<<  -- 5 --  Keith Bramich    A JAPANESE 'RIVERDANCE'?

The last stage of the extravaganza returns to the scene at the beginning -- prayers at a fire on high, and red smoke. The sleeping emperor rises onto the stage, slumped on his throne. Four male singers reappear at the back of the stage and fix their earpieces.

Otomo-no-Dainagon, on stage with the dragon's ball, is asked 'What will you do if the Emperor isn't cured with this ball?'

'I will kill myself'.

He hangs the ball above the Emperor's head, and, to a clap of thunder with bright green, purple and blue lights, the Emperor stirs from his long sleep.

'I thought I would never wake again' he exclaims, asking if Otomo-no-Dainagon has experienced the same dream. But this wasn't a dream, and the ball is the evidence. 'Probably, in my struggle to organise this world, my dream has reached the moon.'

In a shamelessly happy ending, the Princess appears once more, and the Emperor declares his wish that she should marry her young man, giving the dragon ball to Mount Fuji, so that the whole world will last throughout eternity. (At this point, the ball, like, previously, the Princess, rises to the roof.)

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