Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/27

Rh This idea of infinite eclecticism suggested the name Uji-yama (Mount Uji) for a special kind of incense competition. Again, it had been from time immemorial an aristocratic amusement that ladies should go in search of flowers peeping through the snow on the plains of Kasuga and Sagano. Hence the identification of certain incenses having the names of early wild flowers written on their envelopes, was called "little flower incense." Another quaint variety was the "small birds incense," in which, instead of identifying incenses by numbers, they were indicated by duplicated syllables in a bird's name. Thus, if the second and third specimens in a group had been detected by the "listener," he wrote hototogisu (nightingale), because the same syllable, to, occurs in the second and third numbers of the word. If the specimens detected were the third and fourth, he wrote ishitataki (wagtail), the duplication of ta giving the indication, and so on. There were also two variants of the game, called the Gem-pei (Minamoto and Taira) and the "horse race" incenses, each of which proceeded exactly after the manner of the Western "race game," a successful identification being marked by the advance of a flag or a puppet through a certain number of squares towards the goal. Many others might be described, but it will be enough to add that there was a minute code of etiquette to be observed in conducting the pastime; that even here the ubiquitous