this solemn ritual the heat grew ever more intense, and Honda was uncomfortably aware of the rolling beads of sweat like a swarm of insects under his shirt.
    When the formal worship was at last completed, the whole group went down into the forecourt. The guests took their seats in the chairs beneath the canopy, and the athletes sat down upon mats, which were also covered with a canopy. The unsheltered seats were already filled with spectators. Since these sat facing the shrine, they were in the direct rays of the morning sun climbing behind Mount Miwa and had to shield themselves as best they could with fans and hand towels.
    Next on the program was a long series of welcoming and congratulatory speeches. Honda, too, got to his feet and expressed appropriate sentiments. The fifty athletes, he had been told, were divided into the traditional two groups of red and white. Today’s meet honoring the gods of Omiwa, then, would have five rounds, each consisting of at least five matches between the two camps. The veterans’ association head rose to speak after Honda, and in the course of his address, which went on and on, the chief priest leaned over and whispered into Honda’s ear.
    “Do you see that boy first from the left in the front row beneath the canvas? He is only in his first year at the College of National Studies in Tokyo, but he is the lead-off man for the whites in the first round. I think that Your