253 Pit Workers in the Old Days #7: Renga Performers #1

These students-like performers who were on vacation would visit the bleak coal pit without an amusement facility in the evening from spring to autumn to entertain the people in the pit by singing popular songs at that time or exchanging riddles with each other. They usually sang Hokai and Sutoraiki, and so on, and also sang Kiteki Issei later. One of them plucked the four-stringed Chinese lute called a gekkin (yueqin) and the other played the two stringed Chinese bamboo fiddle called a kokin (huqin) merrily and rhythmically. The pit workers did not know the sophisticated name, rengashi, for such a performer, and they called the rengashi a yoru no nagashi geinin or wandering night performer. (It is said that the large-size kokin has four strings and is called keikin.)

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At the end, they palmed their song books off onto the audience.