Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/36

Rh enclosure of the office of Public Roads was assigned by the Imperial Court as a foot-ball ground. It will readily be inferred from what has been already written about the cults of the Cha-no-Yu, the Kô-awase and the Ike-bana, that the pastime of kicking a ball came to have its exact rules and even its esoteric mysteries, the latter extravagances being inventions of rival schools which sought to win popularity by appealing to the superstitions of the time. The ordinary foot-ball ground of orthodox kickers took the form of a square, its side either twelve, sixteen, or twenty-four yards, and at its four corners a pine-tree, a bamboo, a maple, and a willow were planted. If these dimensions were exceeded, six pine-trees replaced the varieties just mentioned. Two noble families, however, special repositories of the arcana of the game, enjoyed the estimable privilege of setting up a pine-tree and a post at each corner, and of enclosing the ground with a fence of crossed bamboos. A code of minute regulations governed the apparel of the players,—robes, head-gear, sandals, stockings, and fans,—and another code indicated the proper postures of the body,—the movements of the hands, the paces of the feet, the expression of the face; the pose of the hips; the spread of the step; the recover; the side kick; the fore kick; the separate kick; the extra-tree kick; the numerical kick, and the indefinite kick—all were clearly prescribed. In short, foot-ball became a cult, and even the